“Go big or go home” used to be the motto of many of my college buddies back in the day. Its an exciting motto. A tough challenge to live up to the aspirations inside of you in a big way, or forget them all together. Of course if you had a choice to do everything 150% or forget about it and live at home all your life, I hope you would bid Mom farewell and make it happen. However “going big” doesn’t always have to happen all at once. If I told you you had to play Layla by Eric Clapton perfectly today without you knowing where your C chord was, it might not work out so well. But if I told you you could develop a habit of practicing the guitar for one hour a day for 30 days, I bet you would rock in a month!
The point is, we can “Go big,” but it doesn’t have to be all at once. Real change is slow change, and real change happens by making real habits like committing to practice for an hour a day if you want to rock, drawing a sketch a day if you want to create art, and studying consistently if you want to ace your exam.
For some things, we can go big the first time and make it awesome. But for many other things, we need to take it a day at a time, and commit to making small improvements along the way. Dont beat yourself up if you cant rock out Layla on the first try, but make a small commitment to practice, and you’ll end up with a large awesome change.
For more on creating real change, check out Do You Prefer to Aim Big or Aim Small? by Gretchen Rubin.
Oh, and if you wanted to start working on rocking out Layla, you can find the chords to the song here.
Peace!
– Jake