I once heard a story about the Chasam Sofer. He was once asked how he became the great talmid chacham (Torah scholar) that he was. He said “It’s easy. It only took five minutes.” The listener could not believe his ears. “Surely the Rav spent more than 5 minutes learning to became so great.” The Chasam Sofer said, “Of course. It is five minutes here and five minutes there. Never do nothing. You must always be doing something.” If we take 5 minutes a day to accomplish a goal, that adds up to over 34 hours a year. If you average work day is 8 hours, this is like taking almost 4 days off of work to accomplish a goal. Wouldn’t you like to take 4 days off from work to make you dreams come true? It is easier than you think.
It is a great idea, but it actually requires you to get up off of your lazy tuchis and get things going. My friend Yael Ayalon once told me that “planning and promises are just another form of procrastination.” How right she is! We think about what we are going to do. We consult with others. We call our mom for advice. Just get up and start doing something. If you can’t give 5 minutes a day to your dream you are lying to yourself. If you want to lose weight but you can’t exercise for 10 minutes a day you are lying to yourself. If you want to be a writer and you won’t put in even a few minutes a day to work on your craft you have to stop lying to yourself and start being honest. The only person you are cheating is yourself. You are the last person you should be cheating!
Most of us remain as we are until we are forced to change, either because of some illness, loss of a job, death of a loved one, or some other life altering event. It is far less frequent that we decide to voluntarily make a change in our life. You have the power to decide to make the change you want to improve your life. Do it today! If you can dream it, you can do it. You just need to do it. “Just” is a big word, but the truth is that it takes just one step, followed by another, followed by another. The sum of those actions is the change you want to make.
You might want to lose 10 lbs (or 50). To think about losing 50 lbs is massive undertaking that seems unrealistic. You just need to take the first step. Let’s try to work out for 10 mins today. Let just try to eat on less piece of candy. After that step, you will notice that we still have not yet lost the 50 lbs. To remedy that, we take the step again. One more workout, and one less piece of candy. Again and again. Before too long you will notice that although we have no yet lost the 50 lbs, you have made noticeable progress. Others will probably see it first. If you lose 5 or 10 lbs, it will be noticeable. The positive feedback will trickle in. “Are you losing weight?” It will feel great. It is not 50 lbs or nothing. The change is a process that is the sum total of all of your steps, with many milestones along the way. Use these milestone to propel you to the next. One day you will wake up, and your clothes will be noticeably looser, or perhaps not even fit at all. We are still not at 50 lbs, but you are obviously doing something right. One more work out, one less piece of candy.
Every mile is made of inches. Every ocean is made of drops. Most things in your life do not require one big step, but just a whole bunch of little ones. Make the steps smaller and smaller until they are manageable, and then just do them, one by one. You think you can’t be thin because 50 lbs is a lot of weight to lose. You think you can’t be a Torah scholar because of all of the pages you have to learn and all of the years it will take to get there. Every Torah scholar you have ever known of started with one line, and then another. Just do the first one. You might be surprised to find out that you actually like it. The process can be very rewarding. The satisfaction of accomplishment is far more satisfying than you can imagine.
You can be what you always dreamed. You just need to do it.