Since we are old enough to attend school, teachers and parents constantly ask us - what do you want to be when you grow up? And as children (wildly bold innovators of dreams and thought) we give them a huge list of things that our developing brains can muster up. We’re conditioned to think about the big picture from the get go. Perhaps that’s because it might be counter productive to ask a child - “what would you like to do tomorrow?” - but I think it could actually be a fun exercise to go down a rabbit hole with them.

I talk about tomorrow because we should be teaching kids that what you wanna be is like a giant, wide river. It’s compiled of streams, valleys, lakes, ponds, and is ever changing. It even changes the very path that it runs on when it’s there long enough. It’s almost impossible to walk the entire length of a river (theoretically, nothing is impossible, but I speak of impossible in this case as just down right not desirable or too big of a task to achieve in one go) to catch a fish. The way you get to a river, is to follow the streams, and the pieces that all make up to be that grand river we all admire, with rushing whitewater, peaceful eddies and at times, mighty waterfalls.

Thought and behavior work the same way. The big task that you want to achieve on the weekend but keep putting off, may have trickle down effects to how you even choose to ignore the most menial task, such as choosing to throw a piece of trash rather than getting up to put it precisely into the trash. Not a huge deal, however, thoughts scale. If you can train yourself to go do that smaller task, then the next task will be much easier. It’s because big, major thoughts aren’t compiled as one entity or string, but compiled of a ton of subcomponents, the supporting structure of it all. And without this, it’s damn near impossible to get to that big river. If you can figure out where the streams and ponds are first however, you can start to understand a plan of action to see the whole thing eventually.

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