Lot’s of the tiniest of steps can take you amazing places.
In the pool with my 5 year old daughter today, she taught me an invaluable lesson about tiny steps and perseverance.
Going back to the start, I need to tell you that’s she’s quite afraid of water. She’ll sit on the steps of the pool, she won’t trust the floaty vest to keep her safe in the deeper water. But today we learned our lesson.
We started with her chest on my knees as I sat on the steps, and she kicked her legs, trusting the vest just a tiny bit, knowing that I had her. Bit by bit, I slid her further down my knees and into the pool. Then she held my hands and floated out a bit, still close to the edge and I was still sitting.
Then I held her as we walked around together in the pool, her arms clutched around my neck, but in the deeper water. We went then onto a pool noodle together to learn what floating feels like.
Then she floated by herself in the deeper water, just holding on to my arms. We then wrapped the pool noodle around us and she held me while we floated again. Doing some laps of the pool, feeling the sensations as we floated and kicked together through the deep water.
I then had her floating in the deeper water while holding the pool noodle with me wrapped inside, getting further and further away from me, inching down the length of the pool noodle. I ducked out of the circle of pool noodle and held it from the other side, while she was in the same place holding the two ends of the noodle. We did another couple of laps, me dragging, her floating and kicking.
I put the noodle under her arms, and we floated around some more.
And then, I let her go.
She screamed – over come by the fear. But we did some big deep breaths, and she realised she was floating by herself.
Oh, the smile that appeared. That is what parenting is about. You know the one? The smile of pure joy. Then she squealed. No longer afraid, instead, overjoyed by what she was doing. Floating around, by herself.
In case you’ve missed the lesson in this story, it’s about pushing past our limits, tiny step, by tiny step. Getting you where you want to go.
What if we all intrinsically trusted ourselves to do it, tiny step by tiny step? How would that change your world?