When I was contemplating what to write about this week, I found myself struggling. Not because I didn’t have anything to write about, but because I couldn’t even focus long enough to think more deeply about the things I did want to write about. My mind has been going 90 miles an hour recently, mulling over the million different tiny things that are going on in my world and choices that I’m trying to make, not to mention choices that I am not even in a position yet to make so instead I’m running all the possible scenarios through my head on a continuous loop. Always productive…sure,sure :/. But what this brought to light for me was how evident it is that so many of us are just going through the motions in our lives, waiting for a miracle to occur. Some of us are waiting because we have to; some of us are waiting out of fear. Either way, we’ve taken ourselves out of the game, destined to warm the bench until it arrives.

Now this miracle could be anything: a new job or relationship to fall in our lap, or for the significant other we are involved with to magically change their entire personality and be the person we want them to be (more on this another time), or really any opportunity that we think might turn our lives around.

Have we gone insane?

If I’m being honest, I am hardly warming the bench in the majority of the areas of my life. I’ve been actively making it a priority to not sit on the sidelines and watch my life pass me by in so many ways, but it has become glaringly obvious to me through this that it hasn’t reached all the areas of my life quite yet and I, too, am guilty. There are moments and even days where I feel so incredibly stuck and even worse, trapped in the hamster wheel that is my life right now. I know that there is something bigger meant for me and ways that I can do more, be more, and live more, but I can’t see past my nose to make a step in the right direction. Part of me is overwhelmed with the endless possibilities and directions I could take that it leaves me frozen in place. Sylvia Plath describes it best…

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet

– The Bell Jar

This is my life right now. I can do anything, be anything, go anywhere… all it takes is a step to get started and my feet are glued to the floor. I am constantly asking myself this question:

If you do not change a single thing, how can anything in your life change?

The simple answer- it can’t! So what the crap am I doing waiting?!

Positive thoughts, faith, visualizing, praying… all great things, but action must be taken if anything is going to happen!

And here’s the kicker- you don’t even have to overhaul your life- you just have to make one small move, one baby step at a time. So what step will be taken today? Not tomorrow, not next week, or month, or year…just today. What is one simple thing that you want to do for yourself today that will move you even if only an inch? Make it.

I don’t want waiting to become my life. And I don’t want that for any of you either.

Step.