Taking Things Day by Day

Sometimes all we can do is take things one step at a time. One day at a time. One moment after another.

Life can get difficult when we least expect it, and then we are left to cope with situations beyond our control. We have to keep going forward, but our progress has slowed.

Things aren’t always the way that we wanted or hoped for them to be.

Sometimes all our hard work feels like it has been for nothing and we are just sliding backwards.

Still, every day, we pick ourselves back up and keep going.

Slow progress is better than no progress.

I’m sure you have heard that saying before, and it is true for us many times in life. We aren’t always making the progress that we had hoped for. We aren’t always making our dreams come true.

Keep moving forward

Some days, all we can do is still be alive, still be fighting.

That is how I have felt lately. The last couple of months have been one challenge after another and I have been feeling displaced. Out of time. Out of place. And yet, I am still here. I am still moving, albeit slowly. I am still trying to make my dreams come true.

In 12 step programs, they have a keyring they give you at your first meeting. It says, “One day at a time.”

Sometimes, one day seems like such a huge thing to focus on. So we focus on one hour. One minute. One more task that we can complete.

We can’t focus on the whole race, so we focus on taking a single step. And then one more step. That’s all we have the capacity for some days. One more step. Then we rest. Then we take one more.

Life isn’t always about quick progress. It isn’t about all the easy times when things flow perfectly. So much of life is just plodding forward, one step at a time, hoping that we don’t fall.

Then we do fall. Maybe we stay down for a few minutes. But then we drag ourselves back up. One more step.

We fall again. Then we stay down longer. One more step.

Sometimes, that is how to path to our dreams is made. One more fall, and one more step at a time. It doesn’t matter how slowly we are moving. It doesn’t matter how long we take to rest in-between. It is those small, halting steps in the middle.

Life knocks us down. It is inevitable. What is up to us, is the decision to get back up.

It may be our mental or physical health that is getting us down. It may be a relationship, or a job. Or, it may be a general feeling of being lost and having gone the wrong direction.

Still, no matter what has happened in the past, we always have the choice to keep going on.