Making Steps Manageable

In my post, Small Steps, I described how a close friend and I regularly talk about breaking our recoveries into small steps; each step building on the last, but none building too far. In the post, Mike's World Tour, I described how I took a month-long trip from New Zealand to South East Asia to see how capable I was to travel. I did this before taking a year long world trip while I waited for my brain injury fatigue to reduce enough for me to work better.

My friend and I have an ongoing debate about whether this month long trip was a small step. I admit that, from the outside, it looks a fairly massive thing to take on. Yet I still argue strongly that it was a small step. I do so because it was very manageable.

It was manageable because I had a reasonably clear idea of what the difficult areas would be for me: coping with fatigue, coping with lots of very unusual situations. It is true that, although I had a clear idea of what the problems might be, I didn't know how big they might be. But, if my "small step" had gone badly, it wouldn't have been the end of the world. I was on a tour and could have holed up in my tour bus and hotel rooms and got through any big problems. In addition, I was lucky enough to have members of my family along with me to help me out if any one situation went wrong. In the end, though, my "small step" went well and I got enough confidance to embark on my longer trip.

I guess, to me at least, that's the true definition of a small step, It's small because I've made it manageable. I know the issues will likely be and, if things go wrong, it won't be the end of the world.

Cheers,
Mike

Small Steps

I have a close friend who's also a recoverer. She's recovering from various issues related to depression. That sort of recovery is no less is a long road than a recovery from TBI. As we go through our recoveries, one thing her and I often talk about is the need to break recovery into small steps; each step builds on the one before, but none builds too far!

We both think about where we'd like to end up and then break that goal into a series of small steps to get us there. Each step is taken with a very clear structure in mind if things go wrong. When you're taking small steps, it doesn't matter so much if you have to take a step back down.

Of the many things I've become able to do using small steps, probably the best demonstration of it is my return to full-time work. My goal was always to work full-time as a competition economist and my Occupational Therapist helped me break this into small steps. I took on a support role, doing a few hours a week of background work supporting other competition economists. I gradually built up my hours and the pressure I faced until, finally, I was once again working fulltime as a competition economist. As the graph in this post shows, it wasn't a fast process, but I did, in the end, get there.

In many ways, my slow progression just happened naturally. I would handle one bit of work ok and then accept a little bit more. I initially found stress difficult to handle, but, by increasing is slowly and with supports in place should I find any one bit too much, I gradually became accustomed to it.

Having a process in place to gradually become accustomed to things is key. Nothing should be rushed! Everything should be in small steps!

Cheers,
Mike

P.S. I've written another post on this topic, Making Steps Manageable.