Baby Steps to Success

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. -- Lao-tsu

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I'm trying to learn Spanish. I took some in high school and in college, but never even approached fluency. Now, with my relatively recent spiritual awakening, I know that, with God, all things are possible.

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I have Spanish textbooks that I have been studying, but the most useful materials have been the Pimsleur series on CD. I listen to it in my car whenever I drive anywhere alone and have so far been able to get through 40 of the 90 total Spanish lessons, each being 20-30 minutes long. I have had to listen to some of the lessons 3 or 4 times (or more) to make sure I was ready for the next lesson, which builds on the prior. Each lesson only covers a couple new concepts and introduces only a few new words and phrases. But they add up. One by one. Until one day...blammo, I'm fluent.

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Today, as I was commuting home, I has rambling off a response to one of the questions in Spanish and started to laugh to myself at how complex the ideas were that I could say and understand. Granted, I'm still far from fluent, but I couldn't have imagined a few months ago how much Spanish I can speak and understand now. The idea of possibly being fluent in Spanish wasn't even on my radar, even when I started back to studying the language. It was only today that I now know that I have it in me to be fluent. I have no doubt that I will be fluent in Spanish soon(ish). Weird. But wonderful. And it all started with simply trying. It began with finding the materials, opening my ears and mind, and beginning with lesson one.

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Any goal you can possibly imagine truly is attainable, but you can't finish a race you don't enter. Just remember: even the longest journey must being where you stand. Just picture your goal, and take the tiniest step in getting it accomplished. And then another...

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Godspeed.