After the last day of school this year, I planned to take my son on his first camping trip beyond the backyard. We went to Brazos Bend State Park, and we had a great time. I was thrilled to finally make use of the Coleman Evanston 6-person tent with Screened-In Porch that I bought on an Amazon deal years ago. That porch part was a huge help when it came to getting away from the mosquitoes.
After a night of camping, the time came to pack everything back up. This tent is wonderful, but it’s also large. It was inevitable that I had to try to remember how to get it completely back in the bag and zipped. It folded easily, and then it went back into the bag easily but then came the zipping part. Looking at that bag stretched wide open with that massive tent packed away inside, it felt like there was no possible way I was going to be able to zip it. Carefully, I went just a few inches then pushed another section down to move the zipper just a little farther. Eventually, the entire bag was zipped, and the tent was neatly packed away.
It made me think about every other challenge that we face in life. Every big project. Every great undertaking. Whether we are planning a birthday party or building a massive new facility, no one ever successfully does the whole thing all at once. Instead, we book the venue before we print the invitations or order the cake. We do soil compaction studies before we survey the users for their functional needs or before the architect makes his or her first schematic design. Every big project begins with a first step and then follows a critical path full of sequential steps all leading to the big reveal.
So if you are getting ready to eat a massive steak in Amarillo or trying to zip a bag filled with your tent, just take a little at a time. Big successes are almost always the result of small victories.