Have you ever heard of Milo and the calf?
I love tales. Those little stories that get passed on year after year, from person to person and entail simple wisdoms. The story of Milo and the calf is one of those wonderful, wise tales. Like with many tales, there are quite a few different variances of the story.
Here my favorite version:
The story is about two Greek islanders vying to become the strongest man on the island.
One of the islanders bought a new-born calf. The other laughed at him. How could a calf help his rival train? But every day the wise trainee lifted it. Every day the calf got a little bigger and heavier, but he could still lift it because it was only a little bit heavier than the previous day. After a year, the wise trainee saw the calf was now a bull, but he could still lift it.
In the meantime, the unwise trainee had tried every day to lift a bull.
He had failed every time.
Yesterday I wrote about lowering the bar. The two principles are very similar. Sometimes less is more. It is better to do something than nothing at all. Sometimes starting small can lead to big things.
Once we start off, and we see: “Hey, I can do that” we often get to the next phase which is “Hey, I like doing that”. That can take us the right to the 3rd phase that says “Hey, I want to do more of that” and suddenly we grow. Every day a little bit.
Small incremental steps can take us to great places.
