I was recently listening to one of my favorite teachers, Eckhart Tolle, and he was talking about how our lives are made up of a collection of little things. Every now and then we have big things in life like planning a wedding, starting a new job, running a marathon, or building a house, but even these “big things” are comprised of a set of little things.

For me, anxiety can show up when I’m thinking about the amount of work required to finish a project or goal. It can be easy to fixate on the seemingly big end result and forget that any big thing is simply a bunch of small tasks strung together.

For this it might be helpful to envision a jigsaw puzzle. You have the box to show you the end product (your vision) but what you’re working with are the small pieces. If the puzzle was already put together you’d be robbed of all the satisfaction of finding the right piece and clicking it into place (over and over again)!

So start to work backwards from your goal and see the steps you took to get there. What pieces of the puzzle were crucial? What kind of journey is this goal going to take you on? Learning to enjoy the process and focus on the pieces is a way to let ourselves off the hook and bring a sense of play and creativity into work and personal goals.