Stop Staring at the Highway The other day I was driving behind someone trying to merge onto a busy road.
The strange part was that there was nothing preventing them from doing it.
The road had a long merge lane. Probably a quarter mile. Plenty of room to accelerate, get up to speed, and blend into traffic.
Instead, they sat there looking left at the cars flying by.
I could almost imagine what they were thinking:
"There isn't enough room."
"Traffic is moving too fast."
"How am I supposed to get into that?"
What they weren't seeing was the road directly in front of them.
The merge lane existed for a reason.
They didn't need to go from zero to sixty instantly. They just needed to start moving.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how often we do the same thing in life.
Why Big Goals Feel Impossible Most of us are terrible at judging distance when it comes to goals.
We stand at the beginning and stare at the finish line.
We think:
I need to lose 50 pounds. I need to grow my business. I need to save for retirement. Then we compare where we are today to where we want to be someday.
The gap feels enormous.
So enormous that we freeze.
We end up studying the problem instead of solving it.
That's something I've written about before in
We've Admired the Problem Long Enough . "We've admired the problem long enough. Let's make a decision and move on."
I think about that line often.
Some people become experts on why something is difficult.
They know every obstacle.
Every excuse.
Every risk.
Every reason it won't work.
Meanwhile, they never take the first step.
What If It Was Easy? Years ago, I heard a coach on a BiggerPockets podcast ask a simple question:
"What if it was easy?"
At first, it sounds ridiculous.
Of course it's not easy.
That's why it's a problem.
But something interesting happens when you ask the question.
Your brain stops focusing on obstacles and starts looking for pathways.
If growing your business were easy, what would you do?
If losing weight were easy, what would you do?
If writing a book were easy, what would you do?
The answers are usually surprisingly practical.
You'd make one sales call.
You'd take a walk after dinner.
You'd write one page.
You'd cook one healthy meal.
You'd save the first hundred dollars.
A few months ago, when sales slowed down in my catering business, I found myself facing this exact question. I wrote about it in
When Sales Stop Coming In, Get Back in the Trenches . I couldn't control the economy.
I couldn't control government spending.
I couldn't control whether customers decided to place orders.
But I could call customers.
I could send simple check-in emails.
I could thank people for their orders.
I could reconnect with customers we hadn't heard from in months.
None of it was revolutionary.
There was no grand strategy.
No secret marketing funnel.
No silver bullet.
Just daily contact with real people.
One call.
One email.
One conversation at a time.
In other words, I could use the merge lane that was already in front of me.
The answers are usually simpler than we want them to be.
And they're rarely dramatic.
They're the kinds of small, repeatable actions I wrote about in
Discipline Over Motivation: Showing Up Is the Cheat Code . The goal hasn't changed.
But your relationship to it has.
A Simple Exercise for Breaking Down Big Goals The next time you're facing a problem that feels overwhelming, try this exercise.
First, write down the goal.
Then ask:
What would I do if this were easy?
Write down every answer that comes to mind.
Don't worry about whether the answer solves the entire problem.
You're not trying to solve everything.
You're looking for the merge lane.
Next ask:
What's the easiest first step?
Then:
What's the easiest second step?
Keep going.
You'll often discover that the path was there all along.
The problem wasn't the goal.
The problem was believing you had to solve everything at once.
The Merge Lane Was Always There The driver I watched wasn't struggling because the highway was crowded.
He was struggling because he was focused on the wrong part of the road.
He kept looking at the traffic.
Not the lane that had been designed to help him join it.
Life is full of merge lanes.
A phone call.
A walk.
A conversation.
A first draft.
A small sale.
A single lesson.
Momentum rarely comes from giant leaps.
It comes from using the road in front of you.
The next time a problem feels impossible, stop staring at the highway.
Ask yourself:
"What if it was easy?"
Then take the first step.
Not the fiftieth.
Not the hundredth.
Just the first one.
Most of us don't get stuck because the destination is too far away.
We get stuck because we're trying to travel the entire distance in our heads before we've even started moving.
The merge lane exists for a reason.
Use it.
The highway doesn't slow down for you.
You just learn to build speed.
“Know what’s enough. Build what matters.”
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