The truth about progress

When your life falls apart, it’s hard get past the shock of it all. ‘How did I let this happen?’ I asked a friend when I admitted to her how off course I had strayed. Her response was not what I expected but it hit the nail on the head. She said ‘How do you boil a frog?

‘The answer is slowly’. She explained that ‘if you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water it will jump out straight away. But if you drop it into warm water then slowly increase the temperature, by the time the frog realises the water is boiling, it will be too lethargic to jump out.’

Getting off the track, or in my case, domestic violence, happens slowly over time. So slowly that you don’t even notice it happening. It’s only in hindsight that you can see all the wrong steps, or allowances, that together lead you completely off track. So slowly that it could happen to anyone. And it does. She then said ‘welcome to the boiled frog club’.

If you’ve been broken or boiled and facing the daunting task of rebuilding yourself, you need to be gentle and remember that just like the way you got here, it’s going to take time. In the process it may feel like you’re not making progress but that’s only because you’re in the thick of it. Oprah is famous for checking in to what the ‘next right step’ is, and that’s all you need to do too. Everyday try to take just one next right step. Trust that all of those steps, no matter how small, will take you to the right place.

What’s the next right step?

Your Friend,

Buzzy