This is one of those little catchphrases we love to use to explain why we aren’t making progress. Think about it. If we always took one step forward and two steps back, we would never make forward progress. Is that true? Nope. We move forward all the time.

I did some research into this catchphrase and found that it was originally two steps forward, one step back. It is reflecting on an anecdote about a frog trying to climb out of a water well. For every two steps the frog climbs, it falls back by one step. This makes its progress arduous, but the frog will still get out of the well, eventually. If you turn it around to the more commonly used one step forward and two steps back, the poor frog would drown, definitely.

I think we do this to ourselves a lot… turn things around. When something appears hard, requires strenuous effort or it is tiring, we become fearful of making mistakes and we want to find reasons to give up. We don’t even bother to see that we are moving forward, we just believe that voice in our head telling us we aren’t. If we allow ourselves to think one step forward and two steps back, we have a perfect reason why we did not succeed. Who would bother knowing that they were going to drown in the end? Turned around, right?

Fortunately, the human spirit is full of fight, hope and perseverance. Even if we think we will drown in the end, for the most part, we keep pushing on and thank goodness we do.

But why do we insist on making it difficult? By thinking these thoughts, we unnecessarily add to our load. Why is that? I think it is due to the fact that we adopt and believe statements like these. Even organized religion is in on it (or are they the originators?). Remember the story of The Fall? This story is a beautiful one of how we have the opportunity to experience who we are through contrast, but that got turned around and used as an opportunity to remind people of the hardships of life. Make a mistake and the woman has severe childbirth and a husband that rules over her. The man, through painful toil, thorns and thistles, labors for food to eat. And neither could be naked again, at least not without being ashamed. That sucks. Why do we believe such things? And not only believe them, we somehow think we are to still be punished for one assumed mistake made a long time ago. I mean, why didn’t God put that guard with the flaming sword on that tree if it was so damn important not to eat of it? Kind of feels like entrapment. And oh how we love to entrap and limit ourselves.

Now I know that not everyone believes this story, but even if you don’t, if you believe your life is difficult and you have no control over it, you believe some version of this story. Life isn’t punishment for a perceived bad deed. It isn’t meant to be hard. What we so quickly label as hard is simply different. Everything appears hard until you try it, practice it and master it.

Thank goodness our spirit (or soul) knows better than to buy into this belief about life. You can cling to it if you want, but you might want to consider releasing it. It just might be even better than two steps forward and one step back, it might be one foot in front of the other. Hmmmm.