Imagine for a moment a beach with thousands of starfish washed along the shore. Stranded and slowly dying under the sun.

There was a boy who saw this and would bend down, pick one up, and toss it back into the waves. Then he’d pick up another, and another.

Eventually, an old man approached, shaking his head. “What are you doing, son? There are miles of beach and thousands of starfish. You can’t possibly make a difference.”

The boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it into the sea. He looked at the man and said, “I made a difference for that one.”

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the size of the problems in front of us. Your goals might seem too big. Your to-do list too long. The gap between where you are and where you want to be might just seem like a beach with thousands of starfish to pick up.

And because of that, there are people out with the mentality that just because they can’t fix it all at once, they don’t even bother starting.

But real progress doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in small acts. One step, one habit, one “starfish” at a time.

You don’t need to solve the whole beach. You just need to take care of the piece in front of you. Don’t get paralyzed by the big picture. Success isn’t about massive breakthroughs—it’s about consistent, meaningful actions stacked over time.

And even if it feels small, what you do still matters. A kind word, a disciplined choice, a single finished task—each one changes something.

Maybe you can’t solve everything today. But you can make a difference for that day. And when you stack enough of those moments together, the impossible suddenly becomes possible.

Until next time,
Isaiah Taylor

Dive Deeper

What I’m Currently Reading - I’m now reading the book of Job in The Holy Bible. A story about suffering and trusting God’s wisdom and sovereignty even when the reasons seem unclear.

Quote Of The Week - “To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.” — Dr. Seuss