'Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.'
Martin Luther King Jr.

Late last week I was heading to Sydney for work. I was driven to the airport by an engaging taxi driver, Samuel, who had come to Australia from his homeland, Ethiopia, some ten years earlier. I always enjoy talking to taxi drivers - most of them have the most interesting stories to tell. Along the way I asked Samuel how he came to make the decision to move to Australia. He told me that it happened by accident really. He had been sent to work in Kenya. Each day for the first two months he would look across the road to the government building where he had been told they handled migrant applications. Once day, on an impulse, he walked across to the building and asked for a copy of the forms. Unbeknownst to his wife and two children, he filled out those forms, returned them and then put the matter out of his mind.

Some months later, back in Ethiopia, he was taken aback when he received a letter telling him his application was successful. He didn't know what to do or how to break the news to his family. He was torn - excited and scared at the possibility of giving his children the opportunity of a very different life but saddened also at the prospect of leaving behind his extended family and his culture. He spoke to his brother before mentioning it to his wife. His brother said to him, 'You must go. You are lucky - you have been chosen.' 'I was lucky,' repeated Samuel. 'But you took the first step,' I countered.

I can't imagine the courage it must take to leave your homeland, your friends and your culture to move to the other side of the world. To a place that you know will be so vastly different; where the language is not your own and where you are the minority in so many ways. 'In my culture,' Samuel went on, 'it's normal to yell to your friend from one end of the bus to the other. We carry on a ten minute conversation that way.' We laughed at the thought of doing that here and talked about how dramatic the cultural differences are. I felt humbled by his story - it made me think that the small steps I have taken in my own life that I have considered courageous were nothing by comparison.

It also made me realise how much simpler a decision is when you only think about taking that first small step. Having a clear vision for the future is wonderful but sometimes it's too much to fully perceive a change that is dramatically different. Sometimes we don't even know what we want - we just know it's not this. Taking that first step can seem so difficult but in some ways maybe it's the easiest part of the process.

If there's even one part of your life that isn't making you happy, take a small step - today.

In the first few years of my business I struggled to clarify my long term vision. There were so many options and I really didn't know what I wanted. Along the way I made some choices that weren't great and some others that were. A year ago I started to get clearer about what I wanted so I updated my vision. I want to write more and I wanted to see the world so I wrote in my vision 'I travel for work' and 'I am a writer'.

I went on that trip in January and it was one of the most memorable weeks of my life. As well as experiencing Darwin and Kakadu, I met the most amazing people, stayed in fabulous accommodation and ate at some beautiful restaurants. On top of this, I now have half a dozen trips to Sydney in the coming months to continue working on this project.

The only step that I took was to write down my vision. I have done this many times over the past six years and each time I'm amazed at how things seem to magically unfold. Sometimes it's all that it takes.