Thursday, October 16, 2025

One Small Thing at a Time

When everything feels difficult and overwhelming your first day on the job, remember: the biggest hurdle is the first one.

Blogs Guide Magazine

By Isobel Farrell, Representative

During a recent vacation, I decided to become a better swimmer. While I might be able to pass some of the basic St. John’s swimming levels, I know I would not last long in the deep end. I am surrounded by confident swimmers, so I wanted to join in the fun.

If you aren’t a technically effective swimmer, let me be the first to tell you—you use your whole body and mind to put it all together. Here’s how it generally goes for me: my mind is trying to remember all of the techniques that I have been shown. My elbows are trying to stay high when out of the water. And I am trying to kick only when necessary.

As a kid, swimming was fun and mindless, but as an adult swimming student, it is exhausting! At the start of my vacation, I was confident that the lifeguard was paying extra attention to me as I regularly came up coughing and sputtering around. I found myself questioning why I was participating in this sport, trying to get better at it, when I felt more like I was drowning than succeeding.

However, as each new skill became a little better, I was motivated to keep going. The biggest hurdle was the first one. When everything felt difficult and overwhelming, how do I keep going?

I’m sure many of us have felt this way with a new job or with learning new skills at work. Our fear of the unknown combines with the struggle to change, and it all seems to work against progressing.

Just over a year ago, I transitioned from the role of being a regional director of the Grimsby Member Centre to a representative. While I knew and still practiced my labour relations skills, the role of a union representative is an all-encompassing position. You use mental calories trying to juggle all the different points of view, legal expectations, and legal requirements that come at you in a day.

As I manage these, often, competing pressures, I am reminded that as CLAC staff, we are afforded training opportunities that help to improve our skills.

The old adage that inch by inch, anything is a cinch applies. If I can learn one small thing, I can learn the next, and then the next. With practice, training and perseverance aspects of the job get a little easier and encourage us to keep going.

Just like with my small swimming victories, I am motivated to keep learning and improving. Ultimately, this will make me a better representative and a more effective colleague.

I recently heard others talking about their first day of work memories, and one said, “My first day was overwhelming, but I kept calm by reminding myself, it’s just the first day. In a month, this will be the new normal. And it was! Now, it’s advice I give my kids when they’re starting something new.”

While I wouldn’t recommend practicing how not to drown as an exercise, by the end of my two-week vacation, I was able to swim 1,000 metres.

One Small Thing at a Time

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