You’re looking at a paper cut-out silhouette of my son when he was in Kindergarten. Below his profile are the wise (and hard-to-decipher) words of my then five-year-old. Let me help you with the mommy translation: If I were President I would “work hard at cleaning my room.”

The boy is 12 years old now. His room is reasonably clean for a tweenager. When I chanced on this picture today, I guffawed, and thought to myself: Wow, this kid isn’t exactly what you’d call overly ambitious (to put it mildly). His career aspirations seem, at best, average.

But then I began to see the wisdom of his words – even if it was an unintentional life lesson that a kindergartener was teaching me.

We all want to change the world. Serve humanity.  Bring justice. Right wrongs. But it’s overwhelming. And the hugeness of problems sometimes makes us stop in our tracks. We face a paralysis of sorts.

But how about starting small?

Do the thing you can. Do it well. In fact, do it excellently well.

With one thing accomplished, checked off your list, you have a sense of pride that will propel you to the next thing and then the next.

Instead, if you forgo the task that is right in front of you, thinking that it’s beneath you or that someone else will do it, you miss the chance to take pride in the simple accomplishments. You carry with you that sense of “It doesn’t really matter” through the rest of the day.

The Bible says in Zechariah 4: 10 “Do not despise these small beginnings for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” The little things matter because the little things affect the big things.

We’re called to do all things with excellence. Half-hearted work will only get us to the halfway point. If you want to get to the end of the race with the air in your lungs sapped and your face flushed with sweat and your heart pounding in your chest and adrenalin coursing through your veins, and pride welling in your heart, then give the simplest task your one hundred percent. Do it the best you can with what you’ve been given. Then look back with a triumphant “yeesss!”

Do the little things well. You’ll automatically do the big things with that same work ethic, with that same commitment, with that same passion, with that same integrity.

Presidents, CEOs, people of the world, take note of what the five-year-old has to say: Work hard at cleaning your room.