Break it down

When it comes to change, a lot of us struggle.  We look at where we are and where we want to be and the distance just seems too big.  There are so many things we ought to be doing and it’s all so overwhelming.  I get it.  So here’s my suggestion:  do one stupidly easy small change.

Let me break that down.

 

We’re going to choose ONE thing.  Not one thing and seven super-secret bonus things.  Not two things, because really, we’re the overachieving type and if we’re supposed to do one, we can certainly do two.  One.  Choosing one means that we’re living in a binary experiment.  We either do the thing or we don’t do it.  There’s not a ton of wiggle room.

 

We’re going to make it stupidly easy.  We’re working a Jedi mind trick on ourselves here, showing ourselves that we can, in fact, change.  It’s a proof of concept thing.  If we can make this one small, easy change, we’re learning that we have efficacy, that we can make a difference.  And, as we all know, that thousand-mile journey starts with one step.  So this first change is going to be as easy as possible.  This is not the time to say we’re going to work out for an hour every day when we don’t even know where our workout clothes are anymore.  This is where we decide to walk for five minutes.  Other examples might be not pushing snooze in the morning or cutting the sugar in our coffee in half or eating a vegetable every day.

 

We’re going to make it small.  Again, no marathons here.  No pantry-clear-out-diet-makeovers.  Just one small shift.  Five minutes of weights.  A hard limit of one episode of TV at night.  An apple.

 

When we make one stupidly easy small change and we stick to it for a month or so, we learn that we can learn.  Then the change is our new normal and we can shift something else.

 

If we get carried away with enthusiasm and fail spectacularly, we can always return to one stupidly easy small change.

 

We can do this.