To Start, Try One Thing

Making a positive change is possible - if you start with a tiny step, a small shift, bravely pursued - with the long term in mind.

More often than we’d like to say, we tell ourselves we need to make a change: to be fitter, healthier, happier, calmer, a better person or partner. Yet we don’t take action.  It’s too hard, you can’t fit it in, there are other priorities, you’ll “wait til tomorrow”, as Silverchair sang.

Or else, we start – big effort – hopes alive, only to find that our best intentions can’t be maintained. It isn’t fast, it’s going to take time and focus – and we give up.  Social media primes us for this, that there’s a quick fix, instant results, bolstered by all those witty posts quoting famous people.  We nod in agreement, retweet, or save the image or even share it with our followers – and it has no impact.

Making that shift just feels like a big, time consuming, hard grind. You’ve got other things to do.

I’ve been reading and reflecting lately on the worthiness of small shifts that can get me – and you – started – and make a difference. 

If the change concerns building better relationships, the highly respected organisational development expert, Edgar Schein, suggests that a slight change in behaviour can often be what “works best”.  While it’s natural to resist change, especially our own, and we’re often anxious about starting, if we begin with micro steps, to practise and ease our way forward, we can make progress.

Psychologist, management thinker and author, Susan David, echoes this principle in her book on Emotional Agility, where she advocates the potential of “tiny tweaks”, aligned with our values, as providing significant impetus for change.  She suggests this is especially the case when those tweaks are linked to our everyday routines.         

It’s easy to dismiss such advice as – sure, it’s okay for Edgar and Susan; they’re not like me. Maybe. Instead I’ll tell you about one small change I made – that made a huge difference.

Several years ago, I realised I was way too jangled at day’s end. I was what Susan David calls a brooder: unable to let go as I looked back and relived my daily shortcomings, failures and anxieties over and over.  I’d heard of meditation and tried a few online sessions – yet I didn’t stick with it.  One year, online somewhere, Mindful in May crossed my path.  I signed up – ten minutes of guided meditation, every day for a month, triggered by a daily email, seemed possible.  That was 2014 – and I’ve not only done Mindful in May every year it has run since, I’ve kept up my meditation, every day of every year, except when I am away from home.

What I’ve learnt is the power of tiny tweaks, small changes in behaviour.  For years, I wasn’t sure what difference my daily meditation made.  Yet it became clear in 2018, at peak hour, the week before Christmas, when my car’s electrics died at one of the city’s busiest intersections. I was in the middle lane, one car back – not well placed to wait for a tow truck. I sat in the car, expecting a bump or a crash any minute, as I watched cars tear up behind me, assuming my car would move off when the lights changed. Then I realised: I couldn’t control this. I was unusually calm – resigned to the fact that all I could do was wait.  It was a great lesson – it was where the rubber of meditation literally hit the road.

There’s also the question of ongoing progress.  Once you start, how do you keep going?  In an article in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande, an American surgeon, writer, and public health researcher, says success is about taking a “longer view of incremental steps that produce sustained progress”.  Understanding that you’re in it for the long term – and that silver bullet fixes only exist in fairy tales.  For me it is always a slog – but as I tick off my meditation, day by day, on a monthly calendar – I see the results - and I know it’s worth it.  I’ve positively changed.  I’m calmer and brood much less.  It takes sustained effort to do this – and keep doing it – and I’m committed.

So to start, try one thing.

1.  Understand why that small change is important.

Think about it, write it down.

2.  Make sure the change aligns with your values.

3.  Start.

4.  Be patient.

Incremental change can accumulate to make a difference.

5.  Find ways to track and reinforce progress.

Don’t “skimp on the follow-through”.

6.  Correct your course, if necessary.

If your mind wanders, you have a blowout, you speak before you think – get back on track and do better next time.

7.  Keep going.

It’s useful to remember, that successful change is a process, not an outcome. 

As Susan David says, what’s key is “giving things a try, and discovering what might be learned”.