When we make a shift in our life to live our calling, it will usually require change. We will need to change how we spend our time, our energy and our money. Sometimes these changes can seem big and overwhelming. So, we don’t do anything, staying where we are. We don’t realize that small choices make big change.
The basis of this thought is that something is always better than nothing. It’s better to spend 5 minutes cleaning our office than to spend 0 minutes. It’s better to walk for 10 minutes than to not walk at all. It’s better to spend an hour of our week on self discovery for our calling than to not spend that hour.
Most of us will look at these statements and go, “Well, duh!” Logically it makes sense, but often that’s not how we approach things. If we don’t have time to clean our office right now, we’ll just let it stay messy. If we’ve blown our diet for the day, many of us will figure that since we’ve blown it, we might as well eat however we want for the rest of the day, week, or maybe even for the whole month. When we look at our behavior, we aren’t following the idea that something is always better than nothing. Instead we take an “all or nothing” approach.
The good news is that small things matter. We can make some small choices today. We can shrink the amount of change we have to deal with right now. And when we do this a couple of amazing things happen:
1. We build emotional momentum
When we’ve tackled the small choice, the next choice gets easier. We are more confident. The next choice or the next change doesn’t seem so big compared to the one we just made. So, we build emotional momentum, and it fuels our next step.
2. We make ourselves stronger
I restarted running just this morning. It had been a few months since my last run, and I felt I needed to get back into regular exercise. Compared to what I was used to, this was a pretty difficult run for me. I had let myself get out of shape. By the end of the run, I was pretty tired out.
As I was done with the run, I had this thought that in running there’s a snowball effect. As time goes by and I don’t run, I gain weight and lose muscle strength, making it harder to start running again. Fortunately this snowball effect can run in reverse as well. When I run frequently, I lose weight and gain muscle, and it makes it easier and more enjoyable to run. This then increases the likelihood that I will run.
When we make small choices to live our calling, this same snowball effect takes place. When we make these small choices, we gain experience and learn. These skills and experiences make it easier to make the next change in our life.
So, what about you? What are some of the best small choices you’ve made?
