When I was in my early thirties, life took a turn sideways. Up until that point, everything looked on track — college, a career going well, an exceptional group of friends, living in a city I loved. I was even in love, and headed off to grad school.
Then my father died — suddenly, unexpectedly — and right in my hands as I tried to resuscitate him after a heart attack. It was a true before and after moment in my life, and everything changed. I found myself living away from what felt like home, away from my core group of friends, dating long distance under the stress of grad school. The man I loved was my rock at that time, but it didn’t last. One day, out of the blue, he ended everything. And I broke. I broke hard.
My physical health took a huge hit from the stress. In my desperation to heal my heart, my soul, and my life, I moved thousands of miles away. I made that choice because that’s what I had experienced growing up — I moved so much that it somehow felt logical to start a new life in a new place. By coincidence, I wound up with access to an obscure cable channel in my new home that played health and wellness lectures 24/7 from the top experts at the time.
It was like going to the university of health and wellness. I listened over and over, took notes, and tried things out. After some time, I developed my own customized eight-week program. I was tired of spending hours every day crying, hiding my puffy eyes at work, and pretending I was okay. I wanted to feel better. Designing and implementing this became a process of getting to know myself again and becoming friends with myself.
The thing that made this plan different than anything I had tried before was how ridiculous it felt. None of the experts were saying this, but I just wanted to feel like I could be a change agent in my own life, so I devised a plan I felt I could not fail. What I would not know for years to come is how this sneaky little plan of mine would become a foundational tool I would need in the future.
Ridiculously Small Steps
Why they worked for me when nothing else did
When we want to make changes in our lives, and especially the more desperate we are, it’s tempting to aim straight for the finish line. To start day one acting like you’re already there — tough it out, stay strong, stay on course. Common spiritual practices will tell you to manifest what you want, act as if it’s already happened, and it will all magically fall into place. This NEVER worked for me, and it was not for lack of trying. It also never felt very true, but desperation will take you down a lot of roads that wind up feeling like defeat.
I also am not motivated by a personal sense of competition, as some are, with myself or anyone else. I always crashed even faster when someone would challenge me — “we’ll do it together” or “I’ll make a bet with you!” Not even embarrassment or bullying worked. In this regard, I have no desire to prove anything to anyone — it just felt like extra pressure. I would crash, burn out, and the goal I was so excited about — or desperate for — would feel like one more failure. I needed a way forward that I could not fail.
I discovered that for me, lasting change comes from goals so small they’re almost impossible to fail at. Not because I’m aiming low — because I’m building the feeling of success, day after day, until the change transforms into normal life.
Here’s what this looked like for me:
One of my goals at the time was to bring regular exercise into my life. I needed to get my heart pumping every day for all the reasons we all know are important. I find exercise EXTREMELY boring, and I don’t have a coordinated or athletic bone in my body. So my week one goal was two minutes on an exercise machine each day. When I said ridiculously small steps, I meant it. Maybe I should say embarrassingly small, and remind you that there’s no need to share your plan with people who won’t be supportive or understanding. Week two, I did 5 minutes a day. The next step was just enough of an increment that it stretched what I had been doing and still felt completely doable. I was successful at 2 minutes a day, and had done it long enough that stepping it up felt doable instead of too big a reach. I literally just added 2-3 minutes a day, each week, until I reached my bigger goal. If one week felt like I needed to stay at that level longer, I stayed there another week or two, or however long it took for me to build on success instead of crashing and quitting. Some of my goals were simply about becoming consistent — so that week’s goal would be to do that thing every day for the week, not aiming to do it every day for the rest of my life! Like going to bed at a certain time and sleeping for 8 hours. I tended to stay up way too late stewing in my grief, so as simple as this sounds, it was important for body and soul.
The basics of making a plan for yourself:
- Set the goals and the timeline. Write it out. The goals can be to add something to your life, stop doing something, or become consistent with doing something. They can all be small parts of a larger goal, like healing something physical, becoming more spiritual, having a better-balanced lifestyle, or finding a new career. You know what you want — break it down into the small, doable steps that you also know. It took me a couple of weeks to identify my specific goals, plan, and prep. You may not know everything, but you know enough to start, and the journey will open you up to knowing more.
- I originally set this up for myself to do for 8 weeks. The idea was from something I had heard — it takes 8 weeks for something to become a habit. But your timeline can be something that fits what works for you. Just try not to make the goal so big it feels overwhelming, and don’t try to tackle too many things at once. Just one goal for the 8 weeks is a step towards what you want. You need a beginning and an end that s in sight. The first time I did this, I had 4-5 things on my list.
- After each week, I would evaluate how it felt, what I might change or not, and see if the goal I planned for the next week still seemed appropriate — a stretch AND completely doable. If something was hard or I couldn’t do it, this is an opportunity to identify and evaluate what might be in the way that week: unexpected events, funds, proper support, triggers, setting something up differently so it eliminates obstacles, or learning something that connects to motivation or refines intentions. Measuring against one week feels very different than measuring against a whole big goal that was never going to be achieved quickly.
Start wherever you are, and let the goal be embarrassingly small if it needs to be. Remember, the whole shift is that you are building on the feeling of success. You are moving the needle with successful steps that don’t create stress and overwhelm. Long term this moves you forward with out damage that can come from the extreme rollercoaster that happens when you start “strong” then crash, burn and need to recover.
If you’re dealing with any kind of chronic health or neurological issues, this is especially important — having been through this myself, I can say this process has saved me over and over again. That’s the point. Every day you complete it, you end feeling successful instead of defeated. You’re proving to yourself, over and over, that you can — in a way that doesn’t create other issues that are counterproductive to healing. That flip may seem small, but it was everything to me.
But that’s not the whole thing — the best part is next. It’s the part that healed my heart, made my soul strong again, and brought the ability to feel joy back to me. That’s the spiritual side of this work, The Sunday Ritual — and that’s its own story. This next step will be in my next Blog post.
