Little Wins for the Big Win

Did you know that January 19 is known as Quit Day for New Year's Resolutions?

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Why do we continue to believe that we can make grand declarations one day that will magically transform who we are and how we live our lives starting the next?

This week I'm talking about the power of small changes and tiny wins. How change truly works, and what it takes to make it happen.



Pssst.... now you can also watch the episode on YouTube !

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Transcript

OK, I'm hitting record before I do any more tweaking to this space. I just spent all this time setting up this space for this recording and then realized that it is a very echoey room. So I found the carpets that I could to put down, but I'm going to have to work on that for next week. Hopefully it still sounds really clear and I'm just gonna flex my. Good is better than done is better than good. Perfection is imperfection is muscle. I can't even think what that quote is. 

Welcome back. Welcome to Holy Hell 2023. I swear in my head it's keeps sounding like 2020. I feel like we've just gone in a time warp. And we're hitting reset. And I've been thinking a lot about New Year's, New Year's resolutions, as all of us do, because that's all the news talks about. It's like a really good marketing scam to get you to sign up for diets and gyms and all this stuff. And you know, marketing capitalism is based on the premise that if you feel bad about yourself, we can tell you something to make you feel better. Or if we make you afraid, we can tell you something to help you be less afraid. So New Year's is the perfect time to sell you. Stuff, and I found out and I don't this is a just a diet industry thing, but I found out recently that January 19th is considered quick day. So most people sign up for the gym or for a new diet and within three weeks they've completely given up. And the reason this happens is because we go into the new year thinking we're gonna, you know, thinking that we change by big swings by taking a really big attempt at being a whole new human being. And I just think it is the most unrealistic, crazy making idea. And and what's worse is, you know, on the 20th of January after you've quit, you end up feeling like a failure. You end up feeling like you have failed in some way. Which is not true at all. It's just that our. Our brains are like the Titanic. You can't turn it fast. It's like a tie, a ton of tiny little 

paddles turning by increment, by increment until the whole thing is turned. So nothing is going to get accomplished in terms of new habits, in terms of the person that you want to become by saying, you know, on the 1st I'm quitting XYZ, or on the 1st I'm going to start rehearsing my guitar an hour a day, or on the 1st I'm going to write my novel for the year. And so I always think about this every year because I do like the idea of January being a time to evaluate where you are with who you want to be. And I think a lot in terms of setting process goals, much less in terms of saying I will do this by XYZ and more. I will show up for my writing five days a week. I will practice the guitar five days a week. I will, you know, sit and Journal 3 mornings. I think those kinds of things are the the building blocks, the foundations. Really focusing on habits are what can get us to who we want to be and to be the person who is doing the kind of work creatively that we want to be doing. And so I talked about this before. What I want to bring this year to this is something I've been really playing with in 2022, which is. 1st I have to say again, I'm a big big fan of tiny little goals. So whenever I'm a tiny little habits as goals like I love an easy win. So often when I'm starting a new habit, I will say I will do one minute of this four days a week. And I do this for I'm trying to get core workouts in because my abs are nonexistent and it's really messing up my hips and my knees and my ankles. I will do one minute of core workout in bed in the morning. Let's all commit to I will do one minute of meditation. Will not commit to more. I will do one minute of guitar practice and something I'm working on. I will not commit to more one minute of journaling or five bullet points of journaling or three sentences of journaling. Whatever your brain you know, likes as a game. And what happens is sometimes I want to do more. I'll end up writing for 10 minutes. I usually play the guitar for way longer because it becomes really, really fun. But it's a really good 

way of hacking this idea that if I don't do an hour every day, then I have done nothing and then I failed. And what's the point? Which is a lot of what, like the diet and the gym and that new year energy feels like you have to be a radically different person in order to get results. And so if it's one minute, it's an easy win, and my brain can get excited about it and I can build habits. And doing something for one minute every day for 30 days will get you so much further than doing 60 minutes once and then not picking up the guitar or the novel or the whatever for another two months or another two weeks. There's just not as much consistency, and it won't become a habit and it will build on anything, right? All of these are cumulative, and the truth is that if you can commit to or play with the idea of doing. One minute of something five days a week for the month. Often it'll become easier to do 2 minutes the next month, or three minutes or 10 minutes. It can grow on its own when you feel ready, but so much of setting new habit goals is picking something that feels almost so easy. It's pointless. Because weirdly, that is the sweet spot of like, where you will show up for the thing. And what's interesting is then you have to fight your brain saying all the time, well, that was that was nothing. I only did one minute. What the ****? You know, like, I can't meditate for one minute and change my life. And so you're going to get up. You're going to have that argument in your head. But what the research is finding is actually setting something that, as a habit, goal that feels like not enough, is usually the exact place where you are willing to show up and do the thing. So I want to invite you in this new year, this January, to think about your big, big, big goals, your creative projects that you want to get back into, that you've been avoiding, that feel, Herculean, that feel like you'll never get there, and break them down into like the smallest possible thing you could imagine. A really good exercise, one that I love, is like, I will. Found my sneakers once a day. There was someone I knew who said I will I will drive to the gym every day for a week. 

And the second week I think she drove and walked into the gym like talk about really, really, really insanely small, right? But it got her brain used to putting on her gym stuff going to the gym. It got her body used to the routine of it. It got her also way more comfortable with something that she had made in her brain to be so scary. And all these things she didn't know which machines to do she know which was the right, quote UN exercise to do so she was just. Talking herself out of it and by doing something that felt completely non like not, not not not possibly enough, she built from that. So I want you to think about, you know, if it's playing music or writing songs or you know, writing the novel, whatever it is creatively that you have been excited about and maybe put aside or want to start this year. Think about the steps that it would require, and then think about the smallest possible amount that you could do and make that your January goal. Make like one minute. Five days a week, your January goal, and I promise you that will make a very big difference. Now the other thing. That I am playing with, that I also really want to impart, is that when you do your one minute, you then have to celebrate the **** out of it. So a lot of what happens again, as I was saying earlier, you'll do a minute or something and then you'll just say to yourself, well, that wasn't worth it. I didn't do anything. If I was truly a committed artist, I would spend an hour. If I was truly, you know, going to get anywhere. I should have been practicing all of What the Hell's the point of starting now? At least that's what my brain does, because my brain, I don't know, likes to, likes to **** on me. Most brains. Do, and they do it for purposes I'll get into later about, you know, keeping you safe. But brains usually want, brains are terrified of anything new. They believe that what you did yesterday kept you alive. So we don't want to do anything that deviates. So when you do something that deviates from what you know how to do, your brain will just attack and say it's a bad idea. So even one minute your brain's going to attack. And what I'm learning is. One great, great way to embed that 

habit as a new thing that you enjoy doing as a habit that is like wired for pleasure is to. Like honestly high five yourself mentally afterwards, or physically if you can. You know you think about like a a kid, a 2 year old learning how to walk. Learning how to walk is essentially falling on your *** 1000 times out of or times out of and getting back up right? It's just constantly falling down and getting up and falling down. And what helps toddlers do that other than the padding of their butts or whatever, is the fact that someone is cheering them on. And when a kid falls down, a toddler falls down. After not even balancing, you know, on their legs, often the parents or whoever is watching is gonna say that was amazing. You did so good. That was so close. Look at you. You've almost made it. You're walking. We're so proud of you, right? That **** works and we grow up and we think that's stupid or silly or we're not deserving of praise, but we all need it. And what I'm practicing is praising myself because we all need it, but also no one necessarily watching. And it's no one's job. You don't have parents who are trying to get you to do your homework or teachers are going to come in and, you know, give you a score. It's really a contract you're making with yourself. It is something you want to show up for creatively, creatively and so. When you do your one minute of guitar, I want you to, as silly as it feels, save yourself. That's ******* amazing. I'm so proud of myself. I can't believe it did a whole ******* minute. That was 60 ****** ******* seconds. Like, make it as ridiculous as you can, but really practice being proud of yourself. It's a skill I wish we taught kids. I never learned this until just now, you know, recently, which is how to be proud of yourself, that you don't need to be looking to someone else for that. Side because if they're not available, then you're sunk. Whereas if you know how to praise yourself or the work that you chose to do and that you are 

proud of, your brain's going to get the dopamine hit regardless if it's someone else doing it or if it's you doing it, you're going to get the dopamine hit. So give yourself that hit. Because when the brain is going to start associating doing that habit with feeling really good about itself, and that will motivate more change. So this is the thing, right? It's a really fun thing to play with, especially if you're sitting there thinking already. This will never work. It's too easy. That's exactly where we want you to start. Pick something that is too easy. It feels silly. Do it. And then praise the hell out of yourself for it. And if nothing else, your month is going to feel so much better than it would feel if you were setting a goal. Like, I will go running for an hour every day. And then you can barely get out there and your lungs give out after two minutes and you spend the whole rest of January beating yourself up for not committing to your goals. Or you get to January 19th and you've been, I don't know, you started drinking again, or, you know, you stopped the creative projects that you wanted to do. You gave up the novel because the task you set for yourself was too big and way too radically different from how you actually live your life. If you can walk around telling yourself that you're a ******* ****** all of January, I'm telling you it'll be a better week, even if what you did was like one minute or something every every couple of days or a couple of days. So I love the idea of bringing a bit of lightness and fun and energy to January. It can be really dark and cold and sad after the holidays are done and we're no longer eating all the food and drinking all the alcohol. So this is also just a really fun way to hang out in your head. Like find reasons to be excited and proud of yourself. I think that is such. 

It's like one of the biggest, um, one of the biggest skills that I wish we taught everyone. Because if you think about it, we're all walking through our lives hoping to get confirmation and validation from people we love or fear or hate or pay us whatever it is, right? We're all sort of it's a very human need, and if we can't get that, then we're just walking around feeling less than and feeling not enough. And So what a great way to bring a little bit of life and light. In fact, I was coaching a client recently and I said to her, she this massive To Do List and a lot of it had to do with cleaning. And it just felt very overwhelming. And I said every time you cross something off your list, can you do like a dance? Can you just like do a happy dance, like let your full body know that you crush that list? Because otherwise when I do this, you get to the end of your list and you just start a new list and you forget that you've done all this stuff until your brain is exhausted just looking at the list because you know there's a bigger list. The same thing happens with habits. If you do a habit and at the end of it you know you did your practice and you're telling yourself it wasn't enough and I sucked and I don't know how to do this thing yet. I should have done better, blah blah blah blah. You're not gonna wanna do it tomorrow because tomorrow you're already feeling ohh, it's going to be even a bigger dump on myself. So the more that you can stand up and celebrate as though you were a 5 year old, who does need to be told that I'm so proud of you? Do it for yourself. Alright my friends, I can't wait to hear how this goes. I'm excited thinking of all of you dancing and high fiving yourselves on the back. And yeah, I'm excited for this new year and I'm excited to be back with you. So I hope you're all well. Take care.