Little things that could change your life

The ream looks the same when you take away one piece of paper. And the next. At what point do you notice a change? (Image by Lynn Greyling)

In Savage Steve Holland’s classic teen movie Better Off Dead (no, I will never stop quoting from this film), weirdo Charles De Mar is positioning himself as the wise older friend. He says to the protagonist, “Lane, I’ve been going to this high school for seven and a half years. I’m no dummy.”

I can laugh all I want (and I do). But how many times have I thought that I was justified in my perspective simply because I had been stuck in it for so long? How often have I clung to a habit out of familiarity, mistaking it for effectiveness?

I’ve made so many changes in the last few years. I’ve made some moves that I had thought I would never make. And what it’s taught me is that a lot of the stuff I was doing was not as clever as it seemed, like the many people whose first guess at Wordle is ADIEU or AUDIO. I was fighting hard for a losing team, and the losing team was me.

For example, I clung to the identity of “small business owner” when my business was really just a bundle of mistakes with a nice logo. All of the career decisions I made were within the framework of that business, even though looking outside of that would have been better. I never questioned whether the business was a good investment of time or money — I was too busy trying to survive.

Over time, as I’ve added more things to my plate, I’ve had the opportunity to reevaluate some of my past decisions. It’s a kind of decluttering: Here is this thing I’ve held onto, but would I choose it now?

If I don’t ask questions like that, my past choices and their results will remain invisible and unexamined. I’m not likely to find a different or better way. And then I will stay bored or stuck or frustrated. I’ll be like Ned Flanders’ parents on the Simpsons: “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.”

I’ve now tinkered and experimented enough that I’ve seen a powerful impact from my actions. This or that thing that I thought I would never do, once attempted, changed my life for the better. And that makes me realize that the next thing I try might change my life, too. That possibility makes me a lot more open to new approaches. It gives me more stamina to stick with experiments to see what results I get. It makes me more interested in following the lead of have been where I want to be.

It should be said that most of these moves have not been very glamorous or dramatic. It doesn’t seem life changing to find a better way to use thirty minutes between meetings, or to quit Facebook, or to wake up a little earlier. But gradually, through making a series of small changes, I found my way to the resolution of chronic problems and the realization of long-held dreams.

So then, I turn it over to you. Even if your life is pretty great, I wonder if there are any little things you’ve become used to that you don’t want anymore, or things you’ve never tried that could end up making the difference.

And if you reject the whole notion as Pollyanna-ish or naive, well — that’s the point. What if you didn’t?