Change Happens In The Quiet Times. Self-Care Mindset Basics.

There is a lot that we all find both sexy and scary about the idea of change.  And that can be a change in anything, cultural, systemic, or personal. We crave the big feeling of shifting and starting a new idea, project, or cultural ideal. 

Think back to the protests and social unrest of 2020 and how hungry we have all been to see social change on the front of Black Lives Matter.  The change in the air was palpable.  We felt like this was the moment where we were going to rewrite the framework of how we operated as a nation.  And I remember at the time, attending protests, supporting protesters, and following along where I could online—it felt that this was the moment.

But often we don’t have those moments.  Those cultural comings together where we all collectively decide that things need to be different.  Be it in terms of social justice and human rights, like in 2020; or in workers’ rights as we are seeing today with large strikes like auto workers unions, SAG-AFTRA, and the WGA strike—we are seeing large-scale changes on several important fronts in our culture.

But what happens if you want personal change?

We can’t rely on large-scale collective action to shift our way into the life we want to wake up to every morning, can we?

No, but we often try.

Hear me out. Social media channels, especially lifestyle social media like Instagram; tell us to sell our stuff, buy a van, start a business from our hobby, and make big moves for the life we want.  So, I know, that feels like the move.  And if we aren’t willing to make big moves like those, nothing will change.

Those are lies.  Change happens for most of us in the quiet moments, in the shadows, in the mundane of every day.  Change happens one small, tiny shift at a time.

Three Degrees To The Moon.

I had a yoga teacher once, Shanti Shanti Kaur Khalsa, who told a story that she had heard from a student of hers that also was an astronaut.  According to the student, it was very important to get your math correct when you take off in your spaceship, if you want to land on the moon. 

As Shanti Shanti put it, the man said that if you are off by even three degrees—by the time you get up there you will have missed the moon by miles. 

Shanti Shanti’s point in telling us this story was that true change doesn’t require 180 degrees of difference, that just three degrees of shift was enough to land you on the moon vs. missing by a mile.

That was truly one of the most impactful stories I have ever heard from a teacher, and I know that the other humans in the room felt the same way.  Big shifts don’t get you there—you might even over-correct and end up in a whole different cosmos.  Small shifts, those three degrees of change, are what can land you exactly where you want to go.

So where do I start?

You start with something small.  Just the other day I was talking to a fellow business owner who told me what a difference stopping her day to pour a cup of cool water with cucumber and lemon in it made for her mindset.

What is your cucumber & lemon water?

For me, it is checking in with myself every day to see how I am actually feeling. This is opposed to how I feel like I should be feeling, or how I feel in relationship to other people. But how I feel, all on my own, without any outside influence. 

I use a puzzle that I play daily, Wordle, as a reminder to check-in.  Each day I start my puzzle with a word that describes how I am feeling.  I have used words like sleepy, tired, elate, quiet, and artsy.  I have also used words like anger, happy, and blech. 

I also make sure I have my favorite meal (breakfast) every day, and I take time to cook for myself—which is something I truly enjoy each morning.  I love baked eggs, crusty bread, and tomatoes.  It may seem extra for a random Tuesday breakfast, but I promise that for me this small thing makes a huge difference. 

So go ahead, right now decide what small thing you can do for yourself.  Then after finishing this article go ahead and do it.

The boring is the impactful.

This is the real talk I am going to give you right now.

Boring tasks, mundane tasks, things that make your eyes roll back into your head—those things are the things that will often make the biggest difference in your life.

I spend a lot of time talking to yoga professionals about the boring task of up-leveling their skills.  It is the act of doing the same thing repeatedly until you get good at it.  It is often boring, but so incredibly necessary if you want to improve as a professional.

Our daily lives are like this too.  If you want to get better at caring for your surroundings—something I call environmental care, you must do it.  Repeatedly.  You must do it when you don’t want to, because you know that it will make a difference over time in your mental outlook and the joy you experience every day when you wake up. 

If you want to start a non-profit organization that is going to help people in your community, you will have to do the mundane work of applying for grants over and over again until you find the funding to get started.  You must fill out the paperwork, organize the people, and get things started.  It is always so much more fun to have a big vision and goal; to put your creative juices to work getting things rolling and talking to other people about how excited you are for this new project.

But that talk, and those creative juices, while great; they won’t make the impact in the beginning of doing mundane tasks like filling out grants.

The boring matters.  Because change happens in the quiet times, my friend.

What now?

Before we go, take a moment, and appreciate all of the small things you do for yourself on a daily basis.  Do you make sure you are drinking your water?  Do you make sure you have time to read or pause at the end of your day?  Do you always make sure you have cozy socks?  It is the little things, the small things, the non-Instagram-worthy quiet things. 

That is where the change happens. 

Embracing this can make all the difference.

Want to bring Sunlight’s Self-Care to your office for professional development?  Send an email to rebecca@sunlightyogatherapy.com and we will get you all the details.