24 Jan 2023
Steve Bailey – coach and change facilitator, and partner at Space Coaching Services – explains how small, incremental steps can lead to a big change in well-being.
Steve Bailey
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Image © Wayhome Studio / Adobe Stock
The start of the year is famously (or, perhaps, infamously) the time for committing to making changes.
Many of us start with well-intentioned “resolutions” to stop bad habits and start better ones. Sometimes, they are very specific (committing to “dry January”, for example), sometimes, much broader (“to exercise more” or “get a better work-life balance”), and all too often, they fall by the wayside. The road to February is seemingly paved with good intentions…
So, how can we increase the possibility of making positive change, whether professional or personal, stick? To override often deeply ingrained patterns of behaviour, and to achieve lasting change?
Well, the answer lies in large part in taking one small step at a time.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Japanese philosophy of “Kaizen” (which can be roughly translated as “good change”), or maybe come across the concept of “marginal gains”, often talked about as part of modern elite sports? Both are built around the same fundamental belief that the path to achieving lasting and significant change comes not from grand gestures, and sudden significant changes of direction, but instead from an extended series of small, achievable improvements, each cemented firmly into place before being built on with the next.
Of course, you can only be sure that anything is changing for the better if you know what it is you are trying to achieve.
Let’s take one of the examples already mentioned, the oft-stated desire of many a working person: “to achieve a better work-life balance”. It’s a worthy aspiration, but without taking some time to understand what achieving it will look like, no reference points exist to tell us what we need to change or whether any changes we are making are working.
So, grab yourself a piece of paper and a pen, find somewhere quiet and give yourself the time to unpack what having a better work/life balance means for you. If it helps, mentally revisit your past few working days, from the moment you woke in the morning until the turning off of the light last thing at night.
Are mornings a nightmare of chivvying children off to school on time, battling traffic and mentally preparing for the day ahead? Do breaks disappear from the day, seemingly indistinguishable from any other time spent in the practice? Does your flexi-time only ever seem to “flex” in one direction, or are evenings spent with half an eye spent scrolling practice group chats or responding to emails unopened since yesterday?
From such reflections should come a more informed view of where the pinch-points are and, consequently, the opportunity to define some more meaningful and specific goals:
Already, you are better placed to understand what it is that you are looking to achieve.
Change is tough – especially making changes that stick.
Trying to make multiple changes at the same time is tougher still, so it can make sense to prioritise where to focus your efforts. You may already instinctively know which of the goals you have identified are the ones you want to focus on.
But if not, it’s worth reflecting on the list you have identified and perhaps even scoring them out of 10 in terms of their importance to you, and the positive impact you feel achieving them will make to achieving your ultimate goal.
It can be tempting to dwell on where we fall short, to look at our routines and behaviours, and see all the ways in which we believe we “fail” – but doing so is often to overlook things we do that are effective and, even more importantly, the opportunity we have to extend them or build on them in some way.
It might be something you do every day, or perhaps only every now and again, but nonetheless points to a potentially positive way forward. For example:
But, of course, what we are interested in here is making changes. So, we need to ask ourselves what it is that would make things even better.
This could be by looking to build on or extend the things we’ve identified that already work well, or setting ourselves up to try something new.
The important thing is that the changes we identify are achievable. This may mean they can seem very small indeed, almost to the point of feeling inconsequential – but if so, so much the better. For you are far more likely to start, and even more importantly, to stick to a change if you hardly notice you are doing so:
It’s worth noting how achievable this action is. It’s not an open commitment in the future, nor is it reliant on other people to make it happen. It is a step that you can take, now. If it is not, you need to work backwards to understand what it is you can do now to take that first step.
Of course, not everything is as simple to achieve as this. Escaping the practice at lunchtime may always be beneficial when it happens, but what do you need to do to ensure that it does happen?
Again, we are looking for the achievable actions you can take. What they are will depend on your individual circumstance, but could conceivably include:
Depending on how these actions go, we can then look to build on them, perhaps looking to increase the frequency with which it happens or further enriching the time you have away from the building by listening to audio books, coordinating your walks with a friend or colleague, or treating yourself once a week to a pastry from that nice little café you’ve found…
On one level, keeping a commitment to walk with a friend one lunchtime a week may feel a long way away from the lofty ambitions of “achieving a better work/life’ balance”, but it’s not.
Stick to it and you have taken a positive step in the right direction towards achieving a change that is meaningful to you. Not only does this represent a tangible achievement in its own right, but it then opens up the possibility of making further incremental improvements to move even further towards your goal.
Achieving objectives is also a rewarding and addictive habit in its own right. It breeds the confidence and belief that change is possible, and that you can make it happen, which can then spur you on to set yourself bigger challenges and to take on more stretching changes.
But, as the ancient Chinese proverb says, never lose sight of the fact “the journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step”.
