One Small Change

In Chapter Two, one of Julia’s “tasks” is to make one small change.

As much crazy as I’ve created in the last six years, I’ve also very deliberately and consciously created a lot of joy, personal fulfillment and true aliveness. This, I also attribute to boundaries. If you are interested in this conscious creation stuff, I highly recommend the book, The Not So Big Life by Sara Susanka. When I was blogging for My Mommy Manual I got a chance to do a skype interview with Sara. This book was pivotal in my life design. Sara is an architect and is credited for the Not So Big movement in house design. Her whole premise is that we don’t need McMansions, we need spaces that fit our lives. Of course, this requires that we know what’s important to us. She wrote the Not So Big Life in response to understanding that your inner space, ideally is reflected in our outer spaces.

I’m not going to go into that book here but just as an example, I’ll share one of Sara’s anecdotes from the book. Sara loves writing (obviously). But prior to her life overhaul she would spent 14 hours working and in the fading moments of the day, sit down to write. Her passion wasn’t getting the best Sara, but rather , the dregs.. What she did getting her best attention was the flood of emails that would come into her inbox first thing in the morning. Only when she had responded to all of the fires could she begin her work day and on and on until right before bed when she could barely squeek out a few sentences.

I can’t recall how she got to this point, whether she made a list of her priorities, passions, etc. but she made a small adjustment to her daily schedule: instead of checking her emails first thing, she checked them twice a day, at 10 and 4 and devoted the first hour or so of her day to writing instead. Doing the thing she loved first thing meant 1) it got done and 2) to her surprise, she discovered that most of the fires that came to her via email resolved themselves before she ever got to them!

Now that is an everyday miracle right there! For me, it was a tangible example for how making a small change that aligns yourself with your values can make a HUGE DIFFERENCE.

So my “small” change was cutting out television. Small is in quotes because I cannot tell you what a profound impact that had on me. 1) I didn’t have to pay for cable 2) my kids stopped fighting over what shows to watch after school 3) I found hours upon hours in my day/week and 4) without all those ads, I was clueless about the things I was supposed to want but didn’t have yet 5) I was so much less stressed out by not watching LOST and Law & Order.

Okay. Your turn. Can you think of one small adjustment you can make in your life that will align yourself with your values/passions/creative life?