“While it may seem small, the ripple effects of small things is extraordinary.” – Matt Bevin
I’m writing this with an ice pack attached to my lower back. Less than five minutes into my warmup Monday everything suddenly hurt. I say suddenly, but it’s been “twingy” for a week or so, and is likely related to chronically ignoring that little voice that tells me “don’t sit like that, dummy” while curled up in an office chair like a shrimp for hours. This isn’t the first time, and probably won’t be the last. With ice and ibuprofen, a few visits to the chiropractor, and being careful and taking it slow this week, I’ll mend.
It doesn’t take a lot of misalignment to cause significant pain, as those of us familiar with joints that “go out of place” in response to innocuous motions like sneezing and rolling over in bed are aware.
In life, little changes produce big results. It’s easier to notice in the negative — the tiny nail that flattened your tire, the small crack that expands to splinter a window, the minor leak that turns into a flood. Most of the time we don’t notice change until we’re in pain or something is actually so far gone that it requires intervention, and then we start asking, “How did this happen? How did we get here? When did this go awry?” The answer is rarely a one-off. Most of the time it’s a series of seeminly inconsequential steps that have occured over a period of time.
We don’t notice it so much in positive growth — further evidence of the brain’s negativity bias — but it’s there. Think about the days and weeks of incremental change that result in trees budding out in spring, for example.
Fixing things that have gone sideways is the same process in reverse, only with greater awareness of the actions we’re taking. Small steps of doing what’s right produce positive results. It won’t be overnight, but it will happen.
In our “go big or go home” culture with its demand for instant results, it’s easy to get discouraged by the perceived lack of progress when we start taking those little steps toward positive change and growth, but they have an impact in the long run.
And it is a long run, no matter how slow we go. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re lucky.
