Start Small

Maybe life has gotten boring. Maybe it's been years since you've paid attention to how your life is going. Maybe you have been stuck in the same rut of doing the same things for years because society says that's the way it's supposed to be. Maybe you've hit some rough patches (of your own doing or by happenstance) and life is sucking.

But now...you've metaphorically “woken up”. Perhaps it's because you are maturing or something in your life has been a catalyst to make you truly examine everything you've believed to be true. Whatever the reason, you want your life to change. People go one of two ways when they want change: inward or outward.

In what I call my lost years, which went from about puberty into my early 30s, I did not know who I was or what I wanted. I looked outward first. It's the easiest thing to do, so that's the direction I decided to go in. I looked to my family, society, my former spouse, my children, my friends, or my religion to tell me what to do. I found some tidbits along that route that helped, but was just gleaning from the tip of the iceberg.

The lost years gave way to the dark years, when I was completely and utterly lost to myself and everyone around me. I looked anywhere and everywhere for a salve to make the pain go away and make me happy. After making some huge mistakes, and paying some steep prices for said mistakes, I finally started to look inward. Yoga was a large part of that inward journey.

You may be asking yourself how some poses on a mat can make that big of a difference. To quote Jigar Gor: Yoga is not about touching your toes, it is what you learn on the way down. What most people (myself included, back then) think of when they hear the word yoga is exercise. Yoga, which literally means union in Sanskrit, is an eight-limbed philosophical way of living that is about bringing the mind and body, the inner and outer, together. Asanas, or poses, is the third one of those limbs. The first two limbs are called the yamas and the niyamas. The yamas are basically about our relationship with the world, the niyamas are about our relationship with ourselves.

One of the niyamas is called santosha, or contentment. (we will delve into the rest of the yamas and niyamas in the future!) Put simply, it's about accepting that what you have and who you are is enough. Santosha is not found outside of yourself. It does not come from a promotion, a bigger house, a finished project, a new wardrobe, a different car, etc. It also does not come from accolades, attention, or relationships with another person. It can only come through personal observance and self-discipline regarding our actions and attitudes. That's a fancy way of saying, get to know yourself, be intentional with your thoughts and actions, and take control of your own damn life.

Now, you've decided, for whatever reason, that you want your life to change. I'm sure you have some ideas on what you want to change. Sometimes those ideas are so grandiose that they seem impossible to reach right now. You may get overwhelmed or see them as too big to actually achieve, so you feel like it's pointless to even try.

This is where the title of this blog post comes in. Look at what you CAN do right now and do that. I'm going to use an example from my own life because it's the only life I've personally experienced. I want to finish paying off my debt, but also want to keep traveling and having experiences. I decided to start small.

I am paying on my debt any time I have an extra 50 bucks in my bank account. I deleted Amazon from my phone, so now I have to go on the laptop to buy anything. Even though I am a minimalist, and not a big shopper, it was still surprising how much I was wasting on Amazon! I have put a hold on spending any money on tattoos for 2024. (I am NOT minimalist in this respect at all.) I am also making a few extra bucks on the side teaching English online.

These are small ways that I could work towards my huge goal of being debt free and traveling for half the year. It has already made a dent in my debt, and it's only been about a month! I also took the kids out of private school (for many reasons), am homeschooling them, and am taking them on day trips every week to local state parks and hiking trails. This is a simple way to satisfy my wanting to see and experience new things without breaking the bank. Luckily, I do travel for work sometimes, so that can scratch a bit of my travel itch, but even on those trips, I stopped eating at restaurants.

So, figure out what you want to change, be honest with yourself, prepare to become a bit uncomfortable, think grand, and then think small. If you want to lose 100 pounds, start by choosing an apple as a snack every day instead of a cookie. If you want to save $100,000, start by putting aside $5 a paycheck. If you want purge your tons of material possessions, start with one drawer. If you want to quit your job and make a YouTube channel, start by teaching yourself about video editing on your phone or tablet and play around with it. If you want to find a life partner who is wonderful, kind, and has their s**t together, then work on yourself and become the person you want to attract. Don't go straight after the dream itself, go to the nearest step that gets you to that dream, again, and again, and again…

Focus inward, don't be afraid to be weird and live life against the norm, and remember, starting small is better than not starting at all. Santosha (contentment) to you all!!