Creating Massive change - all by my little lonesome self!

At some point over the last several months, massive change occurred in my life. I cannot tell you what day or what time it was that this happened. 

In fact, I can honestly say that at no time did I come to the huge realization that I wanted to make things different in my life. There was no tear jerking movie, no speaker with a killer keynote and no tragedy that sparked the realization and influenced the decision. 

If I were to get very clear on how the massive change happened – I would have to say it happened easily and occurred seamlessly. How?

I just started doing things differently. That’s it. I began by changing one small thing at a time. Just one thing. 

When did I make the first small change and what was it?  I cannot lay a finger on it - it is a mystery even to me.

What I do know is that at some point I came to understand that our lives are made of very small moments in time. Each one those moments connects with the last moment and the next moment to create a minute, an hour, a day and in essence a lifetime. 

In each of those moments we make decisions, some conscious and some not so conscious. Yes, we make thousands of decisions every day – many of them based on a decision we made yesterday and even years ago.

Each one of these decisions in and of itself may have very little effect on our lives in the moment – and so we think that they are insignificant. But we fool ourselves if we think this way.


Take for example - that one chocolate. It has very little affect on our weight.  It is of little significance if we pop just one into our mouth – in fact it may even have a temporary beneficial effect. (oooh those taste buds!)  How can something so small be bad for us?

Then there is the morning we decide it really is ok to sleep in an extra hour – or hit the snooze button one more time. How could a few extra moments of snuggly, sleepy, dream filled moments hurt us? It’s pretty obvious – it cannot.

However, our lives are the sum total of each of these small decisions we make.  You get to decide if they are detrimental only after all the decisions added up will be the outcome you desire.

I guess the moment when I realized this – although I still cannot say when it was – I began to become present in the moment and consider each thing that I did. In a way, I stepped outside of myself and looked in. What was Mandie doing right now – and why was she doing it?

It was a simple step really. It did not take any extra effort to be present in the moment. And so when I wandered to the cupboard for that one cookie that wouldn’t really hurt to eat – I thought about the decision to eat it. I asked myself when was the last time I decided that one cookie would not hurt – and when would be the next time? Was I really tricking myself, little by little?

The same thing applied to things I did in my professional life. I began to stay present in the moment. Was what I was telling a client entirely true? Would I really have time to do what I said I would do? Was I telling stories or truths? Was I listening or thinking?

As people around me made new year’s resolutions – I decided not to. Massive change all at one time is unmanageable. In order to create massive change we need to change only one small thing – and that is the decision we make right now. Not yesterday’s decision and not tomorrow’s decision.

Have I seen massive change in my life? Most certainly. I am losing weight – because I am making one small decision at a time. I can get up at 5:30 each morning to go work out – not with one big decision to do so, but by making one small choice to set the alarm for 5:30 and then trust myself to make a good decision when it goes off in the morning. And if I do not make the right decision in the morning – I think about how it felt to let myself down like that.

But in my business is where these changes are showing up most. Each thing I do – I do for a purpose. If there is no purpose – I ask myself why I am doing it – and then change to something that does have a purpose. And most importantly, I am present in the moment. It is when we are not present that we repeat bad decisions, bad behaviours and nothing changes.

Do you want to make your business more successful? Start small. Change how you do things – mimic the successful. One small step at a time. One month from now, all those little changes will amount to massive change. A year from now – you might look back as I am doing now, and ask yourself “when did things change?”

Those small decisions really add up. What will you change today?

Copyright 2010 Mandie Crawford

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