Shift Happens! Small Changes & Why They're Often Best
May 26, 2022
Small shifts can often be more effective than big, drastic changes. This is what actually moves the dial towards the change that you are really wanting. I've learned what is most essential is making these tiny little changes. Things that seem like no big deal to make. But it can make all the difference in your body, in your psyche in your day, in your week and how you feel about your life.
Hi there, come on in. This is Seriously Yourself, the podcast and I'm Ingrid Helander.
Hey there. Hi, come on in. Nice to see you today though. I can't really, but I'm imagining you ,with lots of love and affection. Today we're talking about change and a lot of us don't like change. I've heard that 1,000 times in my office, I don't like change, don't ask me to change. Change is hard and it is, but I prefer when I'm thinking about change the word shift, you know, to shift. If you try to shift a car if you've ever driven a standard, is that the word standard, right versus automatic? You know that if you don't shift correctly, you can actually wreck the whole transmission, right? It's like stripping the gears. If you you go from reverse into drive without maybe hitting the clutch right? Or going through neutral. You make too swift of a change and you ruin things.
So today we're really looking about this on a personal level because when we think about becoming seriously ourselves, we want to make some change probably from the things that are holding us back. Constricting us not being true. You know, the things that are not really us to being more truly seriously yourself.
So change, let's look at the word shift. The biggest lesson I believe I ever learned about making changes came from a woman named Sue Bush and she was my youngest son's second grade teacher. Sue died much too young and is no longer here with us. But she really taught me this amazing little lesson and I'm going to share it with you. When my son was little he was having some trouble in school because he felt very very rushed and pushed to get things done a certain way in a certain time. He also had to deal with having type one diabetes and would have to test his blood sugar often. Sometimes that would take time for him out of things that the other kids were doing. Because of course the other kids didn't have to stop and do that. And you wouldn't think that would be a big deal. I mean I wouldn't have honestly because it takes you know 30 seconds to do that. And I remember talking to Mrs.Bush and saying how he was feeling so stressed out though, he liked her class and he basically like school and he was having fun with his friends. There were no major issues. But you know, how could we possibly help him then? You know what can we what can we do? And she looked at me and said, well it sounds like he's really struggling right before lunch. Everybody is getting to go to lunch and he's having to wait an extra minute to check his blood sugar.
And I thought well yeah that's true, but big deal. You know it's a minute at the most. And she turned to me and she said you know I've worked with lots of kids and lots of kids with special considerations and needs. And one of the things that I've learned that is most essential is making these tiny little changes. Things that she said for me are absolutely no big deal to make the change at all doesn't matter to me. But it can make all the difference in their body, in their psyche in their day, in their week and how they feel about their lives. So uh, there you have it. She let him go like two minutes early, maybe not even that long to go check his blood sugar so that he could line up for lunch with everybody else and it made all the difference. He was calmer, He was more content. He felt more part of the gang and like she said, it was no skin off her teeth. It just didn't matter to her.
That tiny shift was enough to make a huge change. So often when we want to make change, we think we have to do something grand, something large or something perfect. What I've learned is that that is often exactly the opposite of what we need to be about. Here are the kinds of things that I, I hear, not only from my clients, but in my own body, in my own mind, there are things like this. Like, "I don't want to feel affection for this person who has hurt me. So I wish I could hate them" or "I don't want to fight anymore. So I'm just going to roll over and accept whatever comes my way". Or "I'd like to change that I really care about this because I don't feel like I can do anything about it, so I'm just not going to care about it anymore". Those we think are changes, but they are actually still exactly the same parts of us, They're just the inverse, right, same part other side. And I know I've talked about this before, but it's so essential that I'd love you to get a sense of it.
So imagine something right now something in your life or in your body or in your being this thing you call yourself that feels uncomfortable, not just right, a little off balance and then notice maybe what you feel would be helpful to do to change it. And if that idea, A is kind of big and, B is diametrically opposed to the first thing that was bothering you. That's not the way to go, it's still the same part of you. It's just the inverse. Now stop and imagine what's it like to dream just a tiny dream of what would make you feel a little better, a little more complete, a little more true, a bit more in your body, a bit more authentic, happier maybe.
Just a tiny bit, you could change something small and sometimes that's something small is something you can actually help someone else with, for example by being willing to mention this sort of seemingly innocuous thing too. My son's teacher, she was able to make a seemingly inconsequential shift. A 3o second change and he was lighter. He was happier. And guess who else was mm hmm. Me and probably her. If you're able to make those changes for yourself or for others, they can make your life feel a whole lot better. So if you imagine today you're unhappy because maybe you want to travel and you haven't been able to travel in a while. Either, you know, you've been staying in for the pandemic or it hasn't felt safe to you or you can't afford it or you don't get time off or you have little kids and you can't go whatever it is and you want to travel at least give yourself five minutes in the morning to dream of that travel, you know, without shifting into. Oh, it's all or nothing, right? I have to go or I can't enjoy it. Or if I think about it, it just makes me so sad. Oh, what if you let yourself have just a bit, right?
What if you let yourself shop online for groceries or foods from that country or that space, that area you'd love to travel to and you cooked i? Or what if you found some images of it online and made a beautiful board for your room or what if you listen to the music or the language from that country, tuned into one of their radio stations online or from that state you experimented with following their newspaper for a week? Probably wouldn't want to go there then you'd have heard every bad thing. But you know what I mean? Tiny shifts can make a big difference. Say, for example, you want to improve a relationship, but you don't know how and you feel like I either have to completely convert myself into someone. I'm not or I have to cut that person off. That might be true. You might need a really big boundary, but on the other hand, you might need to just go, what would make it easy? What if I let the expectation that it had to be a certain way go and I let myself enjoy what I do enjoy about the person and see what happens and be patient with the parts of me that don't enjoy this person. Or what if I, I decided I would reach in to discover something new about myself and I didn't have to do it perfectly? But I made a small shift toward what I love, what delights me what lights me up just a little bit more. Do you see the difference? If we make huge changes, we're going to blow our minds and we're not going to want to do them and then we're going to feel stuck because all of our critical parts, those voices in our head that say, "you never will do it. You don't do anything. You don't make any differences. You know, it's not good enough. You're not good enough". They step up and they get loud probably to protect us from the disappointment we feel from not having made the difference when all we have to do is make a tiny shift.
So what are your tiny shifts today? What little changes do you want to make? Do you want to exercise more? Maybe you just walk everywhere in your house? Mhm. Do you want to have more friends? Maybe you write a letter to somebody you miss? Do you want to have more time? Hmm, maybe you look at what is sucking your time away and you put it down for an extra 10 minutes today, as I'm looking at my phone. Yeah, tiny tiny shifts. They're the stuff that life is made out of. Did you know that? All those little changes, I want you to hear that you're doing great. By the way, if you've listened into this podcast today, that tells me that you're interested in making tiny shifts and that interest will draw. We'll draw that to you. If you don't believe me, start thinking about something anything. And then notice how often you see it around you, right? That's that bias that we have. That when we're paying attention to something, we notice it then. So you're ready to make some shift. Yeah, one tiny 1. Don't blow your mind and see how it feels. And then give yourself credit, okay? Thanks Mrs Bush, You were a good one. And all of you take good care of yourselves. I'd love to see you sometime in my membership group. I want you to know you're invited. You can shoot me a message or look for me online at https://ingridyhelanderlmft.com/. You'll see it there. Take good care of yourselves. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Seriouslyourself. To help treat yourself well each week, go ahead and subscribe to Seriouslyourself wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this link with anyone you love who might be seeking a little more truth and delight in their lives.
Hey there. Hi, come on in. Nice to see you today though. I can't really, but I'm imagining you ,with lots of love and affection. Today we're talking about change and a lot of us don't like change. I've heard that 1,000 times in my office, I don't like change, don't ask me to change. Change is hard and it is, but I prefer when I'm thinking about change the word shift, you know, to shift. If you try to shift a car if you've ever driven a standard, is that the word standard, right versus automatic? You know that if you don't shift correctly, you can actually wreck the whole transmission, right? It's like stripping the gears. If you you go from reverse into drive without maybe hitting the clutch right? Or going through neutral. You make too swift of a change and you ruin things.
So today we're really looking about this on a personal level because when we think about becoming seriously ourselves, we want to make some change probably from the things that are holding us back. Constricting us not being true. You know, the things that are not really us to being more truly seriously yourself.
So change, let's look at the word shift. The biggest lesson I believe I ever learned about making changes came from a woman named Sue Bush and she was my youngest son's second grade teacher. Sue died much too young and is no longer here with us. But she really taught me this amazing little lesson and I'm going to share it with you. When my son was little he was having some trouble in school because he felt very very rushed and pushed to get things done a certain way in a certain time. He also had to deal with having type one diabetes and would have to test his blood sugar often. Sometimes that would take time for him out of things that the other kids were doing. Because of course the other kids didn't have to stop and do that. And you wouldn't think that would be a big deal. I mean I wouldn't have honestly because it takes you know 30 seconds to do that. And I remember talking to Mrs.Bush and saying how he was feeling so stressed out though, he liked her class and he basically like school and he was having fun with his friends. There were no major issues. But you know, how could we possibly help him then? You know what can we what can we do? And she looked at me and said, well it sounds like he's really struggling right before lunch. Everybody is getting to go to lunch and he's having to wait an extra minute to check his blood sugar.
And I thought well yeah that's true, but big deal. You know it's a minute at the most. And she turned to me and she said you know I've worked with lots of kids and lots of kids with special considerations and needs. And one of the things that I've learned that is most essential is making these tiny little changes. Things that she said for me are absolutely no big deal to make the change at all doesn't matter to me. But it can make all the difference in their body, in their psyche in their day, in their week and how they feel about their lives. So uh, there you have it. She let him go like two minutes early, maybe not even that long to go check his blood sugar so that he could line up for lunch with everybody else and it made all the difference. He was calmer, He was more content. He felt more part of the gang and like she said, it was no skin off her teeth. It just didn't matter to her.
That tiny shift was enough to make a huge change. So often when we want to make change, we think we have to do something grand, something large or something perfect. What I've learned is that that is often exactly the opposite of what we need to be about. Here are the kinds of things that I, I hear, not only from my clients, but in my own body, in my own mind, there are things like this. Like, "I don't want to feel affection for this person who has hurt me. So I wish I could hate them" or "I don't want to fight anymore. So I'm just going to roll over and accept whatever comes my way". Or "I'd like to change that I really care about this because I don't feel like I can do anything about it, so I'm just not going to care about it anymore". Those we think are changes, but they are actually still exactly the same parts of us, They're just the inverse, right, same part other side. And I know I've talked about this before, but it's so essential that I'd love you to get a sense of it.
So imagine something right now something in your life or in your body or in your being this thing you call yourself that feels uncomfortable, not just right, a little off balance and then notice maybe what you feel would be helpful to do to change it. And if that idea, A is kind of big and, B is diametrically opposed to the first thing that was bothering you. That's not the way to go, it's still the same part of you. It's just the inverse. Now stop and imagine what's it like to dream just a tiny dream of what would make you feel a little better, a little more complete, a little more true, a bit more in your body, a bit more authentic, happier maybe.
Just a tiny bit, you could change something small and sometimes that's something small is something you can actually help someone else with, for example by being willing to mention this sort of seemingly innocuous thing too. My son's teacher, she was able to make a seemingly inconsequential shift. A 3o second change and he was lighter. He was happier. And guess who else was mm hmm. Me and probably her. If you're able to make those changes for yourself or for others, they can make your life feel a whole lot better. So if you imagine today you're unhappy because maybe you want to travel and you haven't been able to travel in a while. Either, you know, you've been staying in for the pandemic or it hasn't felt safe to you or you can't afford it or you don't get time off or you have little kids and you can't go whatever it is and you want to travel at least give yourself five minutes in the morning to dream of that travel, you know, without shifting into. Oh, it's all or nothing, right? I have to go or I can't enjoy it. Or if I think about it, it just makes me so sad. Oh, what if you let yourself have just a bit, right?
What if you let yourself shop online for groceries or foods from that country or that space, that area you'd love to travel to and you cooked i? Or what if you found some images of it online and made a beautiful board for your room or what if you listen to the music or the language from that country, tuned into one of their radio stations online or from that state you experimented with following their newspaper for a week? Probably wouldn't want to go there then you'd have heard every bad thing. But you know what I mean? Tiny shifts can make a big difference. Say, for example, you want to improve a relationship, but you don't know how and you feel like I either have to completely convert myself into someone. I'm not or I have to cut that person off. That might be true. You might need a really big boundary, but on the other hand, you might need to just go, what would make it easy? What if I let the expectation that it had to be a certain way go and I let myself enjoy what I do enjoy about the person and see what happens and be patient with the parts of me that don't enjoy this person. Or what if I, I decided I would reach in to discover something new about myself and I didn't have to do it perfectly? But I made a small shift toward what I love, what delights me what lights me up just a little bit more. Do you see the difference? If we make huge changes, we're going to blow our minds and we're not going to want to do them and then we're going to feel stuck because all of our critical parts, those voices in our head that say, "you never will do it. You don't do anything. You don't make any differences. You know, it's not good enough. You're not good enough". They step up and they get loud probably to protect us from the disappointment we feel from not having made the difference when all we have to do is make a tiny shift.
So what are your tiny shifts today? What little changes do you want to make? Do you want to exercise more? Maybe you just walk everywhere in your house? Mhm. Do you want to have more friends? Maybe you write a letter to somebody you miss? Do you want to have more time? Hmm, maybe you look at what is sucking your time away and you put it down for an extra 10 minutes today, as I'm looking at my phone. Yeah, tiny tiny shifts. They're the stuff that life is made out of. Did you know that? All those little changes, I want you to hear that you're doing great. By the way, if you've listened into this podcast today, that tells me that you're interested in making tiny shifts and that interest will draw. We'll draw that to you. If you don't believe me, start thinking about something anything. And then notice how often you see it around you, right? That's that bias that we have. That when we're paying attention to something, we notice it then. So you're ready to make some shift. Yeah, one tiny 1. Don't blow your mind and see how it feels. And then give yourself credit, okay? Thanks Mrs Bush, You were a good one. And all of you take good care of yourselves. I'd love to see you sometime in my membership group. I want you to know you're invited. You can shoot me a message or look for me online at https://ingridyhelanderlmft.com/. You'll see it there. Take good care of yourselves. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Seriouslyourself. To help treat yourself well each week, go ahead and subscribe to Seriouslyourself wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this link with anyone you love who might be seeking a little more truth and delight in their lives.
If you just can't get enough and you'd like even more goodness, you can become a part of Seriouslyourself, The Membership Community. You'll receive a monthly magazine, personal gatherings and cool little treats delivered right to your mailbox. Find out more about that on my website: https://ingridyhelanderlmft.com/seriouslyourself-the-membership/.
And thanks to those who make Seriouslyourself special: our wonderful music is Midsummer from the album Flood by the fabulous Joel Helander. Seriouslyourself is produced by Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, Executive Producer. The ideas and inspirations come from beautiful humans like you, that I feel lucky to know. And I'm Ingrid Helander. Take good care of yourself. See you next time.