If you take a look around your life, you can probably see a lot of things you’d like to change. If you make a list of all those things, letting the ideas spill out of your over-crowded mind and onto a blank sheet of paper, it can be daunting. There can be literally hundreds of things, and every one of them looks huge. You could throw up your hands and never even begin. But I’ve found a better way to get started.
Julia Cameron wrote The Artist’s Way to guide people on a 12-week path of personal change. One of her exercises is Ten Tiny Changes.
Make a list of ten tiny changes you could make in your life, that would bring you joy, or contentment, or a sigh of relief. These changes are really supposed to be tiny, more like ‘wash the window that catches the morning sun’ than ‘travel to the Maldives’. Choose things that would take only a few minutes. Don’t be hard on yourself, but find some simple-to-do, high value things. For example, if you’re like me, there’s bound to be something that you notice repeatedly. How about the shrub that drips cold water on you every time you pass it? (Snip off that branch.) Or those cobwebs up above the door? (Brush them all away.)
From your list of ten tiny changes, pick one and make it your goal for this week. Do it! You’ll add something nice to your life.
Today, I filled a shopping bag full of novels to take to my local Oxfam. It’s cleared a nice space on my bookshelf, where I’ve put a small picture of my granddaughter. It’s made me smile.