WHAT GOOD DO SMALL THINGS!?
Your phrasing might be a bit different but let’s start by addressing the reasons not to do a small thing:
These questions are so deeply human that we all have to learn to deal with them. So, let’s begin.
A small thing is not a big thing
Big things are made of small things. The stuff you're touching (and breathing) is made of molecules. So are you. Molecules, atoms, particles… It’s turtles all the way down.
High-level skills are made up of innumerable low-level skills — each performed performed automatically. These are habits that largely function without conscious intervention.
Your health is not one big thing.
Exercise is taking a thousand skills and putting them on autopilot. From there, you have the option of stacking one complex thing on top of them. New skills stand on the shoulders of giants.
Nutrition is about the interplay between your physical signals, habits, knowledge, and environments (internal and external). Each tiny step is simple. So, simple, in fact, that many people are still surprised that the whole thing put together is complicated.
Relationships are about small things. So many! With all affection to John Cusack, The Grand Gesture is a Hollywood device. Anyone in a real relationship will tell you that love is made up of a zillion tiny gestures.
You don't feel successful doing it
Instead of trying to change our emotions, we can change the frames we view our experiences through.
"I am always up for an interesting new challenge." vs "I am a leaky bacterium who quits everything."
Those judgy statements often imply that growth is not possible. The leaky, quitty bacterium feels stuck in a fixed state. The "Try anything once" person has room to become more playful or scientific as time goes on. They have room to fail without taking it personally. That’s a skill worth developing.
You don't know how to do a small thing
Learning to execute an easy thing with amazing consistency is a transformational skill. That’s what mastery looks and feels like! The goal here isn't necessarily to make things easy. Instead, it's to find the hardest thing you can execute well. How do you get there? Shrink the change until you feel like anything smaller would be pointless. Going smaller than that is probably where you’ll find gold.
Sometimes, the small things are all we've got. 1 is a tiny number but it will always be greater than zero.
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