This post is part of a series celebrating the release of Building Balance in Your Body & Life, my new 30-lesson audio course on Insight Timer. Find the previous posts in the series (starting Mar 2, 2022) here. If the ideas here interest you, please join the course! Go to the Insight Timer web site to listen to the first lesson for free and to join us. Just $20/US for 30 Lessons! Thank you for supporting your body, your life and my work.
Imagine waking up after an ice storm. Everything is coated with crystal -- your car, every tree branch and blade of grass, the walkways and roads – everything under a crust of ice.
It’s 21 degrees (-6 Celsius). The sun comes up and it’s 22 degrees, then 23, then 24. Everything is still frozen. The sun keeps rising and the temperature slowly, slowly climbs: 25, 26, 27, 28.
Is anything happening? Nothing is changing. Everything is still frozen!
Little by little, the temperature goes up: 29, 30, 31 and still nothing melts. And then, it’s 32. Drips start dripping off the eves and the trees. The shell on the car slides off in sections. Chunks of ice fall from power lines and branches.
It looked like nothing was happening and then all of a sudden, everything is melting. It didn’t look like it from outside but each increasing degree was a necessary part of the path to the big melt. (Inspired by a metaphor in James Clear’s Atomic Habits and a retelling by Martha Beck.)
A similar phenomenon happens at our house each April. At the beginning of the month, we can see the whole length of the river from east to west. Every day, we go onto the deck and there is the long stretch of sparkling water. We know the leaves are growing. We can see them but their growth doesn’t change the view.
Until all of a sudden, it does. One day in the 3rd or 4th week of April, we can’t see the river anymore. (I’ll take pictures through the month and add them here!)
Last week, we talked about how tiny, repeated, consistent changes seem like they are doing nothing until suddenly there is a big shift (or a sudden recognition of a shift).
“Slowly, then all at once.” ~ John Greene
“Gradually, then suddenly.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
This happens not just in our bodies but in our lives and in the world. We need to pay attention to the tiny, almost imperceptible shifts that precede major change.
After two years in the house with your partner, are you still saying “thank you” and “I love you” and “I appreciate you”? Or have those words melted away and been replaced with sighs, eye-rolling and silence?
Years of toxic partisan politics little by little erode a once-dignified and respectful institution into one full of name-calling, accusation, and alternate facts. Deceptive, hateful, hypocritical, even violent behavior that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago is so normalized, we don’t even remark on it anymore.
And then, of course, there is the planet. Warming. Little by little...
Then all of a sudden.
For the sake of our bodies, our relationships, our Earth, pay attention to the small things. They are what the future is made of.
The Practical Practice section of the Building Balance in Your Body & Life course offers exercises and inquiry into awareness of and choice around our physical and life habits. This week, notice the small, seemingly inconsequential changes and ask yourself, is that the direction I want to go? Then please join the Building Balance course. for $20/US and receive more ways to feel balance in your body and your life.