Microshifts in Life

In the story you’re writing, you can see how all the microshifts add up to the larger one. You’ve seen the whole plot. You know where the character is headed. You can see the path they’re taking to their new normal.

 This is harder to see in the story you’re living. You may be diligently pursuing your smaller changes, and after a week, a month, even a whole season, you may be feeling more than ready for results. You may be feeling impatient to reach that far-off target. You may even be losing hope that you’re making any progress at all. 

I hear you. I’ve been there. I’ve spent years completely frustrated about my health and my ability to tend myself, just as I described in the middle story.

When this happens, when I get too caught up in wanting to reach the future I’ve imagined, I have taught myself to pause and instead look to the past. I go back to my old journals, or my old pictures, or I talk to old, trusted friends to remind myself of how far I’ve come.

A year ago, what was I dreaming about doing? What was I doing to get there? Have I gotten to do any of the things I dreamed about? Have I already lived the things that felt impossible then?

How about two years ago? Five years ago? Ten?

If I go far enough back, I usually discover that my present is one of the targets I set for myself I was just a little bit younger. I had plenty of moments when those dreams felt too big and impossibly out of reach, but I continued on with my microshifts anyway. On days when it was too hard to believe that I could actually get what I wanted, I instead trusted my need to try, and I continued to make the small shift available to me.

Looking back, I can see the pattern: I eventually do build what was once only my dream. 

But those dreams, like every book I’ve ever written, never turns out exactly the way I imagined it. 

They’re brighter, harder, funnier, messier, and lovelier than what once only lived in my head.

That’s what happens when ideas become reality. Life gives it texture beyond what our little minds could imagine.

That’s why it’s impossible to distill a complete life onto the page. Stories illustrate life, but as I mentioned, we writers never capture life completely.

Instead, we tell our stories precisely. We live our lives fully. And part of a full life is confronting uncertainty and continuing on anyway.

One small step is enough for now.

There is always a way towards your fullest self. Even when you can’t see the whole path, you can take one small step, and that step is enough for now. 

We usually prefer to see those steps in the outer world. We want to experience change that we can see in our external happenings—a tangible result such as a reward, not too much different from the gold stars our teachers gave out in elementary school. Such external validation is often the results we imagine, and since getting that validation is outside our control, waiting for it to arrive can be frustrating.

A microshift, however, is always available to you. Though it may not be the change you imagined, it still moves your story forward. 

Sometimes, a microshift is very simple but still necessary. It’s a quiet, reflective instant that opens you up to a bigger change down the line. 

Maybe, like Lena in the first meeting with the Director, you hesitate to think before automatically doing what you’re told. 

Maybe, like me with my supervisor, you stop long enough to put your own emotion aside and see that you’re not the only one in pain. 

Sometimes, a microshift is just you pausing long enough to make your own meaning so that you can better understand what external action is needed. 

Maybe you take a break from drafting a project that’s frustrating you, and you dig in to some freewrites to unsnarl some plot threads. 

Maybe you start a new journal, sit inside your emotions, and sort your situation into story currents: helping, honing, and eddies.  

Maybe you clarify your targets or find new touchstones. 

Maybe you see a pattern in your own story—the one you’re living or the one you’re writing—that you’ve never seen before.

Maybe you realize that you have been headed in the same direction all along, not one you would have picked but one that brings you into a fuller, more complete version of yourself.

Each of the tools I’ve described here in this Season is its own microshift. 

They may seem small, and they are. 

Small steps can take you a long way over time.

String enough microshifts together, and they accumulate into larger shifts. 

Start where you are.

Go where you can.

See where it takes you.