Do small moves really make a big difference?

Pressing Pause ep 134 Do small moves really make a big difference?

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Welcome to Pressing Pause, I’m your host, Gabrielle Treanor, a coach, writer, introvert and sensitive soul with an inclination to ponder over the stuff of life. Join me as I explore how we can create, find and feel more calm, ease and joy in our daily lives.

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Welcome to episode 134. It feels like I’ve been talking about my book, The 1% Wellness Experiment, being published later this month for a long time now. I’ve posted about it on social media, I’ve written about it in my Substack posts and emails, as well as for publications like The Simple Things and The Happy News. I’ve talked about it on this podcast, I’ve been chatting with friends and colleagues in person about it too.

The importance of pre-orders for a book was made very clear to me. How the number of orders a book gets before it’s published plays a big part in how well a book is stocked not only in bricks and mortar shops but also in the big online stores too, after it’s published.

And so I’ve been sharing about The 1% Wellness Experiment as much as I can. Not for the sake of getting more copies pre-ordered so I can make lots of money. Writing books is not a thing people go into to make big money, only a teeny percentage make mega bucks as an author. I’ve been keen to tell people about the book, to spread the word that it can be pre-ordered so it arrives in time for Christmas because I feel a great responsibility to this piece of work I’ve created. Because I believe wholeheartedly in what I’ve written in the 200 and something pages.

Everything in this book I’ve done myself, and wherever possible I’ve found scientific research that’s been done on it too, showing on a bigger scale than just me how the activities and tools can have a real positive impact on your mental and emotional wellbeing. That’s not to say that the book is the magic key to a perfectly wonderful life or that you must do everything in the book. There is no magic key and anyone who says they have one should be taken with a massive bag of salt, and everything in the book is there for you to experiment with to see how it could work for you in your own life.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the book is packed with really good, helpful stuff that could make a significant difference, yes, even change your life for the better. And so that’s why I’ve been talking about the book and pre-orders and offering bonuses.

But here’s the thing. This probably goes against all the rules when you’re promoting a thing and want people to buy your specific thing but I’m going to say it anyway.

The thing is, the 1% in the book title, the premise the book is built around – that you can make a positive difference in your life in just 1% of your waking day, which is ten minutes – doesn’t just apply to what I share in the book. You can take this idea of 1%, of spending only ten minutes a day, of micro gains and make use of it with or without my book.

It might sound too small an amount of time to really make a difference and I hear that a lot. I hear how you put off doing something which calms and soothes you, which helps you to feel stronger, more positive, more confident, because you need to set aside a chunk of time to do it. And that chunk of time is never found. The thought of only spending ten minutes seems absurd, nothing really beneficial can come from such a short period of time so what’s the point? But if needing a big chunk of time makes doing anything to care for your wellbeing, be it mental, emotional, physical or spiritual feel impossible then we have to make it easier to do. Which means aiming for a shorter amount of time. A doable amount of time. A number of minutes that’s so short it’s pretty much a no-brainer.

But, and here’s the big but, these two handfuls of minutes may seem crazily short but because it’s a short enough amount of time to make it doable it means you can do it again the next day. And the next. And when you add up those short bursts of ten minutes they really do build up to something bigger. Something more significant, more impactful. Ten minutes a day for a week adds up to more than an hour. But if you waited until you had at least an hour in one solid chunk that time may never have been found.

So, The 1% Wellness Experiment gives you 31 different activities and tools that take just ten minutes each (there are 31 so you can do one a day for a month if you fancy it, those ten minutes a day add up to more than five hours in total, just saying). And spending just ten minutes in a day, and then ten minutes another day, and ten minutes another day… those few minutes accumulate and compound and that’s how you create a real and positive impact on your wellbeing without needing to set aside great chunks of time.

This idea of big changes coming from the accumulation of little moves applies to anything you want to improve in your life, not just what I suggest in my book. It’s these little moves, these micro or marginal gains that took the British Cycling team from being the joke of the sport to sweeping the medal board at the Olympics and Paralympics in 2008 and 2012. It was making little tweaks to how everyone involved in the team went about their work from how they washed their hands to the pillows the athletes slept on to the colour painted on the inside of the transport vehicles, that added up to them going from one Olympic gold medal in a 110 year stretch to winning more than half of road and track cycling gold medals in 2008.

Ten minutes may sound too short, small steps adding up to big change may sound cliched but, like a lot of cliches, it sounds like that because it’s true. It’s because ten minutes really is enough to make a difference, and it’s because I know, from my own experience and the many women I’ve worked with, that if it’s not made utterly doable it doesn’t happen, and it’s because of that I wrote my book around actions that will improve your mental and emotional wellbeing in only ten minutes a day.

So I’m not keeping the theory of micro gains a secret to get you to get The 1% Wellness Experiment, besides there’s plenty more in the book along with the 31 experiments or else it would only be as long as this podcast episode. You can take the idea of using 1% of your day to make positive changes in any part of your life. I’ve been using it to build strength in my legs – I’ve been doing 20 squats a day, usually while waiting for the kettle to boil, for several months and I can feel my legs are stronger. And that takes a lot less than ten minutes.

What you want to improve in your life, what you want to change whether it’s practical actions or ways of thinking or how you relate to or communicate with others, significant shifts can happen with small steps repeated so they build up. And if you’re wondering how you’d manage to remember your ten minutes a day I show you how to create lasting habits in the book too!

Spending 1% of your waking hours a day on an action that supports and benefits your mental and emotional wellbeing really does add up to a big difference. And if you’d like ideas and tools to use that time to establish boundaries, overcome comparison, handle anxiety, and deal with perfectionism, as well as build your confidence, feel calm and joyful, get organised and sleep better, take a look at The 1% Wellness Experiment. It’s published on 21 December and if you pre-order it you should get it on publication day, whether it’s delivered from Amazon or Bookshop.org or wherever you order it online, or if you pick it up from your local bookshop. And you can get pre-order bonuses from my website too, go to thewellnessexperiment.co.uk.

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Thank you for listening to Pressing Pause, you can find the show notes at gabrielletreanor.com/podcast.

I always love to hear from you so do email me at [email protected] with any thoughts on the podcast, what you’d like me to talk about or anything really!

Thanks again for listening, until next time.