One concept that I really like is the idea of microactions, which are tiny actions that aren’t even big enough to be considered “steps” to achieving a goal. They can be useful when you’re feeling like I was when I wrote my last post, as if everything is too much work and far too complicated.

The article Inch by Inch: Microactions by Mary LoVerde has a good overview:

Microactions are teeny tiny steps that propel us forward without threatening our sense of control. They get around our fears because we commit to something so little we could hardly be afraid and we’re guaranteed success. They’re much smaller than steps and often so ridiculous that we outfox our resistance to change.

Sometimes, when you do a microaction, it provides you with so much momentum that you actually find yourself achieving a goal, or at least taking a couple of steps toward doing so. The example in the article is of a woman whose microaction was to put on exercise clothes, and she felt silly standing around in exercise clothes and figured she might as well go for a walk. You can’t go into it expecting that to happen, though, because then you might be too freaked out to even take a microaction since you feel like you’d have to immediately follow it up with a bunch of other stuff you’re too tired to do, or you just do the microaction and feel disappointed in yourself for not accomplishing anything big. Sometimes you will accomplish something bigger, sometimes you’ll acclimatize yourself to a certain microaction so that it becomes part of your routine and it won’t take so much effort in the future, and sometimes you’ll only manage to do one tiny, little thing, and that might be the only thing that you do all day.

And sometimes that’s okay, because doing something is better than doing nothing.

A bit of looking around online shows me that Mary LoVerde is the author of Stop Screaming at the Microwave! : How to Connect Your Disconnected Life. I have always thought that was the best title for a self-help book that I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if I’d actually find the book itself helpful if I ever read it, but I can tell you that every time I see it in a store, I feel a bit better, because the title makes me giggle. Stop screaming at the microwave! Hee hee hee.

On a slightly related note, just in case you don’t understand how much of a dork I am, whenever I write a to-do list, the first item on it is always “Write to-do list.” That means there’s always something I can cross off right away, and it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Books, Wellness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.