Small Shifts That Change Everything
The first eight posts in this series were mostly about looking inward — understanding your strengths, what you love, your gifts, your sense of purpose and identity. All of that matters. But at some point the question changes: how do I actually move?
It’s one thing to have a clearer sense of direction. It’s another to do something with it. And I see this often with clients — someone who has done real work on themselves, who knows what they want, who can feel the pull toward something different. And then they freeze. The change feels too big, too uncertain, too much to take on all at once.
What if the answer isn’t a bigger leap — but a smaller step?
The Problem With Big Goals
We tend to believe that meaningful change requires something significant. A bold decision, a clear plan, a moment of decisive action. And sometimes it does. But more often, that belief becomes the thing that keeps us from starting at all. We wait until we have enough certainty. Enough time. Enough momentum. And in the waiting, nothing moves.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a neuroscientist and founder of Ness Labs, offers a different frame in her book Tiny Experiments. Rather than committing to a fixed goal and judging yourself against it, she proposes running small, purposeful experiments: time-limited, low-stakes commitments designed to generate real data about what engages and fulfills you. The idea is straightforward. Instead of trying to figure out the right path before you start, you test a direction — and let the experience tell you something. She calls the structure a pact: specific, actionable, and time-bound. Not “I want to be more creative” but “I will sketch for fifteen minutes every morning for two weeks.” Small enough to begin. Clear enough to follow. Long enough to learn something.
What a Tiny Experiment Looks Like
I’ve been working with a client who is highly analytical by nature — someone who is very much at home with data, structure, and precision. For most of her life, she’d thought of herself as someone who wasn’t creative. It wasn’t an identity she’d chosen consciously. It was simply a story that had accumulated over time. She decided to run an experiment. For two weeks, she sketched for a brief period every day. Nothing ambitious. No expectation of quality. Just the practice itself — showing up, putting something on the page, and noticing what happened. The two weeks ended and something had shifted. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But the story that she wasn’t a creative person had started to loosen. She began experimenting with different mediums. She signed up for an art class. Not because she’d suddenly become someone else, but because the experiment had given her enough evidence to take the next step. That’s how this tends to work. Not one heroic decision, but a small experiment that generates enough curiosity and confidence to make the next one possible.
Alignment Over Intensity
There’s a particular kind of motivation that feels good at the start — a burst of energy, a strong commitment, a sense that this time will be different. And then, a few weeks in, it fades. The plan was too ambitious. The standard was too high. Life intervened. Intensity doesn’t tend to last. Alignment has a different quality. When a practice is genuinely connected to something you care about — to who you are becoming rather than to an external standard — it has a staying power that willpower alone can’t produce. The question worth asking isn’t how to do more. It’s how to do what matters more consistently. And that distinction changes everything about how you approach a new practice. The small shifts that tend to stick are the ones that feel like an expression of who you are, not a performance of who you think you should be.
Where to Begin
Start from what you already know. The posts in this series have been building toward something practical. You have more material to work with than you might think — a clearer sense of what gives you energy, what you love, what your gifts are, what you feel called toward. The question now is what one small shift might bring you into closer alignment with what you’ve noticed.
It might look like:
Having one conversation you’ve been avoiding.
Setting aside ten minutes to reflect before the day begins.
Saying no to something that no longer fits.
Trying something small that you’ve been curious about but haven’t let yourself start.
Practicing a different response when an old story shows up.
None of these are dramatic. But each one says something: this is the direction I want to move. If you value connection, it might mean sending the message you’ve been putting off. If you value creativity, it might mean protecting twenty minutes to make something. If you value clarity, it might mean writing down what you already know. If you value courage, it might mean speaking one honest sentence you’ve been holding back. And if you want to give it the structure Le Cunff describes — make it a pact. Name what you’ll do, how often, and for how long. Keep it small enough to be real. Then notice what happens.
On the Days It Doesn’t Work
You will miss days. You will lose momentum. You will question whether any of it is making a difference. That’s not failure. That’s data — which is exactly how Le Cunff frames it. An experiment that doesn’t go as planned still tells you something. About what conditions you need, what resistance you’re carrying, what might need to change before you try again. What matters is not perfection. It’s returning. Coming back to the question, the practice, the direction. Each return is itself a small act of alignment — and over time, those small acts begin to shape what feels normal, possible, and true.
.And if one question feels like a good place to carry forward, it might be this:
What do I already know that I need to trust?
That’s where we’ll turn next.
Further Reading
Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World — the source for the tiny experiments framework in this post. Le Cunff is a neuroscientist and founder of Ness Labs; her approach to change is grounded in behavioral science but written for anyone feeling stuck between who they are and who they want to become.
Peter D. Demarest and Harvey J. Schoof, Answering the Central Question — the source for the Central Question referenced in this series. The framework connects choice-making to values in a way that complements the experimental approach Le Cunff describes.
Eric Zimmer, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life — a companion read to Le Cunff’s book; Zimmer explores lasting change through small choices aligned with values, drawing on behavioral science and his own story of recovery. Host of the widely listened-to podcast The One You Feed.