Summary

The website content advocates for making small, incremental changes of just one degree in various aspects of life, such as career, health, and relationships, to achieve significant long-term results.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the transformative power of small changes by illustrating the concept of a one-degree shift in habits and mindset, inspired by James Clear's "Atomic Habits." It suggests that consistent, minor adjustments can lead to substantial improvements over time, using the metaphor of water turning to steam with just a one-degree temperature change. The author, drawing on personal coaching experiences, advises against overwhelming changes and instead promotes the idea of making one small change at a time, such as altering breakfast choices for someone struggling with diet adherence. This approach is also applied to personal relationships and professional environments, where the author encourages readers to focus on changing their own thoughts and behaviors by a mere one degree to see profound effects on their well-being and interactions with others. The article cites research and the work of Cellular Biologist Dr Bruce Lipton to support the claim that even a slight shift in thinking can significantly impact one's cellular biology and overall health.

Opinions

Major changes are often overwhelming and unsustainable, leading to stress and a sense of failure.
Small, one-degree changes are more manageable and can accumulate to produce substantial improvements in one's life.
Jennifer's story serves as an example of how large-scale dietary changes can lead to identity paralysis and regression to old habits.
The author criticizes the common approach of trying to drastically alter one's life or expecting others to change in relationships, suggesting that focusing on one's own one-degree changes is more effective.
The article posits that just five minutes of altered thinking can lead to a significant shift in one's mental and physical state.
There is a belief in the power of thoughts to influence brain chemistry and, consequently, cellular health, as supported by Dr Bruce Lipton's research on gene expression.
The author encourages self-reflection to notice and change habitual patterns of negative thinking, even if it's just for a short period, to improve one's quality of life.

Small Changes Create Big Results

All it takes is a one-degree change

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Malcolm told me how difficult he found change. He wanted to change his career, his country, and his health, but he found the idea challenging and overwhelming.

I pointed out how these are all major changes, and big changes are stressful for someone like Malcolm, who likes routine.

Instead of throwing everything he knew up in the air, I asked him to change one of these things by one degree.

One Degree Change

A degree doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? Surely you need to change more than this?

James Clear talks about making small changes in his hook, Atomic Habits. He says,

“If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.”

Think about it: when someone goes on a diet, they often decide to change everything. They cut out foods they like and attempt to add foods they usually don’t like, then wonder why the diet doesn’t last very long.

Jennifer lost five stone but struggled to accept her new self and still identified with her past self. She had identity paralysis. One of the reasons she suffered from this was because she’d made huge changes in her diet that still felt unnatural to her.

She’d had enough of her diet plan and wanted to go back to eating junk and processed food even though she knew she’d regain weight as she had done many times before.

So, I asked her to make one small change each week, starting with breakfast. This felt comfortable and achievable, and she was happy with this idea.

And how about in relationships? You might read many self-help books and watch videos about how to make your relationship into the one you want or attempt to change the person you’re in a relationship with to act the way you want them to.

Good luck with that. It’s a lot of effort, and it doesn’t get you the results you want.

The same thing happens when someone decides to change things at work. Maybe you read books and blogs on how to build success, influence people, and get on with the new boss.

Again, it’s a lot of effort with often little result.

But what about if you just made a small change?

And I’m not even talking about making physical changes. I’m talking about treating yourself to a degree less thinking about what you need to change.

So, instead of focusing on the diet you must go on, and whether your stomach wobbles when you clean your teeth, you let go of one degree of that thinking.

And instead of focusing on how much you want your partner to change and what you can do to make them change, you change the things you do by one degree.

What Does One Degree Look Like?

Remember, it only takes a one-degree change in temperature to convert water to steam or water to ice.

Let’s look at one degree as 1% of an average workday of 8 hours, or 8 x 60 minutes. 1% of that is 4.8, nearly five minutes. That’s all.

So, to make a one-degree change, you just need to let go of persistent thinking for 5 minutes a day. You can do this however you want to. As soon as you feel a familiar feeling and know you’re in habitual thinking, notice it and let it go.

You know that insecure, unhappy, anxious thinking can become habitual. You get into patterns of thought, and then you feel bad, but when you stop running those patterns, you feel better, and who wouldn’t want to feel better for even one degree of the time?

And the better you feel, the more likely you are to want more of that, and one degree can become five degrees and so on.

Imagine feeling worse for one degree of the time? Five more minutes a day feeling upset or sad. It may not sound like much, but research proves every minute counts. If you’re spending minutes a day obsessing over worrying thoughts, the impact of those minutes can be felt at any time during the day.

Change Your Thoughts by One Degree

You’re constantly experiencing thought in the moment. You feel what you think.

You might say that you want to change and tell people that you’re going to change, but unless you think about how to change, it isn’t going to happen. All experience comes from the inside out.

This is because the chemicals sent from your brain largely impact your blood’s chemistry. Brain chemistry adjusts how the blood is made up based on your thoughts. So this means that your thoughts about any given thing, at any given moment, can influence the brain chemistry, which, in turn, affects your cells.

In other words, your thoughts directly and overwhelmingly significantly affect cells. Imagine the effect one degree more joyful thought can have on your cells.

According to Dr Bruce Lipton, a Cellular Biologist, gene activity can change daily. If the thought in your mind is reflected in your body’s chemistry, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and controls the blood’s chemistry, then you can change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts.

Dr Lipton’s research illustrates that by changing your thoughts, your mind can alter the activity of your genes; each gene can express itself in over 30,0000 different ways.

So all of this means that you all have the power to choose to live differently, to feel differently just by thinking differently by one degree.

Final Thoughts

Spend one degree of your day, just five minutes, noticing how many minutes you spend worrying, obsessing, or complaining about something in your life, and then maybe spend one degree of your time looking at whatever it is that you don’t like in a different light.

And I hope you get even one degree more of the changes you want.