Stop Chasing Big Moments. Instead, Try This.
Change doesn’t come from one big moment we create. It’s about setting up small moments that make a broader impact.
By my late teens I was socially stunted. I struggled to hold conversations. I turned beat red and was on the verge of tears any time I was talking for more than a few seconds and I couldn’t pick up social cues at all.
The only person I was actually comfortable with was myself. Through myself, I could actually talk about what was on my mind and process things. Deep down, I hated that I was a nervous wreck who couldn’t talk much at all.
I wanted a change in my life. So badly.
I got that chance by my late teens, the desire to change being something I wanted for a much longer time leading to that point. When I was told of a particular Canadian program called Katimavik.
Innuit for “the gathering place”, it was a program where you lived with a group of other people within your age range in a small community in Canada. These individuals came from different backgrounds and different provinces so there was a good bit of diversity too.
When this was explained to me, I couldn’t believe it. This was my chance. It was a 9 month journey where I finally could change my life around.
And to a degree, I did. But after the 9 months of travelling around Canada and meeting new people, the experience wasn’t as grand as I thought it would be from the start.
Instead, the experience formed a ripple that for many years to come would shape me into who I am today through the experiences that I went through.
One of the biggest tropes in self-help is gurus introducing a new product, course, book, or seminar and labelling it as the greatest thing you’ll ever experience. They hype up this miracle cure as something revolutionary.
And they sell it hard.
Of course it captures the interest of a lot of people. We love quick fixes, and like my former teenage self, we still like to make big leaps and bounds in solving various problems in our lives.
But my experience through Katimavik taught me a valuable lesson and something that I echoed whenever I bring up the experience.
That even though the experience was middling at best, it did set up the crucial ground work and foundation that I can use to build myself up. It was my opportunity to confront a lot of emotions all at once for me. It sucked and I kept to myself a lot, but I processed them over time and it made me a more empathetic man.
That proved crucial in my first co-op position, where I had to call people with regards to their employment insurance debt. In other words, people who usually lacked a job and stable income. It gave me the empathy and confidence for the work to even outpace those working the job for years.
A lot of us don’t always have those opportunities. And so when something that’s supposed to be “big and revolutionary” appears, we take advantage of these opportunities. The only issue is that they are so middling when it comes down to it.
Instead of listening to rich self-help gurus and being complacent with your progress, consider this specific strategy.
Be Humbling With Smaller Moments
Katimavik for me set up the ground work for me, but through that experience I learnt a valuable lesson that I continue to use in my life. I do still set myself great expectations, however I remind myself of two things.
There are many solutions to a problem. And a lot of the time, growth is a long-term process.
Like with so many of my methods, these are mental checks and reminders for myself. They are anchors that ensure that I don’t get too caught up in my emotions.
They obviously don’t guarantee that, but it’s better than being roped into believing one event is going to totally change your life around.
Because the reality is that it won’t.
Even when you apply things that you learn, a lot of events or big moments in your life tend to be more like a spring board. There just isn’t one massive moment but rather one moment that begins a chain of events that leads to further and further change in you.
That’s generally what self-help gurus provide with their events, courses, and other products, but the excessive sensationalization combined with our desire for instant gratification (among other elements) makes those exaggerated claims more believable and compelling.
We don’t think these events are going to have a small impact. Rather we try to make the most of it and don’t fully think things over.
When I joined Katimavik, I set myself up with the expectation that by a few weeks I was going to be completely different. That I’d have way more confidence in myself and would be able to talk with anyone without stuttering and being a complete mess when talking to someone.
We experience a lot of those kinds of things even from smaller events and being able to use that check to curb expectations keeps you real. It lets you enjoy the process more and figure things out more.
Deliberate And Stall For Time
Humbling yourself through reminders makes it easier to spend more time thinking about where you want to go and set better expectations for yourself. This allows you to be a bit more conservative with your approach to information, change, and the events that accompany those things.
One of the biggest problems in self-help is that a lot of advice isn’t memorable. We naturally retain some information, but hardly any of us bother to use it in our lives.
This doesn’t mean the information sucks, but the means of it being presented to us doesn’t make us want to use it.
Because of the mental checks as mentioned before, this allows us to transition into this step where we spend more time thinking and overall stall for time.
Growth is a slow process and so our thinking should be slower than where we have it now. The idea isn’t to not act or spend days or weeks on a decision. Rather, it’s to figure out the best course of action and for us to fully process the information set before us.
Because in the end, self-help isn’t about taking the words of others and using them exactly. We all have different views and beliefs. We all have different problems. Figuring out how to best apply information you are given will help you make better decisions and how to grow and begin that chain of events.
Like I said, this overall strategy isn’t rock solid, after all these can be boiled down to using your time while you are delaying gratification. These strategies can help, but ultimately it’s based on your own emotions. If you lack control over your emotions, it’s going to be a lot harder to delay.
And of course it’s going to be hard for anyone to slow down if things have been working out well and you’re rushing ahead.
But I would say this is a better option because self-help gurus don’t really want us to be thinking or deliberating over what’s best for our lives. They focus on their assistance and hope that people take the offer, even when they know it could end up causing problems or not solve the person’s issues.
This at least gives you more control and you get to make decisions on your own terms which is how self-help is meant to be like. External elements helping, but you’re given the final say without any pressure or smarmy sales tactics.
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