Trailheads & Pivot Points

Meaningful Change Happens Slowly Over Time

Are you familiar with the Tale of Two Wolves? This famous story became a pivot point for author and podcaster, Eric Zimmer. He first heard this story when he was just 23 years old and faced with a big life decision. The echoes of this story would stay with him for decades. Let’s start by reading the tale:

It was that wisdom at the end of the tale that captured Eric Zimmer’s attention and offered a little foothold for a life decision he faced at the tender age of 23. Which wolf was he feeding? Would he make a better choice, now informed with this reality check?

It would take Eric more than a few falls from grace and hitting rock bottom more than once to realize that meaningful change does not happen in one climactic moment. It is a continuous series of small choices in the right direction. Real, sustainable change happens little by little. 

The title of Eric’s new book is How A Little Becomes A Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life. 

Eric felt compelled to bust the myth that one dramatic moment in our lives is not how change happens. No one hits rock bottom, sits around in that dark abyss for a while and then suddenly bounces back. Climbing up and out of a rock bottom is actually accomplished little by little.

As many of us know firsthand, we usually have a whole series of rock bottoms before the seismic one that becomes the real wake up call. And so it was for Eric. 

In his recent podcast conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos on her Happiness Lab show, Eric shared that he was a recovering addict multiple times in his life. He’d find himself at rock bottom when he faced a judge at 23. He was given two choices – jail or rehab. In his mind, it may have been a choice between the lesser of two evils. He opted for rehab. Thirty days later, he was released. Simply believing that he now possessed the willpower to forge through life, he set himself up for failure. On paper, most of us would have thought he was actually setting himself up for success.

He was clean from the drugs and feeling stronger, clear-headed, on solid ground. He decided to tackle multiple parts of his life all at once – sign up for classes at the local community college, commit to physical workouts every day, get a job or start a business, eat healthy. Stepping back and looking at this familiar scenario through hindsight, Eric now realizes that he bit off more than he could chew. Too many big initiatives and too big a bite out of each one. 

The wolf he was feeding was overwhelmed. Willpower alone proved insufficient. He quit. He fed his addiction instead. He was back where he started. 

The judge we face when we hit rock bottom is ourselves. We are judge and jury. We have tough choices to make. Forced to look at our situation head on, we usually do make the right decision. But the real challenge comes when we find ourselves caught yet again between a rock and a hard place. Which wolf do we feed then? Who wins that internal tug of war?

We talk about falling off the wagon, hitting rock bottom, breaking points and mental breakdowns. It is tension under pressure that becomes too hard to hold. 

Eric came to the realization that his pattern of starting anew had one big problem – he was making meaningful change too big. He shares with great candor on Laurie’s podcast that when he was 23 and super-charged to change every part of his life, he was completely unaware that he did not have a solid foundation from which to build.

He was only 30 days out of a rehab program where temptation to use was simply not a choice available to him. Now he was out in the wild and on his own. Temptation abounded. He hadn’t fully kicked the habit; and the magnetic pull to return to the familiar was irresistible when his resistance was low.

It would take him multiple times to experience this reality before he would reach its natural conclusion. He had to find a way to make positive change a daily habit. His aha moment of trying to do it “little by little” was not something that just occurred to him one bright sunny day. It had been sneaking up on him all along. It was only in hindsight that he could see it so clearly.

Eric imparted something during that Happiness Lab podcast that has stuck with me. If you look at all the people we most admire who have in fact turned their life around in the most incredible ways, they all did it one step at a time, over time. No one had a pivot point where one day they were at rock bottom and the very next day, were standing boldly at their peak. Sustainable change does not work that way.

It made me think of Dax Shepard’s life story and then Rich Roll’s. Recently I learned more about Bryan Mycoskey’s life story (the founder of TOMS shoes and most recently the We Are Enough Movement). Google famous recovering addicts and the list will astound you. 

While addiction is probably the most notable places we look for examples of big life transformations, there are a million different ways that we all stumble and hit rock bottom. It might be relationship difficulties, financial woes, keeping a job or even finding a career we enjoy. 

And, as Jim Collins writes about in his book, What to Make of a Life, there are natural disasters that occur in all of our lives – the loss of a loved one and blurring grief; job losses due to mergers, acquisitions, layoffs, businesses closing; retirement and empty nest life transitions; life altering health issues; divorces and remarriage. Jim has an impactful subtitle for his book: Cliffs, Fog and Fire. He has captured strong mental images of how we feel in these shocking life tremors. He also taps into real life analogy that is relatable — we do not expect to recover from fog, fire and falling off a cliff overnight. It takes time.

Which brings me back to the prevailing message that Eric Zimmer wants us to hear and digest. We can make the most meaningful, sustainable forward progress a little by little. He is living proof that making bite-sized good decisions every single day does in fact build momentum. Momentum can carry us further than willpower alone could ever do.

Eric’s book title is How a Little Becomes a Lot. His small daily decisions to do the next right thing, has lead him to be in a far better place in life. Not only is he free from addiction, but he is inspiring others through his book and his award-winning podcast, The One You Feed. 

Eric will tell you he has read over 500 books over the course of many years and distills the knowledge with his own wisdom earned the hard way. He is paving the way for the rest of us to start with a solid foundation, one step at a time. Tackle one aspect of your life that will anchor you to your values and work from there. Little by little, each of us can learn to start smaller and stick with it. Over time, we will find that we have come a long way – in the right direction.

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