Tiny Steps, Big Shifts

How Small Goals (and Fun!) Saved My Sanity

There’s this specific kind of tired that doesn’t care about your plans. You are in the middle of something. Something you actually wanted to finish. And then the energy just... cuts out. Power outage.

If you know, you know. And if you know, this one’s for you.

Photo by Sies Kranen on Unsplash

Start Small or Don’t Start at All

Look, I love a big goal. I really do. But my body has opinions, my energy has a mind of its own, and my brain is basically a browser with 43 tabs open and three of them are playing music.

So I learned to go small.

Not as a consolation prize. As an actual strategy.

One paragraph written. One email sent. One cup of water consumed like it was an achievement. Because on some days, it was.

I’ve lost count of how many days “one paragraph” was the entire victory. And I’ve stopped being embarrassed about that. Those days are the ones I appreciate most. They taught me that whatever you can do is enough. Even when it’s almost nothing.

Fun Is Not a Reward

Fun used to be the last item on my to-do list. Somewhere below “reply to emails” and “feel guilty about not replying to emails.” Once everything else was done, basically.

Everything was never done. So it was time for some restructuring.

I stopped treating fun like a reward and started treating it like maintenance. Because without it, everything gets heavier. My symptoms flare. My creativity goes quiet. My frustration has nowhere to go.

On a hard day, fun looks like this: a YouTube playlist I’ve listened to so many times I know exactly which song comes next. A podcast that feels like hanging out with a friend. If I’m lucky, a fiction book that takes me somewhere else entirely for an hour.

That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. Not productive. Not optimized. Just mine.

Fun is not childish. Fun is medicine. And I’m done waiting until I deserve it.

Your Happiness Is Yours to Build

I used to wait for happiness like it was going to arrive on its own schedule and let itself in.

It doesn’t work that way. Feelings are unreliable guests. They show up when they want, not when you need them.

So, I started building instead.

Three wins a day. Three things I’m grateful for. Checking in with my favorite humans, which in practice means sending them approximately one thousand Instagram reels, something that counts as love in my book.

A good fiction book. An interesting podcast. Dancing in my small kitchen while something delicious is cooking.

Small things. Chosen things. Mine.

None of it looks like happiness from the outside. But, from the inside, it feels like everything.

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None of this is a cure, by the way. The power still goes out. The energy still vanishes mid-sentence on a random Tuesday. My lupus remains unbothered by my personal growth.

But I’ve stopped waiting for the electricity to come back before I do anything. I just... work with what I have. Which is sometimes almost nothing. And somehow, almost nothing is enough to start.

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Tiny goals look different for everyone. For you, it may be washing your hair. Sending a meme to a friend instead of a voice message, you don’t have energy for. Eating yesterday’s leftovers but making them fancy with some extra spice and calling it cooking.

So, what’s yours? Make it small enough that Future You whispers, “Oh, thank God, we can do that.”

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Between the Lines

Page Turner: Be the Giraffe: 14 Paths to Reach Higher in Business and Life by Chris Jarvis

I’m still reading this one, but it already has its hooks in me. The premise sounds quirky, and it is, but in the best possible way. Jarvis spent 30 years solving financial problems for some seriously wealthy people and somewhere along the way noticed that the giraffe, that wonderfully weird long-necked creature, has a lot to teach us about success, perspective, and reaching heights others won’t even attempt. Funny, no-BS, and unexpectedly wise. Exactly my kind of read.

Mind Soundtrack: BURN by Esme Rose

I’ll let the comments section speak for itself: “Every song of yours is on repeat; Every new one is like a new drug for my soul.” That’s exactly it. Play it loud. You’ll know within thirty seconds whether it’s going to live in your bones. It did for me.

Food for Thought:

Shane Parrish said it better than I could:

“Your inner monologue becomes your outer reality. Too much self-criticism, and you stop ambition. Too much arrogance, and you miss things. The most powerful story in the world is the one you tell yourself about yourself.”

So here’s my question for you this week: what story have you been telling yourself lately? Is it the one that keeps you small, or the one that lets you start?