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Japan has many beautiful concepts for living. One of my favorites is kaizen—the practice of embracing change through small, continuous improvements. Not becoming an entirely new person overnight. Just one small step, repeated consistently. In therapy, we have a similar concept called behavioral activation, which I use often with people who are feeling depressed, stuck, disconnected, or uninspired. The idea is simple: sometimes we cannot wait until we feel motivated to act. Sometimes action comes first, and motivation follows. This is also how I wrote my entire book. When I started writing Healing Relational Trauma, I did not tell myself, "I am going to finish a chapter every week." That goal would have sent me straight into analysis paralysis. Instead, I made it smaller. Twenty minutes. I could commit to twenty minutes. A few times a week, I would block off time on my calendar and sit down to write. And most of the time, once I started, twenty minutes became thirty. Thirty became forty-five. Before I knew it, I was click-clacking away, slowly building something I once thought felt impossible. Slow and steady. Slow and steady. This applies to so many things. If sending the email feels impossible, the task might be opening Gmail. If cleaning the whole apartment feels overwhelming, the task is putting away five things. If going to the gym feels like too much, the task could be putting on your sneakers. For those of you who are feeling especially low-energy (or who are on day one of your period and wondering why your entire body has filed a formal complaint), make the task smaller. Small steps still count. (And if you ever need a reminder that humans are capable of extraordinary commitment, take a look at the training schedule of the marathon monks of Mount Hiei.) A journey of thousands of miles begins the same way as any other: One step.
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