I was reminded the other day that sometimes the smallest changes can be our biggest triumphs, especially when it comes to internal and personal work.
It was the morning, and I was just about to dive into my normal breakfast routine. I’m a person that adopts routine really easily. My mind wants to find the best thing and then do it over and over and over again with this idea that somehow it will always be the best thing and that things won’t change.
This about me led to about 15 years of having smoothies in the morning. Long ago, I had learned that smoothies were healthy, and I got into it and somehow made this decision that this was the best thing ever. So every morning, I’m making smoothies. Over time they grew bigger and bigger, more ingredients and good things inside, until every morning I was drinking these gigantic smoothies straight out of the blender.
Hisami would kind of ask me from time to time, “Are you sure that’s really healthy? That seems like an awful lot of smoothie to have all at once.” But I would just assure her, yes, this is really good for me and I’m going to live a long time because I’m eating these smoothies. The kind of stories we tell ourselves because we wish they would be true.
Two years ago, for New Year’s, we were at a traditional Japanese ryokan. Every morning I ate the traditional Japanese breakfast — a little grilled fish, fermented soybeans, rice, miso soup, pickles, salad — things very foreign to the Western culture I grew up in. But after a week of eating this, I felt fantastic. My body felt happier, healthier, and more settled than it did when I was having smoothies.
So I went home, had Hisami teach me how to make it, and started making that breakfast every morning. For the last two years, I’ve been having this traditional Japanese breakfast daily, and it’s been wonderful.
But I didn’t notice the pattern I had shifted into — now thinking that this was the best thing ever and that I needed to do this every morning, regardless of circumstance.
Yesterday I got up kind of late and spent time doing other things. I wasn’t getting around to breakfast until about 11 o’clock, and Hisami was already meeting with someone in our office at the house. I started thinking about grilling fish and taking my time, and then I realized, this doesn’t really fit with the circumstance right now.
Naturally, a new thought popped in. I’ll just walk over to the grocery store deli nearby.
So I went, picked up some sushi rolls and a little sashimi, and instead of eating at home, I went to my office and continued with my workday.
This remarkably small change — just one little choice to change what I was eating — made me realize something new had happened.
Not the food choice. That’s not the important part.
What happened was that naturally, in the moment, instead of going to my default pattern that I believed was good or best, I adapted to my current situation.
Something in me shifted. My Material Mind is no longer just in charge of deciding what’s right and wrong and enforcing it. It has moved inside Spirit Mind to the degree that I’m aware of what’s appropriate and in balance in this moment, which may be different than my default norm or even what I consider “best.”
Very small change.
But for someone who easily falls into habit — 15 years of smoothies, then two years of Japanese breakfast — something new happened internally. There was no external stimulus. I just noticed the environment and noticed that what I was about to do wasn’t bad in any way, but it wasn’t conducive to the moment.
Automatically, I adapted.
This easy, graceful flow — moving with the world that’s actually happening rather than being confined to rules in my mind — is powerful. It’s freeing to live in the moment. It’s stressful to live inside the confines of what is best, what is right, and what is habit.
So this is just a fun example of a seemingly small external change that came from a profound internal shift.
