By Hanna Nichols, Cohort 8
I’ve made quite a few 180 degree turns in my life.
- Instead of jumping right into a career and settling down after college, I decided to go live in Hungary for a year.
- I left my dream job of teaching after less than a year to get my Masters in Public Administration and change the public education system from the outside.
- I left a nonprofit job that I loved to build my consulting business and free up time for the life I wanted.
- I left a home and community I loved to spend 2 years living in Northern Italy with my husband and daughter.
The impact of these 180 degree turns–deviating completely from a path I was sure I’d be on for the long haul–had massive impacts on the trajectory of my life. I met my husband when I moved to Hungary. I had the opportunity to learn about and fall in love with early childhood development and systems change when I worked at the Colorado Children’s Campaign on a K-12 school finance coalition. I was able to move abroad with my family and still have an income because of the consulting business I built. Yes, these 180 degree shifts in our lives are massively impactful and are often necessary when the paths we are on no longer serve us. At points in our lives, we will also be inevitably thrusted from these paths involuntarily and have to decide how we move forward.
At the same time, I would argue that 180 degree shifts most often ARE NOT the best choice, especially when we are so burned out and dysregulated, we don’t even know what we truly want and need to move forward on the journey.
I have found that the most massive inner shifts (that inevitably lead to the most massive outer shifts) are the tiny, almost imperceptible one-degree turns that may not seem big in the moment, but end up changing the pathway I’m on entirely. And however you are picturing a one-degree shift, I’ll go ahead and say…think even smaller. And then even smaller than that.
Examples of one-degree shifts that have made big waves in my life:
My 2-minute daily habit of making my list of 3-5 vital items that need to happen that day, then completely logging off when those things are done. This small thing has saved me countless hours of unproductive work time and made me much less of a cranky pants with my family in the evenings.
Deleting Instagram from my phone. I can still access it from my laptop anytime I want. I kept trying to wean off my addiction by going cold turkey and taking 2-week long breaks. Inevitably I’d come back to it with the same vigor. This makes it so I can still check on my friends, but not feel attached all the time.
Planning an informal coffee chat with one person a month. This might seem easy for some, but as a deep introvert who gets overwhelmed by the idea of being overscheduled, this has been such a nice, but small challenge and has boosted my connections and relationships.
Now it’s your turn! Pick the tiniest possible shift you can make this week—something so small it feels almost silly. Maybe it’s setting a timer for 2 minutes to tackle that task you’ve been avoiding, or putting your phone in another room during dinner, or sitting outside for 5 minutes before bed to connect to your senses. Start there, and trust that the smallest rudder can redirect the biggest ship. What’s your one-degree turn going to be?