A Little Bit

Yesterday I didn’t go into work as usual. I first had a doctor’s appointment. I left my home 15 minutes later than I usually did, and that made a lot of difference. Traffic, for some reason, is much heavier at that time that it is 15 minutes earlier. It took me half again as much time to get to where I wanted to go.

Recently, I noticed that one of the two bulbs in my bedroom light had burned out. The difference in light quality is staggering. Just one bulb makes a lot of difference in how a room is lit.

A little bit can make a huge difference. What if you ate just 10 calories less in a day? In a year, you’d lose a pound. Just one bite of food less in a day, and you lose a pound every year. What if you wrote half a page every day? In two years, you’d have an entire novel’s worth of writing done. Just half a page. Write just one paragraph, and you’d have it in four years. How many people do you know that are going to write the great American novel “some day”? Most of them won’t. But just a little bit of change in your day can make certain you do.

Do you have seasonal affect disorder? Then you know how much a difference it can make changing a light bulb from a 40 watt bulb to a 100 watt bulb. It’ll affect your attitude, which will affect your life and everyone around you. Just a little bit of change.

One less cigarette – even half a cigarette less. One less shopping trip in a week. One fewer videos rented. One quarter hour less on the computer or the TV. All these things can add up and help you create a different life. The changes you make don’t have to be big to be effective. They just have to be made.