Yo yo yo, welcome back to the Feather Your Lifestyle Podcast Conversations on Lifestyle, Passions, and Hustles. My name's Chris, I'm your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 244 today, and we're talking about small things in a big life. And this carries on from last week's episode. Now, if you've just joined us here for the first time in 2026, make sure you jump back to episode 243. We've been talking about how to make this year your best year. Now, if you've listened to that, you've got it all figured out, or you understand it, or maybe, maybe there's still a few little teething options problems or whatever, that's okay. This episode is a perfect follow-on for that. But it's also a relevant injection to wherever you are in your life. And I guess the premise of all of this that I want to chat about today is most of life isn't made up of big moments. It's made up of lots of tiny ones, the things that we're doing on a daily basis, right? And it's these things that we tend to overlook while waiting for something grand to happen. In this episode, I kind of want to just like pull it back, slow it down. And, you know, we've we've set some big intentions. Hopefully you've set some big intentions for the year. And now it's time to remind ourselves that the real progress, the real happiness and the real change really it comes in the small stuff. It comes in doing that groovy stuff, it comes in doing the routine stuff, it comes in doing the reps. And my my goal is to help you, you know, listen and reframe your own expectations, right? And it's, you know, at the moment, there's a lot of people posting things on social media, and you're saying, oh, I get up at 6 a.m. and have my ice bath and I've done 10,000 steps before 9 a.m. and you know, I've got my side hustle taken off overnight, and you know, all they've got the perfect vision board manifesting everything. But a lot of the time, yeah, sure, those things do matter, but they're bigger, small things. And to you, they seem outrageous. Maybe, maybe the small decisions we need to be making is just like, you know, calling your mum, right? Saying no when you usually say yes, choosing to do a 15-minute walk instead of trying to, you know, go go smash out, you know, an hour in the gym, doing the small and incremental things that's going to help you, you know, actually compound. And it's not about you have to feel like a million bucks, but the thing is, you will feel like a million bucks when you can be consistent in these small things. So the main focus of this whole episode is a gentle reminder, simply a gentle reminder that doing enough doesn't always look like how you think it should. Now, we're gonna roll the intro, we're gonna get into this. If there's stuff that you want to continue the conversation on, you can jump down in the comments. If you enjoy these episodes, please hit like, give a subscribe. And the other thing is if you find that maybe someone else needs to hear this, a little kick up the butt, send it to them. Send it to them and tell you, hey, this is for you. Anyway, let's dive in, roll the intro, and let's get started. So, not everything has to be big and meaningful, right? Or it doesn't even have to be big to be meaningful. In fact, most of what really matters is small. It's the little things, it's the things that we enjoy the most. It's like smelling the roses. It's quiet, but they're also easy to miss until you realize it's the thing that's been shaping your entire life forever, right? So there's a whole bunch of things I want to chat about today. I've got my notes in front of me, but the first thing is there is this catch 22 when it comes to the trap of thinking bigger equals better. Now, I am I'm very ambitious. I talk about here on the channel, especially in my you know, my business, that I'm building a business for the long term. And I'm happy to take 10 years and I want it to last 20 years, plus years, whatever. So I do have this long-term ambition and goal. But sometimes we also think, oh, it has to be the best idea, it has to be the biggest idea in order for it to be better. That's not true. Some of the most important things in our lives came from the smallest little changes that someone made and then implemented it on a global mass level. Right? We live in a world where it's a world of milestones, it's a world of metrics, it's a world of must do this, must do that. And the pressure to go harder and to do more faster and bigger, it is constantly getting slapped into your face. I mean, that's our own fault because we're continuously scrolling. But sometimes the most radical act is actually choosing to slow things down, be quiet, take some peace over just trying to be productive. While I was away in the Philippines, we had five, six days sitting on the beach, literally just sitting on the beach in the sun, then we'll go for a swim on in the sun, go for a swim in the sun. And in that, I was able to do some planning, some things came to me because I slowed things down. I took the rest that I needed. And I was able to then realize what are the things that I'm going to do this year that are small and purposeful and on a regular basis that's going to get me to where I want to be. And, you know, I wasn't hitting 10,000 steps every day. We didn't even run, we didn't even walk, literally just relax. But I was with Carla and enjoying the presence of Carla, and we were just enjoying thinking about you know the stuff that we want to do this year, and we were chatting about it. It was great, right? I didn't start some new course or I didn't, you know, release some new product or anything like that. We didn't even revamp the business. You know, I've actually just, you know, at the moment we've moved out of my previous place. We've moved in together, we've got our own place. You know, we're unpacking, we're, you know, doing meals together, building, you know, making dinners and just getting to the routine of that groove. And that's that's been wonderful, right? It's a sl it's a different pace, it's a different kind of thing. I haven't, you know, spent the time on the business that I normally would have because different priorities and there's a different intention there. There's a different thing that I'm trying to work towards. And if you can get your balance of life right, like your personal before your business or your hobbies or whatever, or your work, then you will have a compounding effect that's going to make your life so much better. And that's the next point, right? The compound effect is mundane, right? The small things done consistently will build your life and the life that you want, assuming the things that you want, right? And there's no leap, there's no one, two, three, skippy few, 99, 100. It's all about being consistent and being lean and being, you know, small and making it easy to make it happen. So habits are built based on one decision at a time. Now, there's a really great book. If you haven't read it, it's called Atomic Habits Habits. Definitely go check that one out. But habits are built by doing a decision. It's a trigger point. You, you, you do this because of that. You don't need a new you, right? You need a more present you, you need a more intentional you, you need a more actionable you. It's not a new you, you're capable of doing this, it's really just in the mind. And some of the times it's little things that we maybe we overlook. And it talks about this in the book Atomic Habits, about micro wins and micro decisions, but you know, choosing water over coke sounds sounds you know cliche, but these are the things that make the difference. Because if you're drinking a Coke every single day or three times a day, and you're able to change two of it to water, that compounding effect is going to be life-changing for you, literally. Right? Getting outside for five minutes, you don't have to go out and do, oh, I've just done, you know, a 20k run before breakfast. Go out and do a 10-minute walk or a five-minute walk. Start small. You know, putting your phone down before bed, turning off notifications, turning off those distractions, and saying, I'll do five minutes and allow yourself to do 20. What I mean is get into the groove, give your st yourself the permission to actually do more because you've allowed yourself to look. I'm just gonna start, get yourself into a groove because it takes a little bit to warm up, and then you'll find that you're doing it, whether it's exercise, whether it's actually research, reading, studying, whatever it may be. You get my point. All right. The next thing is, you know, this might be the moment that you're looking for. And a lot of the times we we see and we perceive how we think should things should be on the basis of someone else, or how other people are doing things. You're not behind, right? You're you're actually in your life. You're doing your life, it's just looking a little bit different. Now, we're way past 25 days into the year. We're probably about, we must be pretty close to 30 days. We might have already passed it. I've done these videos in advance, but you know, maybe you're not kicking butt, maybe you're not crushing goals, or maybe, you know, you're feeling tired already. Maybe you're just I don't know, maybe you just feel like you're just showing up. But that's that's that's actually what's important is just showing up, getting into that groove, right? You need to remind yourself this. Progress isn't always going to be visible. We've spoken about this before, right? If you haven't seen that, go back probably in the last 10 episodes we've spoken about that. And growth isn't always going to be loud and bold. And it you don't always necessarily want it to be. I struggle with this. I want to see if I did something this year, I want to do bigger next year. Naturally, I'm that's what I'm attaining to achieve. But that doesn't mean perfect growth either. And change is often boring before it becomes brilliant. When you want to make a change, when you want to become a more present version of yourself, more intentional version of yourself, and see those outcomes, it might mean you have to do the boring stuff and just be consistent for a long period of time. Consistent of the right stuff, that is. So we want to reframe all of this, right? And when you reframe things, we're able to regain the power of you being in control. So instead of saying this, I'm not doing enough, try saying I'm proud of what I've done and I'm gonna keep going. Or I should be further ahead and change that to I'm exactly where I need to be and I'm ready to take the next step, right? So a lot of the time we get stuck on comparing to the future when we're not even comparing to where we are today versus the present. So if you're ahead of where you were in the present, you're already ahead. You're already further ahead, but you feel like you want to be at your next level. So you need to give yourself the permission to be proud and then give yourself permission to move on to the next step. We're gonna wrap it up here. And this look, this was a short and sweet episode, but I I guess we'll finish with this. And I've written this down. A big life isn't built in giant leaps, it's built in tiny daily choices stacked on top of each other. If you need permission to go slow to start again, or to celebrate the small wins, this is it. If you feel like, oh, you know, the the fast pace isn't for you, that's fine. This is for you. You want to go slow, you want to build slow, you want to build that resilience of you being comfortable of the slowness. Because if you're after changing, you know, whatever it is, you maybe have a huge ambition that in 10 years you've got something. You're gonna have to be patient, right? There's no better way to make 10 years feel easy when you feel like the next 10 days is really slow because you're not, you know, smashing goals, right? You can't, you know, you say you maybe you want to do, I want to do$10,000 in one week, right? And you're only doing 1,000, right? You got to do 1,000 every week, you know, maybe for the next 30 weeks. And then you're gonna end up doing 3,000, and then you might do a 4,000. Then, hey, look, it might mean you don't do a 10,000 until next year, but you have to build that experience without any knowledge, any understanding to go say I'm gonna go do this, you're you're making it unrealistic for yourself. Make it realistic for yourself, and let me know this in the comments below. What's one tiny thing that you did today or you're going to do today, and that you're proud of it? Let me know in the comments below. Appreciate you being here. If you did want to continue the conversation, whether it was that little question I just asked you or something else, jump down into the comments below. We can continue the conversation. Otherwise, we'll be back here again next week, doing it all again. Really appreciate you being here. And I'll see you when I'm looking at you. Ciao