A Few More Thoughts on Small.
Small Questions
Last week’s post (you can read it here) produced the swiftest and most feedback I’ve received on any smaller and deeper newsletter. I received emails, texts, phone calls, and voice messages about how much the power of small resonated.
It seems like permission to “go small” is important. It’s something we don’t hear enough. I thought we should stay with it for another week.
Small questions are the key.
Questions engage the brain differently than statements. Questions are an invitation to join the conversation. Questions are playful for the brain rather than commanding.
What happens in your brain when someone asks you a question?
What happens in your brain when someone tells you something like a command?
The question engages my brain. I start thinking about the question with curiosity. There is room for me to explore; it feels spacious. I can be playful, and it feels like an invitation to join the conversation.
When presented with a command, my brain starts to argue and act a little irritable. (I hope I’m not alone in that!!) Orders don’t feel spacious and don’t invite curiosity. They feel a bit, well, pushy!
“Questions are simply better at engaging the brain. Your brain wants to play! A question wakes up your brain and delights it. Your brain loves to take in question, even ludicrous or odd ones, and turn them over.”
-Robert Maurer, Ph. D One Small Step Can Change Your Life
So, how does this play out in our real lives?
When I checked my social media on January 1st, I saw so many announcements of new year goals. Drink more water. Exercise every day. Practice gratitude. (commands!)
What happens in your brain when you change those (good) actions from commands to questions?
What would happen in my body if I drank a little more water every day?
I wonder how my body would feel if I incorporated a little more movement each day?
I wonder what would happen if I jotted down three things I am grateful for at the end of each day?
Isn’t it weird how a question causes the brain to pause, start to dream a little bit and even relax? Try it! Notice what happens when you read a command versus when you read a question!
“Your brain loves questions and won’t reject them…unless that question is so big it triggers fear.”
-Robert Maurer, Ph. D One Small Step Can Change Your Life
Ask small questions often.
Questions invite our brain to play! The more we ask small questions over and over, the more opportunity we have to find creative, playful, and helpful answers. We don’t have to be in a rush to answer the small questions. Let the questions roll around in your head for a few days and see how your brain processes them. Those grand ideas that come to you in the shower or on a walk are probably the result of small questions that you have been playing with for a while. Smaller and deeper is also slower. There is no rush! Give yourself time to see what creative idea your brain can generate. Your brain knows you better than anyone else.
In the book One Small Step, the author gives an example of a woman who wanted to drink more water. She asked herself for a few days how she could drink more water. For her, the answer was to keep a bottle in her car. Even if it was empty, it would remind her to drink more when she had the opportunity, and it worked! Another woman traveled often and wanted to eat better. Her solution (after asking small questions for a few days) was to order whatever she would normally order but to ask for half of it to be boxed up before it was brought to her table. She ate half as much and had food for another meal while traveling!
“Make your questions small, and you reduce the chances of waking the amygdala and arousing debilitating fear. When fear is quiet, the brain can take in the questions and then pop out answers on its own timetable.”
-Robert Maurer, Ph. D One Small Step Can Change Your Life
May you take small steps.
May you ask small questions with curiosity and delight.
May you find peace in the counter-cultural practices of small and slow.
Choose one or two small questions to ask yourself this week.
No rush to answer it. Just let it roll around in your brain for a few days. Maybe jot it down on a post-it note, so you see it every morning and just see what answer pops up and surprises you!
Some questions suggested in One Small Step are:
What is one small step I could take towards reaching my goal?
What is one small step I could take to improve my health (or relationship, career, etc.)
Is there a person in my life whose voice and input I haven’t heard in a long time? What small question could I ask this person?
What would I be doing differently if I were guaranteed not to fail?
I read 91 books in 2021! (a new record!)
A friend and I had a zoom call yesterday to review our reading for 2021. (It’s not like we don’t literally talk about what we are reading every.single.day of the year, but it’s fun to revisit the year as a whole!) We came with our top ten books of the year, plus honorable mentions and special categories (it’s hard to narrow down the best of the best!) You will notice I managed to slip in way more than ten.
My criteria were books that were well written and caused me to think about the story or the idea long after I finished the book.
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (Author)
Evensong by Gail Godwin
The Whole Language by Gregory Boyle
Matrix by Lauren Goff (Illumination and Revelations by Mary Sharratt are very similar and very good too!)
Malibu Rising/Daisy Jones and the Six (By Taylor Jenkins Reid, so it’s not cheating if they have the same author...)
Call us What we Carry by Amanda Gorman
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr
The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Honorable Mentions
The Beatrice Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo
Julian of Norwich-Wisdom in the Time of Pandemic by Matthew Fox
Jesus and John Wayne How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes De Mez
Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evens & Jeff Chu
I try and pay attention to words or phrases that stand out to me in my reading and listening. There is a spiritual practice called Florliledgium that collects short, interesting pieces {words that “sparkle” up} and put them together. This is kind of like that. Watching for things that sparkle. Gathering them and seeing how they work together and what message, mantra, or new idea might arise.)
A Practice:
Read slowly.
Notice if a word or phrase stands out to you.
How do the words make you feel?
Is there an invitation?
(I’m sharing in italics the lines that stand out to me in these passages. Maybe it’s the same, or maybe it’s different, there is much food for thought in each of these passages)
FOR A NEW BEGINNING
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plentitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
John O’Donohue (1956-2008) To Bless the Space Between Us - A Book of Blessings.
