Aisling Leonard-Curtin - The Power of Small: Making Tiny Changes When Everything Feels Too Much

A thousand-mile journey begins with a single step. Lao Tzu

Have you noticed that every second person youre speaking to these days seems overwhelmed? If youre not overwhelmed in your work life, chances are youre overwhelmed in your personal life. Never before have we been expected to be on in so many different contexts, and on an ongoing basis. It can feel like the goalposts are always shifting. Were being asked to do and be more and more with less and less time, energy and resources.

There are small, yet effective, tools and strategies that can help you break down any overwhelming situation and decipher what would be the most effective action you can take at this particular moment in timeand that is what the journey of this book is about.

We are psychologists who also happen to be a married couple. Our collective aim in writing this book is to teach you the smallest skills, which will result in the maximum positive impact on your life.

We have both experienced mental health difficulties and overwhelming life challenges. Our training has equipped us with the tools to shape our knowledge and experience into the concepts enshrined in the Power of Small. But we do not approach this solely from the position of professional qualification and experience. We have brought to the development of the Small concept our joint lived experience. Where useful, we will bring elements of these personal experiences to bear during the course of the bookboth their detail, and how we have been helped by the application of the Power of Small to situations we have faced.

We believe that our past experiences coupled with our psychological knowledge of evidence-based compassionate strategies will allow us to give you a small skills kit full of small, yet powerful, tools for even the most difficult of life circumstances.

People who come to see either of us individually or to attend one of our groups, generally are not in a great place in their lives. They are often burdened by a long list of all the things they believe are wrong with them, others and the world. Of course, they have an equally long list of what they want us to help fix.

When someone comes to see us in a state of distress, we can more often than not tell where the central problem lies pretty quickly. Through asking a few key questions, we can pinpoint what areas of their life are on track and which ones have gone off course.

A client called Michelle comes to see us. She is unhappy in her relationships, and is suffering both physically and psychologically. She absolutely hates her job and cant even remember the last time she had spontaneous fun. Much of the time, her life barely feels worth getting out of bed for.

Michelle wants big changes, and she wants them fast. However, if she gets overly caught up in trying to change everything all at once, she is likely to find herself paralyzed from simply moving forward at all.

Michelle has gotten caught up in this trap of big promises, big disappointment many times before. She has spent thousands of dollars and countless hours investing in the latest quick-fix solutions. She invariably starts off all guns blazing, but then quickly crashes and burns. She has gradually become more and more disillusioned, and over time has concluded that her life is unchangeable.