By Jim Hunt for the News & Journal
Lately, I have been thinking about fifteen steps.
Not fifteen steps to success or fifteen steps to a better life. Just fifteen actual steps, the number of stairs from the first floor of my office to the second.
Like a lot of people these days, I spend far too much time sitting. Between Zoom calls, writing, emails, and staring at a computer screen, it is entirely possible to have a full workday and never get more exercise than reaching for a coffee cup. By evening, I feel as though I have been very busy while accomplishing absolutely nothing that would impress a personal trainer.
A couple of months ago, I was reading some material from the Prevent+Protect program about healthy habits and small lifestyle changes. It got me thinking that maybe the answer was not some grand plan involving a gym membership, a strict diet, and the kind of self-discipline usually found only in Olympic athletes and people who voluntarily eat kale chips. Maybe the better answer was something small enough that I would actually do it.
So, I made a deal with myself. Every time I go upstairs at the office, I walk the stairs three times. There are fifteen steps. I go to the top, turn around, come back down, and do it again. Then once more for good measure.
Since the bathroom is upstairs, life has provided a built-in accountability system. I probably make that trip about five times a day, which means I am getting in a fair amount of extra movement without having to carve out a special time for exercise or put on stretchy pants. Best of all, I have not missed the routine in two months.
That may not sound like much, but I have come to appreciate the power of small habits. Healthy change does not always arrive with dramatic music and a brand-new wardrobe. Sometimes it starts with stairs. Sometimes it starts with parking farther away, drinking more water, or choosing to move instead of scroll.
I was reminded of that recently during a long layover at the airport. Like most people, I had every intention of finding a chair, planting myself in it, and spending forty-five minutes looking at things on my phone that I did not need to see. Instead, I decided to take a tour of the terminal. With my little rollaboard suitcase trailing behind me, it was easier than I imagined. I walked from one end of the terminal to the other, looked in a few shops, watched people rushing to gates, and felt better for having moved around. The forty-five minutes of TikTok scrolling that I missed out on were put to much better use, and I cannot say that my life suffered one bit from not learning what three strangers were cooking in air fryers.
That got me thinking about how easy it is to fit movement into the cracks of the day if we just make up our minds to do it.
The interesting thing about habits is that good ones can become just as natural as bad ones. No one gets hooked on cigarettes with one puff, but once the action becomes familiar, the brain begins to connect it with comfort, routine, and relief. Before long, the hand reaches without much thought.
Good habits can work the same way. Once you decide to do something small and keep doing it, your brain begins to help you along. What felt awkward starts to feel normal. Then it becomes part of the day. Then it becomes part of you.
Most of us do not change our lives in one bold, sweeping moment. We change by repeating manageable things until they stick. Fifteen steps at a time. One walk through the airport. Ten reps with an eight-pound weight. Small choices, repeated often enough, become a way of life.
At this stage of life, I am more interested in habits I can sustain than grand promises I will abandon by next Thursday. So I am sticking with my fifteen steps. They are simple, they are doable, and they remind me that progress does not always come in giant leaps.
Sometimes it comes one stair at a time.