Why Micro-Adjustments (Not Leaps)

When chaos hits, it's tempting to want to change everything overnight. Overhaul your life. Make dramatic shifts. But here's what I've learned: micro-adjustments are sustainable. They're little building blocks that actually last because you've built the foundational pieces necessary for real change.

The big dramatic changes? They often send us crashing back to our defaults. We get scared. We get overwhelmed. And we return to autopilot—the familiar patterns that may not serve us, but at least feel safe.

Micro-adjustments are different. They're the stretch, not the leap. They're finishing that first lap around the track when you don't want to—not running miles and tearing a hamstring. They're choosing one small thing to do differently today, and then doing it again tomorrow. Bit by bit by bit, you open up into a new kind of change that actually sticks.

Presence Is Where Your Agency Lives

When chaos hits our nervous system, we tend to go one of two directions. Some of us jump to the future: If I can just figure out what's going to happen, if I can just make a plan, then I can control this. That's anxiety. Others of us collapse into the past: This is just like before, nothing ever changes, I've been here a hundred times. That's depression.

But presence—the present moment—is where all your agency actually lives. It's where you can make micro-adjustments. It's where you can move out of survival mode. It's where you can create new possibilities. It's where you have the most power for change, both in yourself, your community and in the world around you.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: being in the present moment means feeling the feelings that are being brought up inside you. It means facing what's going on around you and inside you. That's often not what our young brains learned to do as a way to protect us. It's not familiar. Our comfort zone is usually the way we avoid feeling, the way we avoid conflict with the people we love in order to keep things feeling nice—instead of seeing conflict as a way to grow closer together.

Discomfort Is Not the Enemy

Stepping into discomfort is part of being in the present moment. It's part of accessing your agency. I know that sounds counterintuitive—we're taught to minimize discomfort, to optimize for ease, to find the path of least resistance.

But your comfort zone isn't actually comfortable. It's just familiar. And familiar isn't the same as good for you. Familiar might be avoiding hard conversations. Familiar might be numbing out. Familiar might be overworking to avoid feeling. Familiar might be people-pleasing to avoid conflict.

The discomfort of presence—of actually being here, feeling what you're feeling, facing what you're facing—that's where the growth happens. That's where the micro-adjustments become possible. That's where you step out of survival mode and into something new.

Getting Out of Survival Mode

How do you know when you're in survival mode? Most of us have some kind of sense. Maybe you're more irritable than usual. Maybe you're reactive instead of responsive. Maybe you're in constant planning mode, trying to control what can't be controlled. Maybe you've gone numb. Maybe you're exhausted but can't rest.

Survival mode served a purpose once. It kept you safe when you needed to be kept safe. But staying in survival mode when the immediate threat has passed? That's when it starts to cost you—your health, your relationships, your capacity to create, your ability to be present with the people you love.

The path out of survival mode isn't a giant leap. It's micro-adjustments. It's presence. It's one moment of choosing to feel instead of numb, to pause instead of react, to breathe instead of brace. And then doing it again. And again. Until the new pattern starts to become familiar too.

The Role of Acceptance

Acceptance isn't giving up. It isn't saying "everything is fine" when it isn't. Acceptance is acknowledging what is so you can work with it instead of fighting against reality.

When we resist what's happening—when we spend all our energy wishing things were different, or pretending they're not as they are—we lose access to our agency. We're fighting a battle we can't win. But when we accept the present moment, including the hard parts, we free up energy for the micro-adjustments that actually create change.

Acceptance says: This is where I am. This is what's happening. Now—what's the one small thing I can do from here?

For Families: Sharing Presence and Agency

Here's something beautiful about families: you can share presence and agency. Your interconnected nervous systems can support one another. You can move through chaos together with more resilience, more support.

If I calm my nervous system, if I'm present and with my feelings, it gives my kids, my partner, my family the opportunity to be with their feelings too. I can listen more. I can support more. My presence alone allows us to step out of survival mode together—with listening, with curiosity, for ourselves and for one another.

This doesn't mean you have to be perfectly regulated all the time. It means that when one person in the family can hold presence, it creates space for everyone else. You take turns. You hold each other. That's what interconnected nervous systems can do.

For Organizations: Why Strategic Planning Alone Doesn't Work

This one might ruffle some feathers, but here it is: strategic planning, the way most nonprofits do it, doesn't really work. It's one of those things people who've worked in nonprofits smile knowingly about.

Why? Because strategic planning is jumping to the future. It's saying: If we can figure out what's going to happen and what we want to make happen, we can change everything that's happening right now. It's the organizational equivalent of anxiety—trying to control the future to manage the discomfort of the present.

What strategic planning usually doesn't do is look at the patterns in the organization—or in the individuals running the organization—that are maintaining the structural challenges. Maybe it's an organization that struggles to raise money. Maybe people are wearing too many hats. Maybe there's chronic burnout. These aren't problems you solve with a five-year plan. These are patterns.

Our individual patterns interconnect with the organizational nervous system and impact it, positively or negatively. As the general climate and systems we live in change, we have to ask: What is the one thing we can do—right now, in the present—to build agency? To step out of survival mode? To make a micro-adjustment that actually shifts the pattern?

That's where real organizational change happens. Not in the strategic plan. In the present moment, with presence, one micro-adjustment at a time.

OFFERINGS

NEW SELF-PACED PROGRAMS: SPECIAL OFFER BECAUSE IT’S MY BIRTHDAY MONTH… Two self paced 3 month programs, click links for details Care for Changemakers and Moving Beyond Survival. Purchase them by the end of February for sliding scale $27-97. They will go up in price March 1st. 

Develop Nervous System Agility in the infrastructure of your Org or Business, Includes Developing Community Oriented Leadership and Mentorship Training Programs: we provide the infrastructure and training to efficiently build the individualized structure your organization needs to prevent burnout, through circles of support. By incorporating how we care for our own nervous systems, the nervous systems of others and the organization nervous system, through incorporating peer mentorship as well as conflict and repair, we build sustainable systems and community, ensuring the outcomes you want in your org or business.

Connect with me for Coaching or Mediation: My intention is to help you build structures that support nervous system agility and exquisite (higher volume) care for yourself, your family, your business and your communities in challenging times of uncertainty, big divisions and fear through finding new options and pathways for outdated patterns and past traumas towards more resilience, joy and even playfulness. I offer Family System Coaching Packages for 7, 14 and 21 sessions. I offer individuals an introductory 5 session package as well as 4 sessions a month for a minimum of 6 months. My business and non-profit consulting is customized to the needs of the organization. For a 20 minute free consultation: Connect

Climbing, Boxing & Fitness: Nervous System Agility through Movement Coaching Find nervous system support through movement and less talking. Face your fears. Get out of your comfort zone. Stretch. Get coaching from me with climbing, boxing or personal training. Individualized for you or your child. Or you can add this to your other coaching packages to embody your or your child’s shifts in a new way. Reach out if you are interested! Check out climbing website.

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