106 - Why Small Steps Matter

We live in a culture obsessed with big leaps and overnight success. But real transformation doesn’t come from dramatic shifts.

That’s because: Small steps are not a consolation prize. They’re the bridge between stuckness and possibility.

In this episode, we explore why small steps matter and how they create the foundation for meaningful, sustainable change.

Tune in, then join me in Resourced — a 12-week journey to reclaim your pace, power, and relationships through nervous system re-patterning. We begin September 30th. I hope you’ll be with us.

Episode Transcript

Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:

Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello and welcome to Threshold Moments. It's me, Sarah Tacy. I am popping in here to cheer you on and to say what you're doing is enough.

Sarah Tacy [00:00:53]:

It's all too much that's asked from us in the first place. And the good news is, like, when Anna in Frozen 2 doesn't know how she's gonna go on any longer, she just starts singing a song about the next right step. And so today is all about why small steps matter. We live in a culture obsessed with big leaps, overnight success and big transformation, even miracles, which I am all for the magic and I am all for the miracles. But I tend to think that it's when we do the reps over time, thousands of reps over time, that nobody notices, that we make our soil fertile for the plant to take off. We become fertile ground for a quantum leap. One of those things where it's like, wait, did she just come out of nowhere and suddenly everyone's talking about her? How did she get to have success so fast? I've been working on this for 20 years. Generally, it's all of the unseen steps that happened before I'm even thinking, like, when I interviewed Marianne Williamson, it wasn't that it was a big leap, but it was my first foray into interviewing someone who is a politician.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:26]:

And I really wanted it to still have a nervous system feel to it. And I also feel like she had come off of or was in the middle of many, many interviews where people were attacking her. And I was unused to interviewing somebody who might think that everything I was saying might be as an attack, as opposed to like, no, like, I'm on your side. I just want to hear what's going on. And I didn't have many small steps of experience working in this realm to really prepare me to feel safe for my body, to even understand, like, what the heck was going on or to process it. This is a really small experience, but I give it because I'm like, do I take big leaps without all the little steps? Maybe another one was when I was asked to teach a 100 hour yoga anatomy teacher training. I was working with professional athletes at that time doing yoga, and I had just come off two and a half years of working 60 to 80 hours a week training athletes and So I really felt like I would be better at teaching a yoga for athletes class. But I had also studied anatomy and I had studied the nervous system and what helps things to upregulate or downregulate.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:45]:

I had done my 500 hours plus of yoga teacher training, I had all of these things, but I had yet to teach a two hour workshop. And I said yes to teaching a 100 hour teacher training. I mean, I had trained other facilities and other trainers, I had taught hundreds of hours of yoga, but that specific training on anatomy, I hadn't really even taken other yoga teachers trainings on anatomy. And the beautiful part of that is that I really got to find my own lens. And so while it would appear like a massive jump to just pop in and teach this 100 hour training, what it took was hundreds if not thousands of hours of preparation, of tiny steps to be able to show up that first day as a 27 year old or 28 year old, however old I was to step in and be like, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physical therapist, and just come in with enough preparation and open and curious to learning. So when I think about my life, I have been given a number of opportunities to really do something that appears like a big leap. But before that big leap, as much as I can, I really, really do take a million steps that nobody sees. I would even say that this last launch for me, I'm recording this before that launch happens.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:21]:

So at the moment we have 2,100 people signed up and I'm guessing by the end we'll have 2,500 to 3,000. And that would be a massive leap for anything that I've done for attendance for my particular training. But I feel really ready because the thousand tiny steps I've been taking over the 20 years, and I would say the last five years in particular of weaving this all together. So many unseen, so many private sessions, so many monthly calls with 200 to 400 people on there. And so they look like big leaps, but there are a lot of little steps. Urgency culture glamorizes the dramatic shift, right? The crash diet, the miracles that happen, the massive productivity hacks, the quitting your job overnight, the winning the lottery. You know, some research shows that lottery winners suffer from depression afterwards, that within three to five years, most of them return to the same baseline of happiness and some lower because their nervous systems, their patterns and their support structures haven't shifted. So they had a big leap without the tiny little steps of building it slowly over time.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:48]:

Do I feel safe with this much in nervous system work. What we do is we challenge it a little bit and then we stabilize the system and then we challenge a little bit more and then we stabilize the system. This is called titration. And so sometimes the big leaps are so big it's very hard to stabilize and keep the gains. And I'm thinking just about now, like how when we make these big leaps, how it can trigger survival physiology. The body interprets it as too much change, too fast. And like, I know how to survive. Could even be like, I know how to survive in poverty.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:32]:

Or there are certain scenarios where you'd be like, I'd never want to be there again. But the body knows where the threat is going to come from because it's come from that place on repetition and it has survived there. And when you take away the threat and you make a big leap of like safety adjustments or something like that, it's not unusual that the body is still tracking for like, well then where is it going to come from? I don't know. This new place. Something that feels less jolty. Could even be that if we were to try to start a meditation practice and you try to meditate an hour a day when you've never meditated before, the whole process could feel itchy and like, can you get me out of this? An overwhelming collapse and self judgment. But if you were to try five minutes a day and you just stick with five minutes until you're like, oh, this feels good. And you add a minute and you add a minute and you find the place that feels good to you, it's way more likely to stick.

Sarah Tacy [00:08:42]:

The nervous system can be thought of as our protector. I would say it's benevolent, even if sometimes it feels like it's holding us back. It's almost like an overprotective parent. And the more resourced we are, and the more regulated we are, the more in resonance we are, the more our interpretation of the world and the things that happen to us tend to be more generous. And so when we take small steps, we are more able to stay in that generosity loop. When we do small steps, it's less of an energy use than it is. If we're like, oh, we're gonna take down the walls and we're gonna rewire the entire house from top to bottom. It's an expensive act, but if you do just a little thing, you titrate and you do it again.

Sarah Tacy [00:09:43]:

Within my resource program, I have something called daily drips. And the reason why I have this is that in two other online programs that I took, they offered something same, same, but different, where there was daily access to the practice of what they were offering. What I have found almost any other time that I've signed up for an online program is that that once a week feels really big. And then in between, even if there's homework, the homework feels like, oh my God, more to do. But the daily access for me is just like, oh, 10 minutes of remembrance, 10 minutes of practice, 10 minutes of integration. And it was really cool to hear how helpful this was for the students and how much they were like, no, I want to do it, I want to revisit it. Small steps are not a consolation prize. They're the bridge between stuckness and possibility.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:44]:

This could look like one deep breath before sending an email. This could be five minutes of stretching instead of forcing a full workout. I would even say small steps are part of the onramp method, which if I haven't done a podcast on that yet, I will, which is like, you know, you want to feel another way, you know what to do to get there. Like say workout. And so you take a small step towards it. You honor the resistance and you say, I'm not gonna just like start sprinting. I'm gonna start by, I could go for a walk. Okay, now I might add it into a jog.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:21]:

Now I might do some sidesteps to activate my glutes. Like these little steps in to where you wanna go really help lower the resistance in our body and it makes everything so much easier. Small steps create a steady foundation, but they also create a bridge again, a bridge between stuckness and possibility. They widen your nervous system's capacity and that's where change becomes sustainable. So just as a little recap, big leaps like winning the lottery often create short term change, but not long term change. They often lead to collapse because the system hasn't shifted, the foundation hasn't grown and strengthened before the building went up. Small steps are how we get long term transformation. When you honor the small, your nervous system learns.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:29]:

It's safe to grow, it's safe to expand, it's safe to thrive. I would even say that as soon as I think about, oh, it's safe to grow, safe to expand, safe to thrive. The other side of that is learning. It's safe for containment, it's safe for contraction, right? Like contraction on purpose. We're not meant to always expand. And so as we get into this nervous system where we learn the tidal natures of our body, we get to honor it without freaking out that we're going into contraction without freaking out that we don't feel amazing each day. It's like, ah, contraction, ah, integration. Got it.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:18]:

So if you're listening to this, the first day of resource is happening on September 30th. I'm gonna put out a little offer here that if you're interested, so that you can get the weekly calls, the daily drips. I would love for you to join me in Resourced, if anything that I just said resonates with you. And I just really know that you're good on your own too. I really trust in that and reaching out to your community. Thank you so much for tuning in. I generally close out with a prayer, so remind me over and over again that I am enough, that contraction is normal, and that small steps are all I need to take today. Surprise and delight me with the quantum leaps that come in right timing.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:22]:

I'm open to miracles. I'm also open to growing my foundation and fertilizing the soil of my life. Until next time, thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy. It's very helpful.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:59]:

You can find it at SarahTacy.com and if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful, so we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you.