The power of tiny mighty habits
- Dec 14, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: May 8
Your whole life has the same shape as a single day. What you do each and every minute, determines much of your future. When you shine a microscope on your tiny daily traditions you can essentially see if your life will turn out balanced or not. Have you ever gone on screen time to see how much time you spend on social media verses how much time you spend outside on a walk? Or how much time you spend on sports stats verses how much time you spend actually playing the sport? “Tough times are the best times to get back to the fundamentals.”
-Rick Pitino
We hope you pop this classroom on the TV with screenshare, and enjoy as a family, especially with your teens.
If you were to write down your goals, habits, & priorities, what categories do they fit into after you view the following pie chart?
If you find that you have a lot of goals or habits in one slice of the pie, then you may be focused on that slice of pie so much that you forget to take care of the other slices of life. We are hardwired for learning, movement, connection, and spirituality. If we get too wrapped up in one, life eventually forces us to recenter. It is much easier when you do it with your own intention. We like to think there are some of these slices of the pie that are even more important than others. If you are a teenager and you find yourself spending 70% of your day focused on friends and texting, what happens to the other slices of pie? Atrophy. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day and measuring out how you spend each day will give you balance. Just remember to have tiny habits that build up all of the important pieces of that pie!
When we talk about beginning each day, or year, or habit with the "end in mind", which we discussed in classroom series here, we are essentially hoping that you see that present moment actions bring future consequences, even if you can't see the consequence in the present moment. As much as we all love sports and friends, the reality is when we are older, we will need all the education we can have to set us up with a successful career that allows us to invest our time outside of that career. Even if you desire to design your career around using your physical body, like becoming a football player for example, you may find that you still wish later on in life, you devoted more time to studying how investing works, as you get older and more tired. Naturally, everyone will choose a different balance in their slices of pie depending on their life goals. But it helps to look at your life 20 years down the road, and imagine what you want to see from it, and then look at your current daily habits. Do you want to cut your pie a little differently?
Big changes often come from doing small things regularly. The important part is to keep showing up and taking action. The real power is in making little decisions every day. Trying to be perfect isn't what really matters, and it's not something we can always achieve. There is no room for perfectionism in building a good life, but there is plenty of room for consistency. But how do we get consistent? We don't need to make huge changes all at once. What we really need are small commitments that we stick to every day. These little steps can lead to great results over time!
You must protect what matters most to you, your family relationships, your purpose, your life's work. Overextending to things that aren't yours to overextend into doesn't make you a hero. It makes you exhausted...saying no is a superpower. Every no that you have the courage to say will make room for a better yes. -The Lizzy Jenson Show Podcast
The reality is that life doesn't make it easy for us to have perfect balance between every slice of the pie. Before we can build our habits consistently, we need to know what our priorities should be. There is a lot of value in measuring how much time you spend in each priority you set.
This chart is not the only path to priority. Life is less black and white then Maslow predicted. Some see their priorities at the top to be different, but nonetheless, taking the time to define your priorities in a chart like this can be helpful. Hopefully you can see that brushing your teeth day and night and cleaning your bathroom, are still foundational habits that bless life and keep it moving. And if mom is wanting you to do your own cooking occasionally, it is probably because she wants you to have the wings to fly as you get older, so you don't crumble your foundation when she is not around. If you study the life of Jesus, there is one line in Luke 2:52 that sums up four key areas to balance and prioritize. "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Having balance between education, physical body health, social connections, and spiritual connections helped him increase into the man he became. This is a great foundation to help you slice that pie more equally. Here is a free writing prompt to help you write out your priorities using these categories here:
For you teenagers out there, mom might be helping you fill your plates, and pay your bills for now. But eventually mom and dad can't do that. So if you can start to think early about how to build tiny habits in each of the slices of the pie in life, it will set you up to have more success in life. To build tiny habits, you must put first things first; good, better, and best. If something is not aligned with your true North, say no. Keep and make room for the things that matter most in your life.
If you do the hard things first, life will eventually become easier. If you do the easy things first, life will eventually become harder.
Recently, I discovered a Stanford college youtuber, share what he learned from one of his mentors. He said:
"What if laziness is a habit of thinking about the cost of things or the effort instead of thinking about the payoff?"
"What if laziness is nothing but a habit of thinking about the effort instead of thinking about the outcome?"
"What if you could reverse laziness by simply developing a habit of thinking more about the delicious food that you would like to enjoy instead of how long it would take you to get up and get it? Why does a woman who goes through an awful child birth go through a second pregnancy? Don’t they always say the same thing? If I remembered how bad this was I wouldn’t do it again. So the "not thinking" about the effort is vital to the survival of humanity. If we focused on how hard it was to have a baby we just wouldn’t do it. If you focus on how awesome it would be to have a family, well... there you go. You go through the pain because you already committed. Am I ambitious or do I simply have a thinking habit which produces dopamine because I am thinking about the positive outcome…and is the dopamine the thing that gets me up and moving and how do you do it? I think it is just to think about all the things you do in terms of their benefits."
Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form but hard to live with. -Brian Tracy
Imagine you see a goal, and it seems like walking across a plank between two very high buildings. It seems like at any moment you could fall. The stakes are high.
When you feel like the cost of something is too high, than lower your plank! You are looking at the 89 steps (or the 89th floor level) it takes to get to some outcome. If you just focus on the next step, just the very next step in your view, you are essentially lowering your plank to the first floor, or maybe the third floor. Now that plank walk is not so scary.
How do you lower the plank when it comes to building consistent habits? One of our mentors has a tool called floor goals and ceiling goals.
Floors and ceilings
Have you ever had a big goal in your life you wanted to reach, but gave up before you got there? Have you ever tried to start a new healthy habit, but you were unable to keep it going? Have you ever wanted to be consistent in something you knew would change your life but discovered that life is always changing?
This tool of floors and ceilings is the secret of progression.
Ceiling: your high ideal, your big picture vision of a goal, a change, or new habit. It's who you want to be as your future self.
Floor: your tiny version of change. It's your tiny version of a habit. It's your short version of a practice. It's your bare minimum. It should not take more than one minute to do.
If meditation daily is your goal, than your floor goal could be just three deep breaths at a certain time of day.
If eating healthy is your goal, than your floor goal could be to just study one vegetable per day along with a recipe to go with it.
If exercising more consistently as a runner is your goal, putting on your running shoes in the morning could be your floor goal.
When you take the time to name your floors and ceilings, you can find consistency because the days you can't do the ceiling, you atleast can do the floor. Those floors build brain pathways inside your head even though they are small!
The compound law:
By small and simple things do great things come to pass.
When you decide to act on the habits to create your future self, that first little while of trying them at the beginning feels messy. They have studied this in vibration frequency. When you add a new habit into your life, you up your frequency. But watch what happens, and why you should not give up:
Did you notice that when they raised the frequency, (like you raising you habits and intentions) that it will get a little messy at first? The consistency of frequency then transformed into stunning patterns that create beautiful shapes with the salt, much like your life can. This is why consistency is more important than big giant ceiling goals that you do once a month. Just start with your consistent floor goals. The frequency will eventually turn into pattern; the patterns in your life will get even more beautiful if you start small.
Use this journal prompt to build your floors and ceilings:
Have the younger kids watch this one:
There is one great truth on this planet. Whoever you are, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe...it's your mission and ALL THE UNIVERSE WILL CONSPIRE IN HELPING YOU ACHIEVE IT. -The Alchemist
Remember, by small and simple things, do great things come to pass. If you would like to visit our classroom on conquering your fears, visit here. Other classrooms...here! The key is to move outside your comfort zone, by taking one step just out of your reach and into your challenge zone.
Our most favorite way to build a tiny consistent habit:
The Pillow Trick
Choose a habit that you can stack with your bed time.
Put a paper on your pillow that reminds you to do that habit.
When you enter your bed, you will see the paper reminder on your pillow, and go ahead and do that habit, especially atleast the floor goal.
In the morning, when you make your bed, you will see that piece of paper, make your bed & put it back on your pillow for the next night.
Putting that piece of paper on your pillow, will automatically get you thinking about your morning habits...go do those now!
It really is the best kept secret...we call it "habit stacking." It works!
