Small Changes

From Liz Uible

…A one-degree change in the trajectory of you life will hardly shift a thing, today. But a one-degree change, carried out over a lifetime puts you in an entirely different place. That is the power of incremental change…

I am so inspired by the one-degree shift I wrote about yesterday, I have been thinking of tons of other little changes that have made a difference in life.

I have only a few instances in life that they can point to as seminal, instances that changed my life forever. I made a call to my now-husband, Cyrus six years ago in which I told him that we were meant to be together. Luckily he agreed. That is a seminal decision and action. I can think of two or three other seminal decisions in my life.

The rest of the major changes in my life have been the result of little decisions. Think about how amazing that is. Just slight changes in trajectory changed my destination completely.

Today I am feeling grateful for one such small decision that has made a huge impact on where I stand today. In the summer of 2006, Cyrus and I were invited to a gathering of real estate investors in the Midwest. These were forty or so investors whom we did not yet know. We knew of them and they had tons of experience and we knew we could learn a lot from being around them. We got the invitation on Monday. The gathering was Friday. Plane tickets were by then $1000 a piece, more than our current budget allowed. From the East Coast the drive was 16 hours. It would have been easy turn it down and go about our life, disappointed that we had not had more time to plan.

Instead, in a surprisingly short time, we had decided to drive cross country and meet these people face to face. We got our books-on-MP3 ready, packed up the car, and drove the 16 hours to grow our network.

When we arrived we were immediately known in the group as the couple who had driven from the East Coast on a few days notice. They knew immediately that we were ‘doers.’ We had immediate notoriety.

The decision to drive 16 hours on a few days notice to hang out with people I respect is not what I would call a seminal decision. But it was a one-degree trajectory shift. It didn’t change our lives immediately. There were no fireworks. It was simply a decision like the ones we make regularly. But it gave us a powerful introduction to relationships we wanted to create. And over time, we found ourselves in an entirely new place.

What decisions like that have you made in your life?

When we drove home from the mid-west trip, not much looked like it had changed. We had learned some and started some relationships. We had met people doing cool things. Nothing dramatic, nothing earth-shattering. Just 32 hours of driving and some new friends.

Time kept going and our path was permanently changed by that slight shift in trajectory. In retrospect, several important things came out of the decision to drive 32 hours to be with people we didn’t know. We have created lucrative investment partnerships with people who we met that weekend. We have developed peers on the level we were searching for. We began to create a community of people we love and respect, many of whom are where we want to be. And that weekend I met Christine Harvey, my partner at WomenforWealth.com, for the first time.

Which brings home to me the value of developing relationships with people you respect. How can you develop those relationships today? Can you drop a card in the mail to someone, or offer a mentor help on a small project?

I think I will write a few Holiday cards. They are not late. In fact, they are 360 days early. J