A Little Bit is Good Enough: Making Habits and Building Foundations

Making connection a habit will take a lot of motivation at first.  It’s not easy to overcome awkwardness or the feeling of not having enough time to connect.  I don’t want to minimize that when we change how we move in the world, there is friction.  At the same time, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. 

One of the best things about this life is that a little more than yesterday is good enough.  We don’t often need to completely upend everything to make a transformation.  Step by step, connection-building habits can develop over time.

Habitual connection can look small.  When people drive into my neighborhood, I wave to them.  I usually don’t know them, but I always wave.  For awhile I felt strange, but now my hand goes up without thinking.  That small connection is a habit.  It eventually grew into me learning my postwoman’s name and getting to know her.  Still not life changing but I like to think she and I are contributing to a neighborhood where people watch out for each other.

Habitual connection can also look big.  I remember reading an article about a family that held Friday night spaghetti nights.  They invited everyone they knew and there was a standing invitation.  On Friday nights, if you came to their house, there would be spaghetti and meatballs.  I bet at first, that habit took a lot of work to develop.  Learning to cook vast amounts of food is a skill in and of itself.  There were probably budget decisions to be made and someone surely had to pick up the detritus that any house with children naturally has. 

But now, years later?  I am sure that there is a standing grocery list for spaghetti night.  If my experiences are correct, there are probably people who give or bring food to make sure it’s not breaking the bank.  And as for the cleaning up?  It’s probably a habit too.

If we can use our motivation to build a strong foundation, day by day, when the motivation fades, what we’ll have are behaviors that don’t require willpower.  It is hard to figure out how much spaghetti is required for 14 people.  Unless you’ve done it 100 times.

After that, when our foundation is built, we can start to branch out.  The best part is, though, because we have a connection habit, we get to choose what to branch out on.  Maybe I want to branch out from saying hi to my postwoman to getting to know my neighbors.  Or maybe I want to have my kids make her thank you cards.  Or maybe I want to move from waving at people in my neighborhood to putting out a table with extra garden produce for them to take for free.  I have space to decide because I made connection a habit.  I could have done that without a foundation.  But each of those would become a one off event with no connection context on either side.  Within a habit of connection, however, each next step is building on the past and preparing for the future.