How Starting Small Can Save Your Life When a Drunken Doctor Attacks You With a Pizza Cutter

Last summer, life took a turn for the worse. It started out as a trip to the hospital, but things went awry. Ironically, this happened a week after a high-energy Tony Robbins event.

I had appendicitis, nothing extraordinary, and woke up after the operation on my 18th birthday (the nurses sang for me, wrote a card and gave me a balloon). The next day I went home and attempted to get better, but nothing happened.

Still a cripple without appetite, things went backwards. A couple of weeks later I was back in hospital. The previous home of my appendix became infected, and they tried to drain it with some huge-ass needle; it didn’t work. So they operated once more. Long story short, I spent the next week in hospital crying and throwing up until I could hobble to the wheelchair and go home.

When I finally did get home, things were very slow to improve. Seeing a nurse every day for over a month to clean the wound didn’t help. Thinking about it reminds me of the sensation; imagine someone prodding a hunk of fabric-like ribbon into your stomach.

So I found WoW, and that took my mind elsewhere. I neglected what was happening and lost myself in a fantasy world, refusing to accept reality. I didn’t want to face the day, what would I even do? I was useless, hopeless. “May as well spend the next 18 hours fighting monsters”, I said. It was shit.

Although mother was an absolute star in nursing me back to health, I ultimately attribute my reinvigoration to my sister. Prior to this whole ordeal, ask me to describe life and I’d say, “Epic!”. But afterwards, I couldn’t be assed. Virtual worlds took away the pain.

Starting Small

While talking to my sister one day, with sadness on her face, she suggested I start reading. I read religiously beforehand, but not then. For my birthday, she bought me The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma. Truth be told, I didn’t want to read it. That was effort. I couldn’t be bothered to learn. But she convinced me. Each day, I was instructed to just read 5 pages. No more, no less. Just 5.

The first week was haphazard. Sometimes I read, sometimes I didn’t. Although when I did, I felt a sense of hope. The book may have been good, but the idea of improvement gave me hope. Hope that I’d be useful again.

I got into the routine, and eventually screwed the 5 page idea and just continued to read. And the next book. I soon ditched WoW. The only regret was that I didn’t quit sooner; what a waste of time.

During that period, I learned some valuable lessons. And one in particular is that life change isn’t huge. It’s not some big event, or breakthrough moment. It’s tiny, almost insignificant. So small, in fact, that many people ignore it.

Epiphanies can help, but it’s the little things that change your direction. The 1000 waves that hit your hull, nudging you 1º off course, are what determine your destiny. And that tiny change, over time, leads to huge results.

And it goes both ways. 1º in the wrong direction and you’re heading for failure. Which way are you heading?

“The rhythm of daily action aligned with your goals creates the momentum that separates dreamers from super-achievers.” — Darren Hardy

And this scar, holy shit. To quote a friend, “It looks like a drunken doctor attacked you with a pizza cutter.”

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