The Mind Body Project
The Mind Body Project
MM Ep 30: Short Change
We explore how tiny shortcuts—seconds off a workout, skipped reps, easy food swaps—quietly add up like loose change, costing progress and self-trust. We challenge ourselves to spot and reclaim these small amounts so effort compounds into meaningful gains.
• the shortchange metaphor for daily habits
• why small cuts are overlooked yet costly
• examples across workouts, food, and work
• the compounding effect of tiny slips
• simple systems to finish what we start
• a practical challenge to pay ourselves back
Stop shortchanging yourself. Start saying, you owe me a couple more seconds, a couple more reps, another phone call
Welcome back to a mindful moment. Have you ever been at a store, at a restaurant, and you give them money? You pay for whatever service you got, whatever products you got, and when you got the change back, it was incorrect. Now, sometimes we just take that wad of money, we poke, stick it in our pocket, and we never count it. Sometimes, if it's a big purchase and you know, let's say it's$50,$55, we give them a$100 bill, we're probably gonna count our change or make sure they count it back to make sure we get the right change back. We want our$40,$45 back. What if we give them that$100, or let's say our bill is$55, and they give us back$5? Are we gonna say anything? You bet we are. We're probably gonna say, hey, you still owe me this much money. If we go to a restaurant and the waitress, waiter, we pay for it and they bring us back our change, and they just go ahead and round up on our change. In other words, maybe we're do a little bit more, but maybe it was like 45 cents, 50 cents, whatever it may be. And we're gonna say, oh, hey, excuse me, you still owe me 45 cents. No, probably not. We're gonna let that go. And so it's it's about the size of shortchange that we say, hey, wait a minute, you owe me 45 dollars. Or if it's 45 cents, it's like ah, it's 45 cents, it's not a big deal. But how often do we shortchange ourselves on those small amounts? What do I mean? Yeah, we're not paying ourselves, but what if it's working out? If a big shortchange is like, I didn't even go today. That's a big shortchange. And that over time we realize, man, you know, we kind of get down about ourselves and like I should have gone today, I should have gone exercise, I should have ate better. We we just like we would that cashier, that waitress, that waiter, whoever it may be, we'd say, Hey, you owe me more. And we do that kind of with ourselves, you know, hey, you owe me more. But it's those small amounts that we overlook. It's that I got up, I got up, I got on the treadmill today. I mean, I did I did 20 minutes, or I was had planned to do 20 minutes, but I did 19. I missed a minute. Big deal. I still got 19 minutes in. But, or, you know, I ate, you know, I just didn't have, you know, I should have had a better choice of breakfast, but you know, instead of a banana, I had a donut. It's no big deal. I ate good the rest of the day. We we don't we don't really hold ourselves accountable to it. Just like the waiter or waitress knock and say, hey, you owe me 45 cents. But what if we go out to eat every day? What if we go out to eat every meal and we get shortchanged 45 cents? Now we're close up to almost$1.50 a day. Now we're if we do that seven days a week, now we're at like 10, 11 bucks. And we did that every week for 52 weeks, now we're at like 500 over 500 bucks that we've shortchanged ourselves throughout the year. If one transaction we got short shortchanged$500, would we say, hey, you still owe me some money? We would. So we let ourselves go on those small amounts, those small things that we think don't matter. We stop a few seconds early, we skip a rep. We skip 10 minutes of the gym, we skip that quick phone call. All those things add up. So the challenge is to notice when you shortchange yourself those small amounts. Because if we when we do that, that becomes a habit. And just like the the 45 cents over a week, over a month, over a year, it makes a big impact. So my challenge to you is to stop shortchanging yourself. Make notice of those small amounts, because those small things you do make a difference in the long term. Start giving yourself that back. Start saying, hey, you owe me. Start looking yourself in the mirror and say, you owe me this. You owe me a couple more seconds, a couple more reps, another another phone call. You owe me another uh note. Whatever it is, you owe you. Stop snort chaining yourself because it all adds it doesn't add up today, but it will add up this time next week, next month, next year. Thank you for joining me on this week's Mindful Moment. I look forward to seeing you right here next time on Mindful Moments.