Bloom Your Mind

Ep 137: The Game of Inches

• Marie McDonald

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It’s not the big leaps that get you there—it’s the tiny, consistent steps that make your vision real. In this episode, Marie shares how the most successful creators, entrepreneurs, and change-makers all play the game of inches. Hear stories from the creation of the Bloom Room, from a client starting their first brick and mortar business, and from the world of parenting that show just how the game of inches is so much more effective than the goal of taking big leaps. You'll learn why steady progress beats big bursts, how small problems scale if left unsolved, and how every challenge you face is preparing you for the next level.

Tune in to hear:

  • Why consistency trumps intensity (with real stories from Marie + Bloom Room participants)
  • How setbacks reveal where your support systems need strengthening
    What small problems you should solve now before they grow with your success
  • 3 reflection questions to help you lean into your next inch of growth

If you’ve been waiting for the perfect moment or a clear runway—this is your reminder that inches are where the magic happens.

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's Well. Hello everybody, and welcome to episode 137 of the Bloom your Mind podcast.

Speaker 1:

I have been in so much water lately. I told you the story of the yes Trip. We're in rivers and lakes all over the Pacific Northwest and then over to montana and wyoming, and then, as soon as we got back, it was like time for my kids to find their friends and reconnect with their friends and where we live. And so we've been at the beach, we have been camping with a couple people, a lot of people actually, for a couple of nights, floating down rivers in San Diego and just swimming and swimming, and swimming. The summer is so full of water for us and it has been so much fun. I have said yes to a lot of adventure and people keep telling me how do you have all the energy to do this? But to tell you the truth, I think with kids, for me it takes the same amount of energy to do everything for them at home. It's just like having an adventure, is just like putting the energy into something different. So to me it just keeps it fresh and keeps it fun. But I'm not at home doing dishes and cooking. So there you go. That's what's going on with me, and we are having a blast about halfway through the summer for my kids because they go back in September.

Speaker 1:

And today I'm going to talk a little bit about something that I call the game of inches. So on the Bloom your Mind podcast, we take those glimmers of possibility that are living in everybody's minds, whether you see them as a glimmer of possibility or not, and we start to like have you recognize those glimmers? And we teach you how to make them real. So today we're talking about an important idea that I teach my clients and that I find to be true in my own life. Every single time it's called the game of inches, and I've been wanting to make this episode for you since the fall, when I saw a football game and they were like oh, it truly is a game of inches, and I started talking to my bloom room clients about that. I remember hearing that as a kid, when my family watched football, the game of inches, and how we just experienced that as true in the bloom room.

Speaker 1:

So often it's not the people who come out of the gate blazing with energy and big declarations that actually get the farthest. I see this in my coaching colleagues as well. It's not the people who try to like, take giant leaps and skip over parts, the people who make their ideas real, the ones who actually build the creative projects and launch the businesses, heal relationships even, and just live lives that feel super authentic. They all have this one thing in common they play this game of inches. Whether they call it this or not, they take tiny, consistent steps. Sometimes those steps feel light and fun, sometimes they feel decadent and celebratory and sometimes they feel gritty and hard. But they're tiny steps that are consistently made. They celebrate the small wins like they just got an Oscar. They show up on the days when it's hard. They're gentle with themselves when they fail. They recognize that failure is in the game of inches. They practice this rhythm of setting intentional goals a little bit at a time, celebrating them, failing, getting off track and getting right back on track, because every shiny example of success that you've seen, every book that's published that you see, that's like how do they do that? How did they get that out there? Every business that is launched with the most beautiful.

Speaker 1:

I just went out to dinner the other night at this new restaurant called Lila in San Diego and it is epic. It's part of the Consortium Holdings project. In San Diego they have lots of beautiful restaurants and this one is beautiful, mediterranean vibe. There's little rivers flowing inside the restaurant, with trees hanging with lanterns incredible service. The menu is just amazing and decadent and the decor around the outside is like just so layered and specific and detailed. We experience these ideas after they've come to fruition. But all of those things that we see, every song that is released, every movement that we're a part of, is a beautiful mosaic made up of a thousand tiny tiles of effort, trial, failure, retros and iteration. So that's what we're talking about today.

Speaker 1:

Three perspectives on the game of inches. Let's go Perspective one. The first perspective is that small steps beat big bursts. Small steps beat big bursts every single time. So let me give you an example from my own life.

Speaker 1:

When I first started creating content for the Bloom Room, I had all the ideas at once. I was going to block off a whole week to create all this content and I just thought you know, I just need uninterrupted time to get into the zone. So I cleared my calendar. And then life Clients needed me, my kids got sick. I got behind. Life Clients needed me, my kids got sick, I got behind. That full week turned into my next iteration, which was creating a few days that were set aside. And then life happened again and I did not make any progress when I stopped waiting for this perfect condition of the whole week and I just turned my goal into committing to 90 minutes every single week, no matter what, to record content and create each module for the Bloom Room. The 90 minutes stacked, they compounded and they became dozens of hours of content Workbooks, video lessons, program structure, all built by playing the game of inches. It was so much more successful than when I tried to do a big burst.

Speaker 1:

And now people ask me how in the world do you have this much content? And I always say it's from consistency, it's from doing it in inches. And I see the same thing time and again with bloom room participants. The ones who are growing the fastest are the ones who make some progress every week. Not massive dramatic leaps, just steady forward motion. And the other thing about this is that when they fall off track it's not that big a deal. They missed a single step, not an entire production that they were trying to do right. So, like when I missed that big week, it felt big, it felt hard. If I missed a 90-minute recording session, it was much easier to reset a different day that same week to get back on track. So when we break things down into smaller steps, we can get back on track when we fall off. So progress never feels like it has to be all or nothing. So that's the first takeaway. Number one consistency beats big bursts every single time. Okay, perspective. Number two the game of inches prepares you for the next level.

Speaker 1:

So let me tell you about a client of mine who's building a brick and mortar storefront. I am obsessed with this. It's so much fun to support her in doing this. And one week she came into a session feeling kind of defeated. She just made a big move toward her dream that she's had. We've been working on it for like a year and we're really starting it the actual brick and mortar.

Speaker 1:

She said yes to a lease, started working on inventory and then, boom, life gave her some unexpected big challenges, major ones, and she came to coaching with this problem. Every time I go after something big that I want, the world just throws all these hard things at me. Something breaks down every time I go for it. So we sat with the belief and we unpacked it, and what we discovered together is that life actually always is throwing stuff at us. It's not just when something big is happening, it's just consistent reality that problems are always hitting us, challenges that we don't expect are always there. So what was actually happening is that she was being shown that she hadn't built the infrastructure yet to hold the big dream and life's chaos at the same time. It wasn't a sign to stop. It was a sign to strengthen, because if the big problems happened three months later, when the doors were open and customers were waiting, it would have been a much bigger problem. So having these problems happen now actually was just showing us that we weren't quite ready for the next level, and it reminded me, right of like, how pets prepare you for babies and babies prepare you for teenagers.

Speaker 1:

Every stage gives you a little more chaos, a little more challenge and a chance to expand our capacity. Little more challenge and a chance to expand our capacity. Having a little toddler that's all cute, with little like baby talk and the big cute cheeks. That's like throwing a tantrum, saying no, gets us ready for later, when we have a teenager, that's not so cuddly and cute and is not speaking to us in the most respectful way. We've had some rounds of practice to get there. Giving up our needs, not putting ourselves first when we have a pet, gets us ready for pregnancy, where we have to adjust a lot of things, which gets us ready for having a baby, where we give up more and more control. We are attached less and less to our own needs. Every stage prepares us incrementally for the next.

Speaker 1:

So the game of inches is not just about progress, it's about, like readiness, right. So that's perspective number two Every inch that you take is preparing you for what's next. And then our last perspective, and then I'll share three questions with you that you can use to reflect for yourself. Perspective three is that your problems scale with you. So this one's connected to the second, but it's a little bit different and it deserves its own spotlight. So here's the truth. Your problems don't disappear when you grow or when your life gets more complicated or changes or when you reach goals. The problems get bigger and more complicated as you do, as your life does.

Speaker 1:

So let's say you run a coffee shop and your espresso machine takes forever to steam the milk. It's mildly annoying. Right Now, imagine there's a line of 20 people waiting for their lattes and whatever else. That's not mildly annoying anymore, it's sort of a meltdown moment. Or let's say you're an online business owner with a broken link in your sales page. No big deal when 10 people are visiting, but what happens when 2,000 people are signing up for your launch? That same little issue becomes a total bottleneck. And then there's like 200 people needing customer service emails. Or you've got a communication breakdown with your partner or your sister. It's irritating on a good day, but once you actually have a life problem that's unexpected, that comes up like a financial crisis or a family emergency, that communication problem gets a lot more painful.

Speaker 1:

So that's why the game of inches matters. We can talk about a hundred other examples, but solving these small problems creates more ease later. It avoids the problems being big and unwieldy crashes later. So ignoring the small problems means that we're going to scale the mess. Means that we're going to scale the mess. So that's perspective number three. Solving the inch-sized problems now helps us before they become mile-long headaches. Right. It helps us really avoid the problems that scale with us become more complicated as life does.

Speaker 1:

So let's just finish this with a few questions for your beautiful brain so you can think about this as it applies to your idea that you're making real All right. Number one where can you embrace the game of inches today? How can you recognize and celebrate small progress in yourself and in the people around you? Number two how is the challenge that you're facing right now actually preparing you for what's next? What capacity is being built? What systems are being revealed that are or are not ready for where you're going? Next?

Speaker 1:

And remember, this doesn't have to be scale in like related to literal bigness, right, literal size and complication of a business or a project. It can also be a relationship, like we talked about. How are you communicating? How are you valuing each other? It can be health habits. We talk about home and away games. How good are you at maintaining your health habits at home before you scale the complication of that by traveling?

Speaker 1:

Okay, third question when is there a small problem that you can solve now, before it gets bigger? Maybe just what would like? A single inch of relief look like All right, my friend. Three questions around the game of inches. I hope this episode gave you a little perspective shift, a little breath of encouragement, a little reminder that every inch matters and when you celebrate them, they build up to become way more progress than any single leap or series of leaps can give you.

Speaker 1:

Just take one next step and if you need help building that rhythm of one foot in front of the other, one inch by the next, come join us in the bloom room. That is what we do. All right, my friends, that's what I've got for you today, and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the Bloom Room. You.