How small things make up my world
These niggas gone bear witness
A Michelin Star
Couldnt see it this far back when a nigga was line cooking
I'm Sous chefn these days
Proof reading these plates wit a fine tooth comb
Won't find a line crooked
Still casting lines now I'm hooking big fish out these waves
- from Michelin Star x Mick Jenkins
I aspire to be an author, so today I must write.
I must put my all into my craft because it is each word, each character that will bring me closer to achieving my goal. It is the letters and periods, not the book deals and awards, that will make me an author. I will never write a good book if I never sit to write a brilliant page.
It is the little things that make up our world, the minuscule moments that make up our lives, and the fleeting thoughts that make us who we are.
Here’s how I’m building a better life sustainably by pouring intention into the little things:
There’s so much around us that tries to sell us a story of immediacy, of instantaneous success, of seeing the results instantly. The world around us is encouraging us to focus on speed, what we can gain quickly and with the least amount of effort. From crypto to courting, the process is hardly ever thought about. It is the transformation, the before and after, the results that people are interested in. Not what it took to achieve them.
And I used to be in that number. I used to fixate on the results. I used to think that things are just supposed to happen the way I want them to and if they don’t, then it just isn’t meant to be.
But now? I know that the results that everyone’s fixated on are rooted in a lot of small decisions compounded on each other. And that you cannot expedite that compounding process. It takes time for those decisions to become greater than they are individually. It takes commitment to reject the urge to hurry it along and patience to see it through.
This has shown up most clearly for me in my friendships. Instead of trying to rush beautiful, enriching, and growth-filled relationships with the people in my life, I rejected the need for speed and decided to build them carefully, one moment at a time.
When we were children, friendships came to be a lot faster than they do now as adults for a variety of reasons. We spent a lot of time with our friends as kids because we were in the same physical building for eight hours every week for nine months of the year. I went from having to maintain a friendship across the lunch table to having to maintain one across an ocean. But what’s allowed me to participate in 5, 10, and 13-year friendships is the mutual commitment to showing up for each other, working through difficulties, and continuously investing in our relationship.
These kind of friendships don’t just happen. They don’t just maintain themselves or sprout up suddenly already fully developed. Me and Ameerah haven't been friends since we were 11 by happenstance. We have been friends for so long because of the hundreds of phone calls, texts, hangouts, study sessions, cry sessions, trips, walks in the park, coffee/matcha meet-ups, gathering sessions, and invitations to click-clack over the last decade. Each individual interaction since 2010 has led us to where we are today. Each decision we made to choose our friendship has compounded into what we have and value so much today.
I have a lot of goals. I’d consider myself a bit of an ambitious girly. But I’m aware that you have to know what kind of house you’re building before you start laying the bricks. This means I have to always keep my main goal in mind, but stay focused on the process that will get me there.
My dating experience as an adult thus far has left me with feelings of disappointment, dismay, and disillusionment. But one day quite recently, I realized it may be because I was so focused on having a positive dating experience (the goal) that I wasn’t carefully considering what needed to happen in order for that to come to pass (the process). I gave myself grace because if you read the books I read in my formative years about love and romance you’d probably think relationships are just supposed to happen, too. But I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m not one of the protagonists whose love stories the YA authors of the 2010s set as examples for me and my entire generation that led us into a den of dating disappointment and delusion! This ain't Hush, Hush, Twilight, nor Knight Angels: Book of Love, I ain't Nora, Bella, nor Jane and ain't none of these young men Patch, Edward, nor Max. I had to bffr with myself by getting serious about this goal, even if it meant doing the work of interrogating deep-seated ideas about what it should look like.
Brief side note: none of those books I just listed featured any Black people nor were written by Black people. I, alongside my non-white YA romance girlies of the 2010s, had only stories written by white women about cis-het white teenagers in very white areas of the country through which we could imagine, contextualize, and understand what romance and love could be. Perhaps the delusion was so easy to fall in love with because it truly was distant in even the most realistic parts of it. We deserved so much more. The Black teenagers of today deserve so much more than YA centered in grief and anger. They deserve joy and romance and adventure in their stories, too.
What I’m doing differently that has already changed my attitude on the matter from frustrated to optimistic is realizing the power of my individual decisions. I stopped focusing on my dating experience and started focusing on making individual positive decisions (the process) that could eventually turn into a positive dating experience (the goal).
I decided to stop using bashful, avoidant language when talking about dating and choose more direct verbiage so that I could have a more confident and clear mindset about my dating experience.
I decided to stop comparing my dating experience with that of my friends or the girlies on TikTok and chose to use metrics that are unique to me and my needs so that I could have an outlook on dating that is rooted in my reality and no one else’s.
The goal is a positive dating experience and the positive dating decisions compounded will eventually, I pray, achieve that goal. However, I have to know what the goal is in order to make more aligned decisions.
An old classmate of mine talks about his fitness journey as simply putting "daily deposits" into an imaginary piggy bank. The gist is if you keep showing up, if you keep investing in whatever your goal is, the sum will come.
Or at least that's how it might work. A huge point of frustration for me, which led me to leave my gym in tears last fall and eventually pushed me to reconsider my entire relationship with training, health, and my body, was that every deposit and every investment may not work out as you had hoped. Earlier this summer, I realized that I wasn't seeing the results I wanted after nearly 9 straight months of making all the “right” decisions. I kept making deposits but opened the piggy bank to check and saw very little compared to what I had put in. I was devastated but then decided that I couldn't stay in that feeling. I, with the support of my dear friend Asia, managed to accept my reality as it was, push past my conflict-avoidant tendencies, and make the necessary changes to see better results from my investments.
I had to stay flexible in my approach to the larger goal by being willing to change my decisions. Changing your decision requires self-awareness and, in my case, a good sit down with an honest, caring friend. It’s really difficult to reconcile with yourself that you’ve invested in something but don’t have the returns to show for it. It’s difficult to admit to yourself that something’s not working. But it’s crucial if you’re ever going to pivot. I don’t know why my time with my trainer didn’t yield the results I wanted. She was very smart and experienced and I was very dedicated to showing up and putting the work in. But I had to make the decision to cut my losses and try something different to get where I wanted to go. I needed a new investment strategy. I needed to be flexible enough to let go of what wasn’t working so that I could figure out what would.
I read in How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (2021) by Katy Milkman that a key to consistently making better decisions is to reduce the need to make the decision at all; automate it!
What does that look like for me and my decisions? I write at least 750 words every single day. I don’t have to think about what I’ll write about, I don’t have to think about when I’ll write, I simply know that every day I will write 750 words. Period. It’s easier because there’s very little thinking or decision-making I have to do ahead of time.
Same with working out. I don’t decide the day of if I’ll work out or when I’ll go to the gym or what I’ll do when I get there. I plan at least a week in advance when and where I will work out and make sure it’s on my calendar so that when the morning comes I have nothing to decide except what I’ll wear. That leaves more mental capacity for me to focus on my performance and body and make the micro-decisions in the moment to push harder, stretch further, or pull back a bit.
I’m making these choices because I am confident they’ll benefit me long-term. I’m choosing to focus on the decisions I make every single day because I know how overwhelming it is to try to focus on goals that feel so large and complex. I was so consumed with the results, what the goals would look like, and what it would feel like when I got there, that I was pushing myself to do it fast and do it perfectly. It wasn’t a healthy approach for my mental and emotional well-being.
I took a step back, looked at my goals for what they were, reevaluated them to ensure they were aligned with me and the life I was meant to live, and positioned them as simply the destination. There are many more destinations beyond them, but as for this portion of my drive, they’re my next stop. In order to get there, I have to drive mile by mile. It’s getting closer, I see it’s getting closer, but I’m going to push myself to take this drive one turn at a time. It’s the only way I’m goin make it there whole and healthy enough to enjoy it.
Thalia, 24, is navigating a lot of change and is leaning on the power of individual decisions now more than ever to keep her focused on enjoying right now, today.
