MicroShifts: Transforming Your Life One Step at a Time

Gary Jansen Best-selling author of Station to Station

microShifts Transforming Your Life One Step at a Time

Also by Gary Jansen The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved Holy Ghosts The 15-Minute Prayer Solution Station to Station Life Everlasting

Š 2019 Gary Jansen All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright Š 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover art credit: hanohiki/iStock, Karlygash/Shutterstock Back cover author photo credit: Charlie Jansen ISBN: 978-0-8294-4536-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018962457 Printed in the United States of America.

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Versa 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Eddie and Charlie, always remember to live and love. Those two words are separated by one tiny vowel, but to do one wholeheartedly is to do the other.

Contents

Do Small Things in a Great Way .................................................. ix 1 MicroShifts................................................................................1 2 Remember Who You Are ......................................................17 3 Get Some Sleep ......................................................................23 4 Learn from Your Enemies .....................................................33 5 Make a To-Live List ...............................................................41 6 Cultivate Enthusiasm ............................................................49 7 Be Brave Enough to Have No Opinion ...............................61 8 Observe the Observer ............................................................67 9 Keep Prayer Simple ................................................................75 10 How a Few Small Words Can Change a Life .......................81

42 MicroShifts That Will Change Your Life for the Better .......87 The 28-Day MicroShift Challenge ............................................105 Acknowledgments .......................................................................107 About the Author ........................................................................111

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As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small.

And in return, life . . . leaves marks on you. —Anthony Bourdain

Do Small Things in a Great Way If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet, how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

—Fred Rogers

You fill me with awe.

Yes, you. I know that can be hard to read, but I mean it.

How can I say this without even knowing you? By the simple fact that you are alive in the here and now. You won the life lottery, my friend. And the odds of that lottery are pretty impressive. Something like seven billion to one.

Which means that there are about 6,999,999,999 people in the world who are not you. That’s a lot of folks who can’t think the thoughts you think or feel the emotions you feel. Ever try to picture what it’s like to be another person? I mean really leave your body and feel what your Uncle Lenny is feeling at ix

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any particular time? You can’t do it. It’s probably one of the reasons there is always so much strife in the world. It’s really hard for us to consider what it’s like to walk in another person’s shoes or understand why someone acts a certain way.

Maybe if we could jump bodies and minds and souls from time to time, we’d all be kinder and more patient toward one another. Maybe.

The good news, though, is this: You are unique. One of a kind. This is amazing. You have a better chance of winning a million dollars than you have of being you.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.

—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

So, congratulations. If you are reading this book, that means you are alive. Even if you feel less than alive, even if you’re in pain, even if you’re confused, or even if you feel totally alone, you have life. Right here, right now, you have life. Regardless of what people tell you or how they treat you, regardless of your race, gender, health, social status, whether you have green eyes or no legs or your nose has been broken two times and you resemble a Picasso painting—you are endowed with a heart and a soul. These two aspects of who we are, heart and soul, act as the opposite ends of a battery. Connect those

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poles to a purpose—whether that purpose is simply breathing, crying to get a parent’s attention, learning to walk for the first time, scoring well on a test, becoming a dancer, or desiring to be a good parent—and a circuit is created. This is a powerful connection; life by its very nature is creative.

Life creates babies, beautiful art, inspiring music, energetic dance, thrilling prose, thoughtful poetry. Families, communities, and friendships are created through the miracle of shared life. When life encounters other life, there is a change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. As the psychologist Carl Jung wrote, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

This book is about practical spiritual transformation. As a writer and editor who has spent over ten years not only working with some of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time—from popes to priests to nuns to gurus to scientists to self-help experts—but also searching in my own life for what St. Ignatius would call “God in all things,” I’ve come to see that everything has a spiritual component: our jobs, families, relationships, suffering, finances, health, emotions, disappointments, joys, and sorrows. This means that the love you feel for your spouse or partner is spiritual. The fear you have when you look at your bank statement is spiritual. An

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unexpected pregnancy is spiritual. The anxiety you experience when you’re worried about your teenage son and his friends is spiritual, as are the sometimes rocky relationships you have with your friends and colleagues. It also means that there is a spiritual element to political conflict, social revolutions, the environment, and even the jerk at the supermarket who rammed his cart into the back of your foot and was rude to the tired checkout clerk. As St. Ignatius taught, the spiritual life isn’t something separate from everyday life: it is everything and everyone. Which means that even minor changes that you make to your exterior life—for instance, how much sleep you get or how you react to problems at home or work—can have an important impact on your deeper, inner life. And vice versa.

I have written this book in a way to make it accessible to all readers regardless of religious or spiritual backgrounds (or lack thereof ). Meaning, I have intentionally tried to limit the amount of “God talk” in these pages, though God is never far away from my intent (and let’s be honest, there is still lots of God in here). St. Ignatius, the muse for this book as well as the muse for just about everything I have ever written, believed that to experience a fulfilling life we need to seek the sacred in all things, even the small things that make up a life. From how we respond to a smile, talk to a child, or

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even how we treat our pets, God is always there, always present in all that we do and even what we don’t do. As someone who has tried to make Ignatian spirituality, or the spirituality of everyday living, a part of how I work and raise a family, I have seen the fruits of paying attention to the small stuff, especially the power in making small changes. This book encourages you to take a look at a few things you might take for granted and consider making small, simple, and incremental changes—something I like to call MicroShifts—that over time can lead to radical transformation in your mind, body, and soul. MicroShifting is not effortless, however. As with any sort of positive life change, the art of the MicroShift requires time and commitment. And, while I offer a number of practical tips, ideas, personal stories, and what I like to call “spiritual life hacks” to help you along, this book is really meant to assist you in pondering the great gift that is your life and seeing ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Ultimately, it’s about doing small things with great love. And all it takes are some small shifts in the way we look at everything around us.