Speaker Beth Ridley recounts a moment of career stress and low confidence that led her to intentionally create a small self-care experiment: doing one new thing each week for a year. The catalyst was observing a calm coffee-shop patron, prompting Ridley to sit in a café and take an hour for herself. The weekly ‘‘one new thing’’ practice accumulated into lasting mindset change by building routine habits aligned with positive psychology: choosing experiences over things, investing in positive relationships, practicing present-moment awareness, and expressing gratitude. The speaker frames these as evidence-backed small habits that shift negativity bias toward greater positivity.
Chapters
My goal for kicking off your day this morning is really to inspire you to foster and cultivate a positive and a growth mindset. But I was really at a point where I was trying to decide, where do I really want to go with my career long term? I was starting to transition into leadership roles, so moving from being a team player to being more of a team leader and trying to grow my career, but also managing and caring for the little ones at home. So it was an exciting time, it was a busy time, and it was a really stressful time. Right. I was asked to lead one of the most important strategic initiatives for the company at that time. As soon as I stepped into the. I really realized I was totally unprepared. I was facing challenges that I never really had to deal with before. I felt like I was really failing on all fronts. And it was a situation where I couldn't work my way harder to fix. Just wasn't working. And, you know, I really started to question. I had a lack of confidence, really. It started to really impact me at home. I was not present with the kids at home because work was just constantly on my mind. One day, I'm at Starbucks and I'm standing in line waiting to get my coffee, and of course, stewing about work like I always do. But I happened to look over and I saw a woman sitting at the table sipping her coffee while reading a book. And my first reaction was, who does that, right? I mean, I got all this going on at work. I got all that going on at home. Who has time? My second thought was, but it looks so lovely. I mean, she's so calm and at peace. And my third thought was, I am doing that. I want to do that. So the very next day, I drove to a coffee shop in a random neighborhood I'd never been to before because I didn't want to risk seeing anyone from work. And I grabbed the most mindless magazine I could find, like People magazine. Let's see what the Kardashians are up to. And I got my coffee, and I sat there for an hour, and I read my magazine. And it was like the most glorious hour that I had ever had in my entire life for a couple reasons. One, just getting outside of my own head, forcing myself to not dwell on work, even if just for an hour. It was so refreshing. Also, I was in a new environment, a new neighborhood that I hardly ever frequent. So it was just kind of like fun and exciting, like, oh, who are all these people? And this is what happens during the day. And then Also, I felt empowered because all this stuff was happening at work that was out of my control. I took control over one small thing. It was a really small thing, but it went a long way for me, feeling empowered. So for those three reasons, it was really a transformative experience for me when I was at a really, really low point in my career. And right then and there, I decided I want to recreate this feeling more often. So I hatched the plan. Once a week for a full year, I am going to challenge myself to do one new thing. Each of the individual things that I did really invigorated my day, right? I got to face fears in a fun way, challenge myself. I got to learn and grow. But a year of doing this, the cumulative effect was really transformed. Transformative for me. And I know you're probably thinking, ew, that's dramatic. So just think of your brain like a muscle, like, if I want to tone my arms, you have to go to the gym regularly. So if you want to train your brain to have more of a positive orientation, you have to start incorporating little things in your lifestyle as a routine, as a daily habit. And so there are actually habits that are backed by evidence and research that show if you make these small things a little bit more routine in your life, you will start to dampen and lessen that negativity, that natural negativity, bias, instinct, and have a little bit more of an orientation towards positivity. More routine than not, you want to be investing in experiences versus material things, right? Experiences become part of who we are. And, you know, the joy and meaning that comes from experiences lasts a lot longer than buying material things. You want to invest in healthy relationships with other positive people. You want to practice simply being in the present. You don't want to overly ruminate about the past or overly fret and worry about the future. And you want to practice gratitude, right? Reflecting on all the things that you have to be thankful for and expressing appreciation to others. So I didn't really understand at that time. I was doing the one new thing. I hadn't studied positive psychology, so I didn't really understand why it would have such a transformative effect on me. But now that I have this language around positive psychology, I totally see why. So that one new thing a week was actually checking off the list, all of these happy habits and making it routine. I think that's the key thing. It was making it routine. I think we all know that these are good things to do, but how many of us make it a daily habit? At least it became a weekly habit for me, and frankly, that was enough. After the course of a year, I could absolutely tell a difference in my mindset. No kidding.
