The Butterfly Effect

What is the story you are telling yourself?

In 1961, Edward Lorenz asked the question: “If a butterfly flapped its wings in Brazil could it cause a tornado in Texas?” His results found that small changes can indeed create a massive impact. The world is interconnected.

Many of the events in our lives are interconnected. By exercising more, we get fitter. Through reading more, we understand more. By making an effort with our friends and family, we have healthier relationships.

But little changes can also have a massive impact on our lives even if they don’t seem connected. By going for a walk at lunchtime, we feel good. We feel good so we are more likely to eat the salad we packed. We are pleased with our choices, so we are more likely to help someone out. It all starts to add up.

If we can learn to make one small change today, then that small change could create a massive impact over time.

To you.

To your life.

But it requires effort and a shift in our thinking.

What if we just looked at a situation positively rather than negatively? What if we said something nice instead of something nasty? What if we showed an act of kindness instead of moaning about how selfish people are nowadays?

We become the story we tell of ourselves. By saying we are unlucky, life is unfair or we are a victim, we are priming our brains to find the evidence in the environment to back up these thoughts. We need to change the narrative.

How we think about things impacts everything, it drives our behaviour. These small incremental choices add up to become bigger things later on. We are the sum of all the small choices we make. Our life can be defined by our choices.

We become the story we tell ourselves, it could be despairing or inspiring. It’s up to us.

Video from The Art of Brilliance library. For more videos like this head over to Art of Brilliance.