“If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.”
US Navy Admiral William H. McCraven told University of Texas students in his commencement address.
The video has been circulating on social media and I highly recommend it.
How is it that something as trivial and insignificant as making your bed can give you the impulse to change the world?
“If you make your bed in the morning you will have completed your first task of the day. This will give you a little sense of pride and motivate you to do another one. At the end of the day this completed task will have become many completed tasks.”
This simple and powerful idea is one of the classic examples in any habit change book. Like exercise and getting enough sleep, making the bed is considered a “key” habit because it has a chain effect of positive results or behaviors in other areas. Making the bed represents winning a “little battle” that puts our brain in success mode and generates the motivation to continue and achieve more.
In his book “The Power of Habit,” Charles Duhigg recounts the results of studies showing that people who make their bed in the morning are more productive, happier, and better able to stick to a budget. Making our bed in the morning increases our chances of making better decisions for the rest of the day and heightens our sense of control.
“Making the bed also reinforces that little things matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you can never do the big things right.
Hearing this phrase reminded me of the days when my daughters were on a mission to learn how to wash dishes. During the first sessions in the kitchen there was everything: whining -it wasn’t fair to have to do it-, screams of frustration because the dishes had mustard, all kinds of moans and even a total collapse due to soggy bread in the drain. There was nothing worse in the world than a piece of broccoli stuck on a fork.
During one of those scenes I clearly remember thinking that if a crushed strawberry was enough to upset a girl, she didn’t even want to imagine what life with its challenges could do to her. I understood that if we don’t let our children get frustrated with the small and solve it, we can’t expect them to solve the big.
And while we are on the subject of children and housework… There are a lot of lessons in those unsophisticated and apparently trivial activities. Unfortunately, and with the best of intentions, we often deny our children the opportunity to learn, develop skills, and gain resources for life.
We limit your exposure to situations where meeting the goal means having to do things wrong many times before doing them well, to tasks that force you to exercise the muscle of resilience, patience, gratitude and generosity – characteristics that are related to happiness-.
By exempting them from chores, we take them away from occasions where it is possible to experience that feeling that comes after contributing, completing an objective, acknowledging that they are useful and capable. They stay out of scenarios where responsibility and a sense of commitment grow.
And it’s not like the time they save by skipping homework is invested in something worthwhile… they spend it watching TV or sinking on the phone.
Returning to the small details, to the conquest of small battles and to the dishes in the kitchen… I also remember that my daughters invariably asked: How am I going to end all of this? and I always answered: “washing one plate at a time”.
And now that I think about it, that’s how life works too… one conquest of small victories at a time. We lose a kilo at a time, we knit a sweater one stitch at a time, we put together a puzzle arranging one piece at a time, we run a marathon one step at a time, we learn one attempt at a time, we move forward, we forget, we heal and we let go. day at a time, right?
And all this is made easier by making the bed one day at a time.