The 14th Carrot - Katie Kaufmann

Hey Reader!

When I was in theater school, I had a corporeal mime teacher who stressed the importance of practice in a way that really sunk in and I have repeated to many others in the past couple decades.

When we start doing an action that we want to improve at or that is supposed to eventually get us somewhere else, it can seem like nothing is shifting for a looong time! We begin to think things like, “Why isn’t this working?,” “What am I doing wrong?,” and maybe even, “What’s the point?”

Here’s where the 14th carrot concept comes in.

Imagine if you will, an old school scale, perhaps somewhere in Europe.

On one side of the scale is a 1 kg weight. You need to purchase 1kg of carrots for a recipe.

Not knowing how many carrots you need to make 1 kg, you begin placing carrots on the high end of the scale one at a time.

1 carrot, nothing moves

2 carrots, nothing

3, still nothing

You keep placing carrots, 11, 12, 13… and there is still no shift in balance! You begin to wonder if maybe the scale is broken. You must be getting really close to 1 kg, surely.

You place one more carrot, the 14th, on the carrot pile and like magic the scale MOVES. Not a little bit but a LOT and the side with the 1kg weight rises and the side with the carrots sinks. A big shift happens!

Now, that shift could not have happened with any fewer carrots on the other end of the scale. Each was an important mass to help make the shift happen but it is only the ACCUMULATION of all those individual carrots that made the shift occur.

How does this relate to your wellness?

Maybe it’s the act of meditation, that elusive practice that is supposed to affect all areas of your life.

You’re doing it but not FEELING anything. But maybe one day you wake up and notice you haven’t snapped at your kids in a few weeks, things that used to stress you out are just rolling off your back, you have been able to focus for longer periods of time without checking your social media feed. Things HAVE shifted but TODAY is that 14th carrot moment when you NOTICE it.

Or maybe you’ve been consistently adding more weight to your lifting routine over the course of a year in really small amounts.

One day you look in the mirror and there are defined muscles where just even a few days ago there was a dough-like upper arm.

Change happens like this!

You consistently put in the work and the outcome eventually takes care of itself. It may not be on your timeline. It may not be the outcome you even imagined, but clearly a shift nonetheless.

Now that you know this, what does it make you think about? How might it shift the way you approach the repetitive nature of practice? How might you treat yourself differently in the process?

With love,

Coach Katie

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Contact me at katie@coachkatiewellbeing.com or via my website coachkatiewellbeing.com