Three Small Moments: a reflective exercise
- Different Keys Coaching & Consulting
- Dec 8, 2024
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 18
Welcome back to Be You, But Better!
Free life coaching exercises for self-awareness and improvement
In this innovative series, we aim to provide you with practical and insightful life coaching exercises designed to help you explore and improve various aspects of your life. As a life coach dedicated to supporting individuals who think differently, I believe everyone should have access to tools that can foster personal growth. These free exercises ensure that everyone, regardless of circumstances, can access professional coaching tools.
You can work through these exercises alone or with a trusted friend. Writing your responses in a notebook or journal can deepen your self-awareness and help you identify your strengths as well as areas to work on.
Our first exercise, Critic and Cheerleader gets you thinking about how you relate to your inner voices.
Our second post, Find your Flow with Journaling explores how journaling can help track your progress and reflect on your growth.
Three Small Moments
Three Small Moments is a simple yet powerful tool to transform your relationship with the world around you. By focusing on three small, meaningful moments from your day, this exercise encourages connection, awareness, and gratitude. When practiced regularly, it can increase your sense of satisfaction and contentment, and during periods of adversity, it can help you maintain stability and build resilience.
The Illusion of the Key to Happiness
When life feels overwhelming, it’s tempting to cling to fantasies of a better future—a multi-million lottery win, career success and fame, or meeting the perfect partner. These daydreams make sense: when life feels difficult, imagining a grand, life-changing solution can provide temporary relief.
But here’s the thing—in reality, these fantasies invariably fail to deliver the happiness we imagine. Winning the lottery may solve financial problems, but it comes with significant new problems and pressures. Career success and fame look great from the outside, but they bring challenges that many people find overwhelming. And finding the “perfect” partner? All relationships take work, and no one person can meet every emotional need.
Spending too much time on wishful thinking can feel comforting in the moment, but it often keeps us in a state of dissatisfaction, yearning for a fantasy life and overlooking the meaningful moments already present in our day-to-day reality.
Let’s Be Realistic!
Wishful thinking isn’t all bad - after all, it’s vitally important for human creativity and has allowed our species to develop and thrive. However for every instance of wishful thinking that leads to a successful outcome, there are countless others where plans fail, hopes fade and someone’s dreams are dashed. As a society, we have even turned this into a form of entertainment - think of talent shows, where we watch hopeful contestants with big dreams step into the spotlight. While a select few succeed, many face crushing disappointment with their reactions broadcast to millions.
While I’ve never had my dreams shattered on live television, I do remember the profound letdown of learning Santa Claus wasn’t real. The sleigh, the reindeer, the North Pole—all just stories. It turned out that my parents were the ones sneaking presents out of the cupboard while my brother and I were fast asleep.
For a brief moment, my world felt upside down. If Santa wasn’t real, what else might be a lie? Was the tooth fairy next on the chopping block? Were monsters made up too? Did God really live in the sky? But as I unwrapped my Christmas gifts—still real and delightfully tangible—I quickly consoled myself with the fact that the presents existed, even if the magic didn’t.
This experience gave me my first taste of skepticism. Adults, I realized, don’t always tell the truth. Sometimes they believe their own stories, and sometimes they don’t - and sometimes they just say anything to put an end to a child's incessant questions. This new knowledge caused me to reassess other things I was told, including one of my father's favourite sayings, 'every cloud has a silver lining'.
Every Cloud Has ... ?
This proverb was very definitely not true, I decided. Everyone knows that silver is a metal and metal is far too heavy to float in the sky. Whenever I heard the phrase, I would respond ‘That’s not true! Every cloud does not have a silver lining - every cloud has rain in it!’
Looking back, I see that this early refusal to accept comforting but flawed ideas wasn’t mere stubbornness. It was an attempt to make sense of a world that often felt contradictory. My “every-cloud-has-rain-in-it” philosophy wasn’t about pessimism—it was about preparing for life’s inevitable storms.
But while expecting the rain can shield us from disappointment, it also makes it harder to notice the sunlight breaking through. Just as excessive optimism can distort reality, so can relentless negativity. When we focus too much on what could go wrong, we risk missing the small, beautiful moments that make life meaningful.
Finding Balance
Over the past couple of years, I’ve come to appreciate that both tendencies—negative thinking and wishful fantasizing—are normal parts of the human experience. As Russ Harris explains in The Happiness Trap, our brains evolved to anticipate threats and seek rewards. It’s natural for us to spend time thinking about what could go wrong or what might make life better. These tendencies are not flaws; they’re part of being human. The key is learning how to work with them, rather than being swept away by them.
Yes, every cloud has rain, but clouds also come and go. Some bring refreshing showers, others bring storms, and some simply drift away. Behind all of them lies the clear blue sky—constant, steady, and unaffected.
This, then, is the heart of this exercise. Three Small Moments isn’t about pretending the clouds don’t exist or forcing yourself to see only silver linings. It’s about noticing the moments that connect you to that unchanging sky. These small, grounding experiences don’t eliminate life’s storms, but they can help you find balance, whatever the weather.
Relationship with the Critic and Cheerleader Exercise
In Critic and Cheerleader: A Reflective Exercise, you explored two contrasting inner voices—the harsh critic and the overly enthusiastic cheerleader—and began to develop a more objective perspective on your thoughts.
Three Small Moments builds on this by helping you focus on real, meaningful experiences from daily life. It’s not about celebrating big wins or wallowing in disappointment. Instead, it helps you notice and appreciate the small moments that bring value, connection, and calm. This exercise anchors you in the present, even amidst the inner noise of critique or cheerleading.
Three Small Moments: how to conduct the exercise
1) Find a Quiet Space
Settle into a comfortable spot where you won’t be interrupted for about 20 minutes.
It’s best to do this exercise in the evening, while the day’s events are still fresh in your mind.
Have your journaling equipment ready, whether that’s a notebook and pen, an audio recording device, or a journaling app.
If you’re new to journaling, check out my blog post “Find Your Flow with Journaling” for helpful tips.
2) Identify Three Small Moments
Reflect on your day and recall three moments that stood out to you. These don’t need to be extraordinary—just meaningful in their own way:
Enjoying the warmth of a morning coffee or tea.
A smile exchanged with someone, online or in person.
Watching the leaves move in the breeze or appreciating a moment of quiet.
Completing a task that brought a sense of accomplishment.
3) Explore Each Moment
For each moment, write a few sentences to reflect on it:
Describe the Moment: What happened? Where were you? Who or what was involved?
Reflect on Its Meaning: How did it make you feel? Did it bring a sense of connection, gratitude, or calm?
Acknowledge Its Value: Why do you think this moment stood out to you?
4) Acknowledge Negative or Overly Optimistic Thoughts
As you reflect on your moments, it’s natural for distracting thoughts to arise—whether they’re overly critical or overly enthusiastic. These thoughts might try to pull your focus away from the experience. The key is to acknowledge them without judgment, rather than suppressing or fighting them. Simply notice the thought, thank it for showing up, and gently redirect your attention back to the moment you’re exploring.
If you’re unsure how to handle these distractions, here are two simple approaches drawn from evidence-based methods:
1. Gentle Observation (Inspired by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT):
ACT encourages you to notice thoughts and feelings without judgment, creating distance from them. When a distracting thought arises, try saying to yourself:
“I notice that my mind is having a critical thought about this moment…”
“I notice that I’m feeling overly excited about this reflection…”
By naming the thought or feeling, you step back from it, allowing yourself to focus on the task at hand.
2. Talking to Your Inner Voices (Inspired by Internal Family Systems, or IFS):
IFS explores the idea that different “parts” of ourselves, like the Inner Critic or Cheerleader, can influence how we think and feel. If you notice one of these parts speaking up, you might try responding kindly and directly:
“Thank you for sharing that, Inner Critic, but I’m focusing on something different right now.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, Cheerleader, but let’s stay grounded in the moment.”
Both approaches can help you stay centered without getting swept away by internal distractions. Choose the method that feels most natural to you, or experiment with both to find what works best.
Remember, the goal is not to force these thoughts away but to gently shift your attention back to the small moment you’re reflecting on.
5) Reflection Questions
How did reflecting on these moments affect your mood or perspective?
Did you notice any patterns or themes among the moments you chose?
How might engaging in this exercise more regularly help you feel more grounded or balanced?
A Note about Online Technologies and Moments of Connection
In a world where digital technology and social media often dominate our lives, it’s easy to focus on their downsides—and rightly so, as there is now a significant body of evidence to show that the main social media platforms contribute to mental health challenges and increase social isolation, and these issues need to be addressed. But technology also has an extraordinary ability to connect us in ways that were once unimaginable.
Online communities have allowed people to share experiences and create meaningful connections that transcend geographical and cultural barriers. This has allowed many neurodiverse individuals in particular to find a level of support, understanding, and a sense of belonging that was not possible previously due to the limits of their local surroundings.
So, as you reflect on your three small moments, don’t overlook those that might have happened online—a kind message, a shared laugh, or a meaningful conversation can be just as valuable as face-to-face interactions.
The Science Behind the Exercise
Psychological research highlights the benefits of reflecting on positive or meaningful experiences:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) teaches us to acknowledge thoughts and feelings without judgment, fostering emotional flexibility. Russ Harris’s book The Happiness Trap is an excellent resource on this approach.
Mindfulness practices, as described by Mark Williams and Danny Penman in Deeper Mindfulness, help us engage fully with the present moment. Mindfulness isn’t about religious meditation—it’s a practical skill to observe and accept our experiences without being overwhelmed by them.
Reflecting on these small moments reinforces neural pathways associated with gratitude, connection, and resilience. And because 'neurons that fire together, wire together', this can change our brain so we are able to enjoy our life as it is, rather than getting swept up by life's emotional ups and downs.
Optional: Deepen Your Practice
If you’d like to explore this exercise more fully, try the following:
Look for Patterns: Over time, consider whether the moments you notice share themes, such as connection, gratitude, or personal growth.
Visualize an Inner Shelter: Imagine these moments as lights illuminating a peaceful internal space, or as a series of images on display. This “Inner Shelter” can offer comfort and stability during stressful times.
Reflect Across Time: Use this exercise to track small moments over days, weeks, or months, and notice how they build on one another to create a sense of continuity and connection.
Moving Forward
Life’s clouds will always come and go. Some will bring rain, and some will pass quietly, but the clear blue sky beyond them remains. By reflecting on three small moments, you’re not denying life’s storms—you’re building an awareness of those things that remain clear and constant behind them.
Whether your moments are found in a warm embrace, a walk in nature, or a heartfelt exchange online, each one has the potential to strengthen your connection to the world and to yourself.
This exercise can stand alone as a simple, grounding practice. Or, for those who wish to go deeper, it can serve as a stepping stone to creating a mental Inner Shelter—a calm and stable internal space that supports you through life’s ups and downs
If you’ve got any thoughts on this exercise, please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you!
You can also arrange a free consultation with me, if you would like to chat about this or any other coaching-related issues.
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