As we discussed on Tuesday, it’s easy to feel bad about what we’re doing or not doing. Here, let me demonstrate.

I used to exercise regularly. I’ve run a half marathon. I’ve biked across Iowa—twice. I’m accustomed to being in good shape.

But with a 15-month-old daughter, I find myself completely sedentary. I know I should return to regular exercise, but in the immediate future, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Daily exercise takes a good deal of time, and it’s going to be a few weeks until I can find that time. I should be doing it, but I’m not.

I feel bad about my lack of exercise—and maybe you feel bad about something you’re doing/not doing—but there is something we can do right away to improve matters.

“What am I not doing that would be easy to do?”

Business philosopher Jim Rohn urged his seminar audiences to ask themselves an incisive question:

“What am I not doing that would be easy to do?”

Here’s something I’m not doing that would be hard to do, at least at first: exercising 5 days a week.

But I have a pull-up bar. It would be easy for me to do a couple of pull-ups a day. That takes virtually no time but reintroduces exercise into my life. I could then increase that number gradually.

Or say a person hasn’t started saving for retirement. It would be great if he maxed out his Roth IRA every year, but that’s an intimidating prospect. If he’s not investing at all, it would be easy for him to open a Roth IRA and have $100 direct deposited from his monthly paycheck.

There’s immense value in big life changes, but little changes are valuable, too—they make it easier to effect big changes later.