Tiny Leaf Game
Sometimes I am quite glad to be MANY!
It’s almost worth having younger parts with all their neediness and fears, in order to still maintain near-constant playfulness and a sense of adventure!
However, it can be VERY frustrating to my adult parts when my invincibility-minded youthful personalities do not care one bit about what this or that indulgence (or laziness!) will do to OUR BODY!
And don’t even get me started on how MUCH I wish I had more than one BODY, with an ever-growing list of digital creations planned and waiting for me to create!
When I’m brainstorming and designing, almost all of myselves are involved.
When I’m “putting in the time” to actually implement the ideas — editing text, copying and pasting from one document to another — it can be VERY HARD to pay attention and stay focused, while Little Ones just want to PLAY!
I gave away a free tracker page on Patreon not long ago - a printable document with a farm theme that has little broccoli or corn icons for me (or for you!) to color, in order to playfully show progress on current goals.
I THOUGHT my Little Ones would go for that more than they did. 😞
The trouble with ANY paper-based tracking method is that you have to dedicate a place for it within easy reach - or else you must do the “stationery shuffle” — moving notebooks and things out of the way in order to find (or make space for) your tracker page... and then you need your colors, or stickers... 🫤
So, I have invented “The Tiny Leaf Game” - haha!
I did not purposefully set out to create this - I was just doing a little workout with my exercise bands and I thought how lovely it would be to have little markers for each time I made a healthy decision - like working out, even for 5 minutes!
Once I finished, I went exploring and just used what I found:
29 tiny leaf-shaped glass beads
2 tiny glass vials
1 tiny wood box with a latch
1 tiny glass jar with a cork stopper
With those things, I created these “rules” for myselves, for now:
14 tiny leaf beads in each vial, one extra bead, and ALL inside the wood box
1 vial marked ✔️ the other marked ✖️
if I work out or go for a walk, move 1 bead from ✔️ into glass jar
if I eat a health-respecting meal or resist a health-demoting treat,
move 1 bead from ✖️ to glass jar
for every health-demoting decision, move 1 bead from glass jar to a vial
and of course, try to get all the beads into the glass jar
if i get all 14 from the vials into the glass jar, move the last 🌿 to the glass jar,
and pick a new set of beads/mini items and begin “a new game”!
This seems to me a new system that i can get behind - highly visual, without having to shuffle papers or pull up a file just to check something off.
The game itself is tiny, but the message is important: I am changing, one leaf at a time.
🌿🫙🌿🫙🌿🫙🌿🫙🌿
In honor of having just launched my first FREE email mini-course called “The Stillness Series“ - and in order to test the process of creating a series here on Substack, I have expanded my “Tiny Leaf Game” into a fun little 10-part series called “Visible Progress – Tactile Rituals for Motivation and Stillness.”
The next 9 “lessons” will post to my Substack every 3 days, ending on December 10th. You can view the list of lessons below, but first let me give you a brief description of this fun little mini course:
“Visible Progress” expands on the Tiny Leaf Game and other sensory-based motivation systems. Each lesson guides readers through creating tangible rituals—tiny, playful, embodied ways to honor consistency, self-trust, and grace. Instead of charts or apps, we can explore jars, pebbles, cords, and tokens that let us see how our own efforts accumulate. We can look at how sensory proof changes our internal narratives about worth, discipline, and success.
Lessons:
(this post) Tiny Leaf Game – lil leafy idea (visual proof of effort)
Momentum You Can Touch – turning habits into sensory rituals
The Jar as Mirror – reinterpreting results as reflection
Proof You Can Believe – replacing guilt with tangible self-trust
The Grace of Small Objects – sacred ordinariness in motivation
Visible vs. Invisible Progress – learning to value unseen effort
Reset Rituals – finishing and beginning with ceremony
When the Jar Feels Empty – reframing lapses as rest
Textures of Achievement – how sensory feedback supports consistency
Your Own Tiny Ecosystem – designing a personal ritual game
As mentioned, I will schedule this mini series to post a new lesson every 3 days, so that it finishes December 10th.
I will name each of these posts “Tiny Leaf #” followed by the name of the “lesson” above - so that future readers (and myself) can clearly see that all 10 form a series.
Wish me luck and good follow-through! :/wink:
My About/Contact page is at: FranLaff.com/help