practice · all tools
The Small Stand
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for courage: whenever an easier option would quietly compromise a value — staying silent, going along, softening the truth — pause, name the stake to yourself, and choose the aligned path. Each evening, briefly reflect on the day's stands taken and missed. Repeated many times a day, the choice becomes increasingly automatic.
- Calibrate stakes: micro-stands in ordinary situations, not career-risking confrontations — the practice is repetition, not heroism
Practical
- Time
- 0-1 min
- Group
- 1–1 · individual
- Settings
- self-guided
- Materials
- None; optionally a note for evening reflection
- Mechanisms
- life-embedding, behavioral-rehearsal, values-clarification
- Change scope
- skill · recurring-practice (multiple times daily; same exercise for at least a week)
Origin & where it lives
Thomas Jordan & Claude [AI] (exercise); VCoL method by Theo Dawson (Lectica) — Virtuous Cycles of Learning (VCoL) — micro-practice in daily life
Instructions: open online
In this directory via Thomas Jordan's IDG Resource Library
Exemplar of the micro-practice genre (the model's `life-embedding` mechanism): no container, no facilitator, tiny dose, high frequency — "a skill you practise ten times a day rapidly becomes automatic."
status: checked · added 2026-08-25