Dr. Venus Nicolino says real change requires small steps and plenty of time

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Rome wasn’t built in a day. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. We’ve all heard these sayings about the importance of taking one small step at a time to achieve a big goal. The challenge, says Dr. Venus Nicolino, is remembering to apply this advice to our own lives.

Once people decide they want to change, they typically want that change to happen immediately. But breaking a bad habit or setting a new course in life isn’t something that usually happens in a week or two, much less overnight. Nicolino, the Los Angeles-based author and noted clinical psychologist, says that successful change first requires making the decision to give yourself time. 

This applies to people who want to make a change in their personal habits, finances, health, career — whatever goal they’re striving to achieve.

“A quick recipe for making progress in anything: Give yourself a year. Not a month, not a week,” Nicolino said in a video on her popular TikTok channel. “Ask yourself what a small win looks like and go get one, then get another one. Show up. Most people don’t — or can’t — sustain this intrinsic progress. Do your best and give yourself credit when you do.”

She added that part of doing your best is acknowledging that even your best isn’t enough sometimes. However, she continued, the important thing is to keep trying. “Track your progress and be honest about where you are,” she said. “And give yourself props for not staying stuck where you were.”

Dr. Venus Nicolino focuses on giving people practical solutions to real-world problems

Dr. Venus Nicolino has helped people in this area — and with many other issues — for years. A native of West Philadelphia who now makes her home in California, she’s developed a unique, irreverent approach to taking on life’s challenges that puts an emphasis on cutting through the tons of bad advice available these days on the internet or in the self-help aisle at the bookstore. The title of her book says it all: Bad Advice: How To Survive and Thrive in an Age of Bulls–t. 

Nicolino also offers advice and her take on a variety of issues through her popular TikTok channel and on her podcast, “The Tea With Dr. V.” She holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology and a master’s and Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

Her interest in psychology began on the front porch of her childhood home, where she often heard stories about neighborhood drama. “The more I listened, the more I learned and wondered if solutions were being overlooked,” Nicolino shared in an interview. “My natural curiosity led me to a career in psychology, but it’s grown into something bigger. Today, I steer people clear of self-help charlatans and offer them guidance that’s relevant to their world — the real world.”

The power of incrementalism is the key to change

On the subject of change, Dr. Venus Nicolino said you must first come to terms with the idea that real change is a process, not a quick fix. Once you’ve reached that point, the next step is to set small goals and achieve them. When you start to add them up, they lead to significant changes. 

If the change involves breaking a bad habit, she also suggests another early step to increase the chances for success. “Breaking a bad habit leaves a hole. So, fill it with something good. Because emptiness invites that bad s–t back,” she said in another TikTok video.

In advocating taking one small step at a time, Nicolino is in accord with a growing number of experts. The Project Management Institute, which focuses on these issues in the business world, said a simple but profound example of this is available to everyone in, of all things, the 1988 baseball movie Bull Durham. 

In the film, the catcher Crash Davis (played by Kevin Costner) points out that the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is about 25 hits in 500 at-bats. Spread out over an entire season, that’s just one hit per week. As Davis puts it, just one additional hit per week “and you’re in Yankee Stadium.”

Research backs up this idea of setting achievable, smaller goals on the road to achieving a more measurable result, especially if you write down the goal as well as the small steps needed to achieve it, according to a Dominican University study. The Harvard University Extension School also suggests breaking down large goals into “manageable steps.” 

Nicolino says it’s important to give yourself a break from the inevitable mistakes you will make and face down any fears you have about change. “Facing fears is the way to handle fear because eliminating it is impossible,” she said. “The more we face fears, the more comfortable we become in doing so. I know I’ll never be fearless or completely at ease taking on fears. Yet, knowing I’ve stepped up to the plate, again and again, is a big help for future meet and greets with fear.”

The power of belief stacks the odds in your favor

Dr. Venus Nicolino also advocates something a bit less tangible, but just as useful, when making a change in life: a belief that you can do it. She noted in a TikTok video that “belief is a powerful tool” that’s been repeatedly lab-tested. For example, she cites a study involving people who suffer from migraines.

In the study, some people were given a placebo — and were even told it was a placebo — while others were given medication. Even though the patients knew the placebo pill contained no medication, 50% of them reported improvement in their migraines after taking the pill because they simply believed it would help. 

“Even more impressive, Dr. Bruce Moseley gave half of his patients real arthroscopic knee surgery and the other half placebo surgery. The fake surgery worked as well as the real surgery in more than half of his 50 trials,” Nicolino explained.

She noted that people can also see the power of belief in sports, where the same coaches continue to win championships even when they have different players. Dr. Venus Nicolino asked, “Why is that? The players believe in the system and they’ve seen it work for previous teams.”

She added that the power of belief, even after the studies and examples people know about, still is a bit of a mystery. 

“Some believe our anticipations and expectations creep into reality,” she said. “What we know for sure is that when you buy in, you stack the odds in your favor.”