Elisha Goldstein on the Power of Tiny Shifts

Psychologist and mindfulness teacher Dr. Elisha Goldstein has spent decades helping people find their way back to themselves. He’s come to see that lasting change rarely comes from dramatic overhaul, but rather through the smallest possible pivots. His new book, Tiny Shifts, introduces a four-step method for interrupting the emotional loops that keep us stuck, and making real change in the ordinary moments of everyday life. Mindful editor-in-chief Siri Myhrom sat down with Dr. Goldstein to talk about the neuroscience behind the method, why our bodies know things our minds don’t, and what to do when the problems feel too big for a tiny shift.

The heart of the book is the Four R Method: Recognize, Release, Refocus, Reinforce. Where did that come from? Was a method you’ve always had, or did it emerge from a need?

I think the Four R Method evolved over time—out of my personal experience and also my teaching. The first R—Recognize—is foundational. It’s in many of the world’s wisdom traditions, psychology speaks of it, neuroscience speaks of it. This idea of recognizing, labeling, noticing. Awareness is on its own a regulation tool. It’s also the very first opening to anything. It’s the foundation of mindfulness.

We need to rebalance the somatic reaction that’s happening, because that widens the space now between stimulus and response. That moment of awareness on its own is typically not enough. We need a wider space.

That first R is really about stepping outside of the emotional loops that are patterned and conditioned within us—often unconscious, whether that’s anxiety, overeating, snapping at people, road rage, or just generally feeling overwhelmed. These loops happen because there’s so much repetition over years of our lives. We just don’t notice we’re in them. How many people, since 2007, have been programmed to fall into the gentle scroll—typically as some form of soothing, with boredom or dis-ease or restlessness underneath? To wake up to that has been foundational for me.

But what typically wasn’t there—and what’s not taught systematically—is what I learned later as a psychologist: the somatic piece. That moment of awareness gives us a little wedge. But we can lose that wedge pretty quickly. What we need to do is rebalance the somatic reaction that’s happening. That’s what widens the space between stimulus and response. We don’t just need to step into the space—we typically need to widen it.

Can you say more about what Release actually means? I think when people hear “letting go,” they imagine it means not feeling the hard thing anymore.

So that’s a good question, what you’re pointing to here, because release is not about getting rid of the feeling. If you think about tiny shift, it’s like an emotional pivot. We’re just trying to pivot. It’s not about the outcome so much. Think of it more like a verb.

It’s not whether the emotion is legitimate or illegitimate—it’s here. Release is taking a moment—taking a breath, a slightly longer exhale out, allowing the shoulders to drop, letting the muscles elongate—to feel a little more softness in my body around the activation.  

I’ll give you an example—a hypothetical moment that has happened many times. My teenage kids had agreed to clean up after themselves after their midnight snacks, and I came downstairs one morning to dishes everywhere. I notice myself really frustrated. Shoulders up, hands tense, face kind of scrunched, heart rate up. I’m about to storm into their room and let them know.

And release is more about taking a moment to soften around that feeling. It’s not to get rid of the feeling, because the anger is actually justified. They crossed a boundary; there was an agreement. That anger is a healthy feeling. It’s not whether the emotion is legitimate or illegitimate—it’s here. 

So I recognize the frustration loop. And release is taking a moment—taking a breath, a slightly longer exhale out, allowing the shoulders to drop, letting the muscles elongate. That activates the parasympathetic nervous system. What’s happening there is that I’m taking that space between stimulus and response and widening it. The anger is still there. But I’m able to feel a little more softness in my body around the activation. 

Sometimes, too, I’ll notice a story in my mind that’s not serving me—something rigid, something about what was done to me—and as I take that exhalation out, I might see that story and say the word “release” and allow it to kind of come out. That doesn’t mean it magically disappears. But it does help soften the activation. It helps turn the volume down on the story a little bit. That’s what we’re after. Whether we’re going to use the anger constructively or destructively—that’s the important piece. And the release is what gives us enough space to choose.

There’s a phrase in the book — “embodied cognition” — that gets at knowing through our bodies. Where do you think our disconnection from the body comes from?

I think it’s cultural. Western culture, in particular. You see it from a young age—how we train kids to favor and prize thinking. And our bodies, how we feel, sensations—this type of stuff is implicitly taught as unimportant. So we don’t get a lot of reps with it.

We’re also wired to problem-solve. So if we’re feeling anxious, frustrated, like something’s wrong—we’re going to try and problem-solve that. And the way we problem-solve is we start thinking. We think about all the problems in front of us, or possible problems that aren’t in front of us, or we reach back to our Rolodex of history and think about problems in the past. Meanwhile, we feel more anxious or upset, because that’s the emotion it feeds.

The insight doesn’t translate into change until it drops down into the body. That’s the piece that’s so often missing.

The pause can give us a moment of recognition, but then it’s gone. The insight doesn’t translate into change until it drops down into the body. That’s the piece that’s so often missing.

There’s a study I keep coming back to, by Norman Farb and Zindel Segal at the University of Toronto. Segal is one of the creators of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. They showed emotionally difficult film clips—clips from Terms of Endearment and The Champ—to two groups. One group had gone through mindfulness training and one who hadn’t. Both groups showed the same perceived sadness. But the mindfulness group scored statistically significantly lower on the Beck Depression Inventory. 

We’ve got two basic networks in our brains: the narrative network [also called the Default Mode Network], where rumination and worry live; and the present-focus network [also called the Task Positive Network], where problem-solving occurs. And what the brain imaging showed is a kind of seesaw effect: when one network goes up, the other goes down, and vice versa. 

When people were paying attention to the sensation of sadness and saying “sadness” in their mind, their narrative network was coming down. They didn’t get caught in the rumination as much. That’s how mindfulness works. And similarly, when we recognize a loop and soften around it in an embodied way, it dials down that narrative default mode network. That’s the neurology behind why this works.

Can you give another example of how this works in your everyday life?

This method is basically how I cured my insomnia, because understanding the neurology of this has helped me trust, to come back to my body any time I have sleep troubles. As an example, my dog recently woke me up in the middle of the night, barking. So I had to go get the dog, and on the way back to bed, I banged my hand on the banister in the dark, and cut my hand. It’s the kind of thing that just wakes your whole body up. By the time I got back to bed, my mind had latched onto a work problem. And I could recognize what was happening: I was in a worry loop. There’s something called the Zeigarnik Effect—the mind keeps trying to close unfinished loops. So I knew that if I just tried to push the thought away, it would keep coming back.

I recommend this to anyone: really deeply listen to a practice with massive repetition, so that you memorize it. Because the higher your emotional activation, the more your thoughts are convincing, the more you kind of go under a spell. If you have some level of mastery, you’ll be able to break that spell—because you can trust the neurology.

What I did instead was recognize the loop, and take a moment to soften the physical tension. My stomach was clenched from the worrying, so I took some deep breaths—not to “activate the parasympathetic nervous system” as a technique, but because my abdomen was tense and I needed to do the opposite. I needed to stretch those muscles. So I took deep breaths, my abdomen expanded, and that was the release.

Then my refocus was: I know the seesaw effect. I know that even though my mind is telling me I need to worry about this, if I come back and attend to something in the present moment—for me the body is the most tangible anchor—I can activate that steady gear and bring the spinning gear down. And because I’ve done a body scan hundreds of times, my body just knows what to do. I don’t need to turn on an audio. I recommend this to anyone: really deeply listen to a practice like that with massive repetition, so that you memorize it. Because the higher your emotional activation, the more your thoughts are convincing, the more you kind of go under a spell. If you have some level of mastery, you’ll be able to break that spell—because you can trust the neurology.

The third R is Refocus. You describe it as “taking the steering wheel.” What does that look like in practice?

Our brain is already reactively asking us questions—and it’s steering. What’s the worst case scenario here? What’s wrong with me? Why don’t my kids love me anymore? Whatever it is, refocus is about consciously redirecting that question-asking capacity. When we ask our brain questions, it searches for answers. So instead of those reactive questions, we ask something like: What’s most important for me to focus on right now? What do I actually need right now that’ll move me in a healthier direction? What’s something I can do that’ll enhance the next five minutes of my life? Something like that will completely change the moment.

Sometimes refocus doesn’t even require a new question. After you’ve recognized and released, you often just have access to wisdom you already had—a phrase from a teacher you love, an intuition about what you need. The emotional loops don’t erase our wisdom. They just block access to it.

And sometimes refocus doesn’t even require a new question. After you’ve recognized and released, you often just have access to wisdom you already had—a phrase from a teacher you love, an intuition about what you need. The emotional loops don’t erase our wisdom. They just block access to it. That’s why so many people say, I’ve done so much work, read so many books, why isn’t it sticking? This is why. When we’re in those emotional loops, we lose access to what we know. The release is what restores that access.

The fourth R—Reinforce—is the one you say that’s most often skipped. Why does it matter?

Yes, it’s the most often missed—and the reason there’s a fourth R at all is because after we have an experience, we need to do something to emotionally tag that moment so we remember it. It might be a meditation or interrupting a moment where you were about to snap at your kid, or you were in traffic hating being in traffic and you loosened your grip on the steering wheel and remembered something Sharon Salzberg said—you are also the traffic—and suddenly felt a whole lot more ease. The reinforce is saying: I need to do something that emotionally tags this moment. That’s a term from neuroscience. To emotionally tag the moment so my brain remembers it. I want to install it in my short-term working memory so that the next time I’m in this context, my brain will automatically bring it up and interrupt the old pattern.

Emotional tagging is acknowledging: Wow, look at what I just did, and how I’m feeling right now. That gives it a little extra emphasis. It’s like hitting the save button on a document you just created. You take a beat with it. Just let the moment land. That’s the reinforce piece.

The way to do that is quite simple. Just acknowledging: Wow, look at what I just did, and how I’m feeling right now. That gives it a little extra emphasis. Or you take a moment and put your hand on your heart and sense the shift—whether it’s relief, ease, warmth, whatever the positive shift is—and you let it land. It’s like hitting the save button on a document you just created. You take a beat with it. Just let the moment land. That’s the reinforce piece. And that’s how we really enhance the process toward more implicit change—not just knowing something, but having it available to us the next time we need it.

As I was reading, I was thinking, too, about our current cultural moment. I live in Minneapolis, and we have had a hell of a year. In the realm of overwhelm, there was both the feeling and the message: We need to be doing something, and it has to be more and more and more, and it’s not enough, and everything’s on fire. How does a concept like “tiny shifts” work when the problems feel so big and so urgent? How can this tiny thing be enough to meet what is asking so much of us?  

First of all, just acknowledging that, yeah, Minneapolis has been through the wringer this last year in gigantic ways. A friend of mine who’s been diagnosed with cancer said exactly that to me after I gave him the book, Do you have anything called Big Shifts? Because that’s what I need. And I really felt that.

A friend of mine who’s been diagnosed with cancer said to me after I gave him the book, “Do you have anything called Big Shifts? Because that’s what I need.” And I really felt that.

But here’s what I’d say. In your example—the feeling that I’m not doing enough, there’s so much to do, everything’s on fire, and it’s still not enough—that is an emotional loop. What I’m noticing is that I’m activated. My mind is running stories. My body is tensing. It’s a not-enoughness loop, a save-the-world loop. And a tiny shift is saying: What’s happening within me right now? Because I’m not grounded and balanced in this moment. And that’s what we’re after.

So I recognize the overwhelm loop. I release. I soften around the activation even as all of that is still here. Then I refocus—and in this moment I could go a lot of directions. I might ask: What are some things I’ve been doing in the direction of this that I feel a sense of accomplishment about?—redirecting attention from the lack to what I’ve actually done. Or: What’s one thing I can do that moves in this direction? 

The tiny shift isn’t pretending the big thing is small. It’s gathering yourself—recognize, release—so that when you refocus, you’re steering from a more grounded place.

The tiny shift isn’t pretending the big thing is small. It’s gathering yourself—recognize, release—so that when you refocus, you’re steering from a more grounded place. And then if you notice even a little bit of relief or clarity, you reinforce it. Okay. I can do this. This is also part of me. I can walk through this incredibly difficult time with more groundedness. And that might take thirty seconds. Or it might open up the realization that you need to take a half an hour this evening. That’s okay too. Because that’s a need you have, and the method helped you find it.

Following up on that question of What do I need right now?—What if what we need is truly unrealistic or impossible—say, a more loving parent, or for more people to step up, or for more hours in a day? How do you get at what’s underneath all that so you can get to what can actually be addressed?

Often when we’re overwhelmed, we struggle to even name what we need. So we can ask, What do I need right now? And if the honest answer is, I’m confused, I don’t know, I’m just so over it—then the actual need is “clarity.”  That’s always a one-to-one: confusion means the need is clarity. So then the question becomes, What’s going to support me in the direction of clarity? Maybe a conversation. Maybe journaling. Maybe space and time—and there’s no getting around that sometimes we just need to take time to reflect. You’re not going to get it without taking time to sit and be with something. We can do that together or we can do that individually, but there is a need, and there’s no getting around taking space for that. So the next layer is: What’s going to support me in creating that space? 

Speaking of that, you do have a class coming up. Do you want to talk about? 

Yes, we have this great program called the 21-Day Tiny Shift Experience, starting on May 11. I realize that change happens in the everyday moments of our lives, and this is a program of one- to three-minute daily voice notes delivered through WhatsApp—for people who want support in layering this into everyday life. People had incredible results the first time we ran it: more relief, more ease, more calm, real insight—without taking time out of their day, just by weaving in these tiny shifts over three weeks.

And remind us—where can people find your  book and learn more?

The book is Tiny Shifts, and there’s a free resource bundle at elishagoldstein.com/tiny-shifts—a quick guide to the method, three shorter meditations, and a needs and feelings inventory. 

There’s still time to join the upcoming 21-day Tiny Shifts program, which starts on May 11, 2026. Register here.