It’s January 11th and that means many of us have already given up on the changes we vowed to make in 2021.
There is good news.
1. You aren’t alone.
and
2. You can start again!
Making changes is not as difficult as you think.
In fact, the process is pretty simple. It’s really just five steps.
But simple doesn’t mean easy.
Any time you want to make change you are going to have to do something differently than what you are doing now, and change takes effort.
If you need a do-over and want to hit the reset button, here are the five steps to follow:
1. Shift your mindset around three things: circumstances, time, and motivation.
Circumstances:
You control how you react to circumstances, circumstances don’t control how you react. When you become aware of your thoughts and how you respond to situations in your life, you put yourself in a position to change.
Time:
Very often we use lack of time as the reason we can’t make changes. But we all have the same number of hours in the day. So why can some people fit exercise or time to clean or time to keep things organized or time to balance their checkbook into their day and others can’t?
It’s not lack of time. It’s how we prioritize our time.
And when we own that, then we can start allocating time differently.
Motivation:
NOBODY IS MOTIVATED ALL THE TIME.
Not even world class athletes.
People who make changes don’t have a million times more motivation than you do. They don’t!
They have the next key…
2. Habits
The key to making changes in a way you can sustain is not motivation. It’s developing habits in a way you can sustain.
Most of us just don’t know how to develop habits in a way that works for us long term.
3. Tolerating Discomfort.
Even when you are developing new habits in a way you can manageably sustain, you have to be able to tolerate a certain amount of discomfort.
Most of us try to make really big changes and that’s just too much discomfort for us to tolerate right off that bat.
You need to start with levels of discomfort you can manage.
The more you practice sitting in discomfort, the more discomfort you can tolerate.
4. Giving yourself permission to do things imperfectly.
Even when you shift your mindset, and change how you prioritize time and develop habits in a way you can maintain them and learn to sit in discomfort, there is gonna come a day when you fall off track.
When you acknowledge that shit happens, when you talk to yourself when you don’t meet a certain self-imposed expectation in the same way you would talk to one of your kids or a friend, when you look at roadblocks on your path to change as guideposts and learning opportunities, then you put yourself in a position to be okay with having a shitty day.
You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward.
This is the stuff we work on in Not Your Average Community.
Registration is OPEN until Saturday January 14, 2023.
Click here to learn more.
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