Creating change in your life is difficult, as humans we always crave the feeling of being safe and things being the same. Breaking down your normal routine can be difficult and when you put too much pressure on yourself you can quickly begin to feel overwhelmed.
The more you feel overwhelmed the more likely you are to switch off, stop focusing and just give up!
In this blog I’m going to break down how you can create change, build a vision and ultimately become the person you want to be!
Step 1 – Changing your environment
As the title suggests step one is changes the things around you, this step isn’t the most powerful step and you probably won’t notice an instant difference but the compound effect of getting your environment creates huge potential for some of the next steps. To help you make those here are some question you can ask yourself.
What’s your current environment?
Think about the people you spend time with, work, social side, what’s in the house etc.
What’s one way you can upgrade your environment? For example, getting into an environment like the gym surround yourself with people that are on the same path.
Step 2 – Changing your Behaviour
Now this is more powerful than chaining your environment so pay close attention. The first thing I want to point out is that YOU are not YOUR behaviours.
There may be some things you’re doing right now that aren’t doing anything for you, but they are just part of your routine.
Changing your behaviours takes energy and you will notice resistance when you move away from your normal, LEAN into the change don’t fight it.
Some questions for you on this could be:
What am I doing? What could I do differently?
Step 3- Assessing and developing your capabilities
This step is bring awareness to your knowledge and skill around the topics. It is a chance for you to work out where you may need some help or learn something new! It could be as simple as asking a friend or family member to come to the gym with you for a bit of accountability, or it could be doing a programme or some sessions with personal trainer.
Some questions for this step are:
What information do I need to move forward?
How can I learn this skill?
Do I need help from a professional? Personal trainer/coach/nutritionist/therapist…
Step 4 – What are your values and what are your beliefs?
Your values are the things that are important to you, they could be things like family, health, exercise, sport etc…
Your beliefs are what you align your thinking to, do you believe that health is important? Do you believe that exercise is good for you?
We often know our values but where we miss a trick is aligning our beliefs with those values.
For example lots of people understand that health is important but still they believe that exercise is too difficult or eating health is too much effort.
When your beliefs don’t match your Values you end up feeling stuck and frustrated!
So if being healthy is important to you, you must have a belief that eating well and exercising supports that.
Take some time now to figure our what’s really important to you and what beliefs you need to put in place to compliment your values.
What is important to you?
What beliefs do you currently have?
Do any need to change?
What new beliefs would you like to have?
Step 5 – Creating your identity
Building your identity is SO Powerful when you’re looking to make a change. More importantly creating that ‘Future self’ has the biggest impact on you, your actions and your results.
Use a magic wand, you are 5 years in the future and nothing stood in your way! No excuses and you smashed through any challenges you faced.
What is that future you doing differently to you right now? What is that person saying yes to and what are they saying no to?
Take some time to figure out what your future self looks like and what they do differently?
Another part of this section can be creating I AM or I AM NOT statements, let’s take smoking as an example.
If you’re a non smoker and a smoker offers you a cigarette you would say ‘No thanks I’m not a smoker’
You identify as a non smoker so your decision to not smoke is easy, its not who you are.
What example can you think of in relation to you and your goals?
Step 6 – Creating an extremely clear vision
This is an accumulation of the last 5 steps, how can you piece together your answers from the previous steps to build that crystal clear vision.
What does it look like?
How do you feel?
What steps do you need to take to get there?
Who do you WANT to have around you?
Spend some time to write down the clearest vision you can!
Now you have the BEST foundation for change, this vision is your bible, your motto, your focus, it’s the reason, on those days you can’t be bothered, you get out of bed and get the stuff done that needs doing, not because you want to but because you know its getting you closer to the future you!
Feel free to reach out to us on social media and let us know if this has helped or if you would like some help creating your vision for the future!