Wanting to change your life is a bold statement to make.
Unfortunately, it not as easy to follow through.
There’s a reason why many people revert back to their old habits after trying to “change” their lives.
We see it when people set ambitious New Years resolutions, only to fall off track a month later.
However, change is possible.
In this blog post, I’ll be sharing 5 easy tips you can implement to change your life for the better.
For those who are visual learners, I created a video for you to follow along here:
1. Acknowledge the reality you live in now
Real change only begins when you acknowledge where you’re at now.
The greatest thing you can do for yourself is to:
- Assess your life objectively
- Acknowledge the parts you don’t like
- Create a plan to change those exact things
The key to creating real and meaningful change is to accept your life now and to accept without judgment.
In the past, I never wanted to admit something was my fault. As a result, I would try to shift the blame and avoid all responsibility.
I was afraid to acknowledge I did something wrong because I thought that would mean that I was a bad person.
However, if I just viewed things objectively, then I could’ve changed those toxic behaviors a lot sooner.
To help you gain an understanding of your life now, I created a free guide that will walk you through Finding your Life Path.
2. Stop hanging out with negative people
Studies has repeatedly shown that those who grow up in enriching environment turn out to be more intelligent, better adjusted, and overall a lot happier.1
For example, kids who grow up around encouraging parents are more likely to have better self-esteem.
On the other hand, kids who were surrounded by negative people tend to be unhappier with worse self-esteem.
With that in mind, take a look at the environment around you: specifically, the people you interact with on a regular basis.
You can’t change your past, but you have full control of your current reality and environment.
You’ve heard this before, but you are the average of the 5 people you hang around with.
Assess the the people around you. How do they make you feel? Do they inspire you and motivate you most of the time or do they mainly discourage and mock you?
Whenever possible, choose to be around people who enhance the quality of your life rather than detract from it.
When I stopped being around negative people, I was no longer bitter and negative.
It felt liberating to be around people who lifted me up instead of those who constantly belittled me.
The only regret I have is not cutting those people off earlier, even if it would’ve hurt me in the short-term.
I was finally able to see that my old negative behaviors prevented me from creating authentic connections and costed me a lot of lost opportunities.
Because I associate myself with positive people who put 100% into their goals, I am constantly awed and inspired.
Of course, this isn’t black and white – not everyone is perfect, including you and me.
However, it’s more important to look at the bigger picture. If you don’t like the person you are when you hang around with someone, it’s time to reconsider that relationship.
3. Change the content you’re consuming
Just as your physical diet is important, it’s equally as important to consider your mental diet.
What type on content are you consuming on a daily basis? Are you reading? On social media? Watching TV?
Furthermore, if you use social media, what types of accounts are you following? And if you watch TV, what types of TV shows do you watch?
The media we consume influence our thoughts. And our thoughts influence our behaviors, which influence our actions. And it’s our actions that determine the results of our life.
In short, the content we consume plays a huge role in the results we create.
To help you better understand, let me give you a personal example.
I wanted to lead a healthier lifestyle. However, I followed a lot of unhealthy food accounts on Instagram.
Seeing unhealthy food on Instagram everyday did not help me at all. In fact, it made me crave junk food all the time. It was harder to resist snacking on junk food.
However, once I unfollowed those accounts and followed more healthy eating accounts, it was a lot easier to shift my diet because:
- I wasn’t being tempted by the junk food
- The healthy food accounts were giving me healthy eating ideas I was excited to try.
This is a change you can easily implement if you want to change your life.
If you use social media regularly, I challenge you to unfollow all the people and accounts that encourage your bad behaviors. In turn, follow new accounts the reinforce good behaviors.
I love this step because it’s literally the easiest step you can implement to change your life now.
4. Create a Concrete Life Vision
I am shocked by how few people do this.
If you don’t have a general idea of what you want out of life, then you’re just being pushed by around by others.
The first step to building your dream life is to actually know what it is. It sounds like common sense, but unfortunately, it isn’t.
A lot of people wish their lives were better, but don’t have any idea what “better” is.
A life vision is more than, “I want a fancy car” or “I want a huge mansion”
Yes, those can be part of your life vision, but a life vision takes everything into account.
It takes in account how you want to feel, what you want to do everyday, the relationships you want to have, your health, your career, and more.
Take a few hours out of your day to do this. Write out a vision that excites and inspires you.
Your life vision will provide you a greater sense of purpose and meaning.
I remember the days I was working a job that made me miserable.
Nothing changed and my circumstances were the same. I was still working the job I didn’t like, commuting 3 hours everyday, and had the same amount of free time as before.
But suddenly, I had a purpose. I found time to work on my passion projects when it felt like there was none before: I had a drive that turned my bleak days into one of real meaning.
I woke up earlier to work on my projects, listened to podcasts that taught me new skills, used my work lunch time to write blog posts, and found time in the evening to edit photos.
Each day was an adventure and a chance to learn and do more.
5. Stop thinking the short-term gain and instead think of the long-term wins
For a lot of the things you do, you won’t see significant results for a long time.
Examples of this is starting a sustainable business, losing and keep weight off, building meaningful relationships, and more.
Most of the meaningful rewards in life come from playing a long-term game.
A lot of people who choose short-term gains over long-term ones end up losing out on a lot more.
For example, let’s use diet, since this is something I have experience in.
If you try to lose weight by starving yourself, you might lose 10 pounds in a week.
On the flip side, someone who is making gradual changes might take a year or more to lose 10 pounds.
However, the individual who starved themselves are more likely to gain the weight, plus more, back when they start eating again.
Whereas the other person is likely to keep the weight off for the rest of their lives (and may even lose more) because they continued adjusted to adjust their normal into something that works for them.
All the big wins in life comes from compound interest.
Change your Life and Gain Clarity
If you’re feeling a little lost and confused, know that you are not alone.
If you’re looking to change your life, I created a complete guide, journal, and workbook that will help you do just that.
I dive deeper and talk about how to effectively change your life in the Life Clarity Guide.
Change is not as complicated as everyone makes it out to be. I dive into how you can EASILY make change without burning yourself out. Anyone can do this, no matter where they are in their life.
Final Note
As I said, changing your life is a gradual process.
You can’t expect to go from 0 to 100 in one night, but if you take small, intentional steps each day, then you’ll see change a lot quicker than you expect.
