Today is the Day to Change Your Life

But How? 5 Simple Steps.

Today is the Day to Change Your Life. But How? 5 Simple Steps.

I was a train wreck and I cried a lot. Well not a lot by some people’s standards, but I did find myself crying on many occasions. I got to where I hated parties because I didn’t think people really liked me and I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere.

It was easier to blend into the wall as best I could. I was very uncomfortable talking with anyone even if they talked to me. I tell people this now, and they are incredulous! They are like, “you? Seriously because I never saw you that way at all.” I suppose I was a very good actor.

That Started to Change When I Became Sick and Tired of Making Myself Miserable

That is what I was doing. I was making myself miserable. Seriously, other people didn’t see me that way so why did I? What possessed me to think that when in reality I have lots of friends and even better I have a couple of very close friends. I now have a wonderful husband, too!

I did something that I am not proud of and I really don’t want to share what that some “thing” was. It wasn’t done to anyone else, so it really isn’t anybody else’s business because I did it to myself. The regret was overwhelming, and I truly was scared that I had harmed my mental health beyond repair.

That was the Lowest of the Low

I knew that things had to change because that wasn’t the person I ever wanted to be. I had gotten caught up in the culture and what was acceptable because I had grown up around it. Not sure why it hit me so hard, but to this day I now look at that night as a turning point. Things had to change and I had to change. But how?

The answer to that was “I don’t know, but I just know I have to change because I can’t live with what I did.” My young son deserved a mom who had moral values and he needed someone he could be proud of instead of ashamed of.

Reading fiction is one of my favorite things to do. Some people love non-fiction or watching videos online, but me I love reading a good story that absorbs me….one that I can get inside of the characters and become a part of their lives. People tell me I take stories too seriously. Oh well, it’s who I am and I really don’t want to change that part of me at all because I enjoy it so much.

I Bought a Non-fiction Book — ICK!

I really dislike reading non-fiction because there is no story to it and most are so dry that I begin falling asleep after a few paragraphs. They just don’t interest me, but this one grabbed ahold and wouldn’t let go because it was like the author was speaking my language, and he was really just speaking to me personally. He wrote the book for me….well not really, but it felt like he did. The name of that book? Well it was called The Compound Effect – Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success written by Darren Hardy and it just really spoke to me.

“There are no new fundamentals. Truth is not new; it’s old. You’ve got to be a little suspicious of the guy who says, ‘Come over here, I want to show you my manufactured antiques!’ No, you can’t manufacture antiques.” This quote was inside of this book.

Famous Inspirational speaker, mentor, and great business philosopher Jim Rohn

“This book is about success and what it really takes to earn it. It’s time someone told it to you straight. You’ve been bamboozled for too long. There is no magic bullet, secret formula, or quick fix. You don’t make $200,000 a year spending two hours a day on the Internet, lose 30 pounds in a week, rub 20 years off your face with a cream fix your love life with a pill, or find lasting success with any other scheme that is too good to be true.”

Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect – Jumpstart Your Income, Your LIfe, Your Successs

Those Were the First Lines of the Book – Change Your Life

And those lines hooked me because I’m a huge believer in the old adage — “If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is!” So when someone starts off with basically telling me I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to blow smoke up your a**, and I’m speaking truth to bulls**t, then I’m hooked!

That book became my second bible — the first being the Holy Bible. I read and re-read each chapter and put things into place to change my life. It has dawned on me though, it isn’t necessarily the book and what is in it although I highly recommend it because it truly is amazing, but it is more because of the change in my thinking.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I was making it way to hard. The best way to change your life is to change your mindset from I can’t to I can!

Step 1 — Breathe

Bring that doggone thing you always have attached to your hand or in your pocket or wherever you carry your cell phone around with you and take it to the furthest part of the house as far away as you can put it. Set it down and go to a very wonderful part of your home that is far away from any devices and breathe. Spend several minutes only focused on your breathing and nothing else.

Clear your mind as you breathe and only focus on how you breathe. Take breaths that are deep into your belly and take shallow short breathes, and then take two or three huge breaths and then just breath normally.

You may think this is a waste of time and you may not want to do it, but if you want to change your life then you have to do this process so that you will remember it more than anything. “Oh yeah, remember that day I just sat there and thought about breathing….very strange…(insert eye roll).”

Change Your Life Step 2 — Feel

What are you feeling right this very second. Be honest and tell yourself exactly what is on your brain. Is it negative? Is it positive? Are you feeling brain dead or sad or are you bored and feel lonely?

Are you feeling fed up with everything and everybody and just wish you could leave everything behind and go on a long vacation to Italy and drink wine? Or do you just feel like you are a dumb ol’ clod who doesn’t know anything?

Maybe you feel happy about the wonderful steps you are taking in changing yourself and feel pride and excitement about your life?

What exactly are you feeling? Be completely and totally honest with yourself. Write these feelings down after you have really figured it out.

Think is Your Step 3

This is where “the rubber meets the road” so to speak. You must think here about what it is you really want. What will make you happy and what exactly will change your life. Clearly you have been wishing things were different, but wishing doesn’t really mean anything. I wish I had a new car, but the truth is I love my car. Or, I wish I could lose 50 pounds, but the truth is I’d be a skeleton with skin if I lost 50 pounds. That’s not what I really and truly want.

My I can story included this journey many years ago and this particular step was my most troubling because I didn’t know what I really and truly wanted, I just wanted to stop hurting all the time. Don’t beat yourself up on this because that is wasted. That’s what I did and it took way too much time when I could have been saying to myself “yeah but what do I really and truly want?”

Before you go any further in your journey, you must tell yourself what it is you really want because that is half the battle. The rest won’t be easy, but it will be simple as I said before.

If you get stuck on this and you want to read some more on this particular topic, go here: Confused About What you Want? Who Else Wants to Discover their Life Vision?

Step 4 — Set Daily Targets – Goals you Will and Can Achieve to Change your Life

Don’t set pie in the sky targets. Set simple, achievable, actionable goals that will give you little wins. Start out small with simple targets such as park as far away from the door to your work so that you have thinking time and more steps. That’s pretty basic, so you could go a little further than that of course depending on your circumstances, but the important thing is to get these targets set.

Making a plan of action will help insure that you actually take action. You could stand in front of your mirror every morning and say out loud “I can do this. I got this!” Or, you can journal every single day about your day and the ways in which you want to change your life.

And the Final Step 5 is Action — Take Massive Action Towards What You Really Want For Yourself to Change Your Life

Basically at this point, just start doing your targets each and every day. Bookend your day with “what’s my goal for the day?” when you wake up, and “did I achieve my target” right before you knock off for the evening.

Holding yourself accountable for taking those steps will make a huge difference. Reward yourself with something when you achieve the targets, and evaluate when you don’t and figure out why you didn’t and what it’s going to take to insure you do take your action steps. Truly changing your life takes some evaluation and feedback. Are you further today than you were yesterday? Awesome!

Change Your Life – How Do You Eat an Elephant?

One bite at a time. I’m sure you’ve heard that. If you don’t believe me, draw a huge square of blocks on a sheet of paper. Each and every day color in a cool color of one of the blocks. One day you will see that the whole sheet has been colored in. It’s so cool! Hang that on the wall and show yourself what you did. That’s pretty easy, you can do something else, but that’s an easy start.

You know it is interesting to note that whatever you set your sites on is where you will eventually end up. If you’re always telling yourself you are not good enough, then you will never be good enough, but if you tell yourself where you are going in life and take the actionable steps to get there, then one day you will wake up and you will have arrived. You’ve done it! You’ve really changed your life and it wasn’t even that hard!

Breath. Feel. Think. Set Goals. Act. See? Simple.

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Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Thessalonians 1:2

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,
Ephesians 3:16-17

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.
Ephesians 4:7

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32

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#memes