How Can I Change My Life?

How Can I Change My Life?

One of the things I notice when I’m asked “how can I change my life?” is that the person asking is often really resistant to being told that they need to be taking action. They are adamant that they want to achieve their goal and it’s the most important thing to them right now, but taking sustained action doesn’t fit in with their day-to-day lives.

People are often dismissive of attempts to encourage or cajole them into action. Plus, I can usually visibly see them digging their figurative heels in to do it their own way, and only that way.

People appear to be defensive of their actions and have a long list of reasons why they can’t do the things I suggest.

Fighting For Your Limitations

There’s a great quote which refers to how we fight for our perceived limitations.

If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.

How often do you find yourself defending your current situation? In other words, fighting for your limitations? You’re just too busy, too tired, too this and too that to be able to do those things.

The real problem is that you’ve convinced yourself that it’s ok to be where you are now, even though you’re unhappy with it.

You do this because you feel justified, especially compared to your peers, because their attainment is very similar to your own.

Sticking With The Same Crowd

As the saying goes, ‘birds of a feather flock together’, and as long as you’re flocking with the birds you feel comfortable with, then you’ll carry on doing exactly what you’re doing. You might even criticise or gossip about one of the other birds if they try to grow better and more colourful feathers.

On the other hand, you’re  justly proud of yourself when you take action on the difficult things and discover fairly quickly that not only are you capable of this daunting task, but that you find it easier than you thought you would!

Turns out that it’s the thoughts in your head that have created a monster, but once you overcome the monster, you get on with it and makes progress.

I Don’t Know What To Do

Learning is an imperative requirement of success. In fact, learning needs to happen every day so that our lives move forward and not drift backwards. But learning is meaningless if you don’t do anything with what you’ve learned.

There’s a tendency in the self-development world for people to become learning-junkies. You can get a real high from an a-ha moment. You discover something about yourself or the task at hand and think, ‘oh, that’s why I do that’ or ‘great, I can use that in my next project’ or whatever.

But, with that a-ha, the junkie moves on to his/her next hit, looking for the next a-ha but having never really tried or embedded the new learning into their lives so they miss out on the intended improvement.

Applying What You Already Know

How many times have you read something and rolled your eyes because you’ve heard it all before? It feels like old knowledge, it’s nothing special, in fact, it’s ordinary and therefore doesn’t merit any further consideration.

But how often have you put that knowledge into action?

As a coach, it’s sometimes frustrating to work really hard on creating and delivering content. You want your content to be fresh, engaging and novel, but, by the nature of personal development, an awful lot of that knowledge isn’t fresh or novel, because a lot of it could be deemed to be common sense.

Because, the thing is, everyone thinks there’s this big secret, but there’s not.

For the ones who finally pluck up the courage to move forward on their goals in a meaningful and consistent way, it’s the daily actions that make the difference. Yes, there are hurdles to jump, but there are also long meandering paths that take you through boring scenery. Sometimes it’s rocky and you stumble, but mostly it’s just…repetitive!

It Gets Tiresome

People who haven’t achieved the successes in their lives that they wanted think that those that have are cut from a different cloth or are just plain lucky. But thankfully, that’s not true, because otherwise for the vast majority of us, life could be exceptionally tiresome.

Because living a life thinking that it’s never going to get any better than this is tiresome.

Imagine a year from now being exactly in the same place that you are now. Will you be happy? Or are you expecting that something will have changed to create a more positive and rosy outlook?

Oh, wait, but that’s how the vast majority of people live their lives.

They’re tired with working a job that doesn’t fulfil them and takes up too much of their time for a pay that barely covers the bills.

They’re tired of waiting all year long for that one slice of heaven on a beach when they can relax and forget about everything that bothers them.

They’re tired of running themselves ragged, just to end up where they started.

I recently read a quote from Roger Hamilton, I can’t remember it exactly, but it went something like this:

If you’re working an average job or have average income, you probably earn just enough to have nothing.

Does that sound familiar? Yes, you have the ‘average’ trappings of an average life, but no more. You can pay the bills, you run a car, have a mortgage and can manage a holiday once or maybe twice a year, but that’s about it.

Most people live like this. And if most people live like this then, it must be average.

So How Can I Change My Life?

So going back to that person who wants to step away from this average lifestyle. What’s stopping her?

Easy.  She needs to be taking action.

But not just any action, after all she’s already lifted herself above most ‘average’ people by her readiness to learn new things. The problem is, it’s not making enough of a difference.

She’s currently bogged down with the learning and the implementation because she feels that she needs to know all these things before she can really move forward and put herself out there, in a big way.

But, big achievement will always require big actions.

Big actions will always require a willingness to fail, often multiple times, often at very inconvenient times and often when it’s embarrassing.

Face Up To Failing

Trying to avoid looking like an idiot doesn’t lend itself well to effective learning and implementation, instead it stifles development as we try to hide our failings from, of all things, average people, who of course, have an opinion on how things should be done…to fit in.

Not everyone wants to fit in with that model.  But the trouble is that most average people haven’t yet found a way to turn all that ‘knowledge’ into effective action and eventually into tangible results.

Make It Happen

You can change your life.  The only thing that’s missing is your willingness to put yourself in the space where the magic happens. That space requires action, tenacity and a willingness to fail and try again, over and over.  There is no secret formula and it’s all within your reach.

What to do next…

> Read another post – The Reason You’re Not Achieving Personal Goals
> Join my free private FB Group – Click now to join my closed (private) Facebook Group
> Catch up with me on social media – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or Pinterest
> Sign up below 👇 for my weekly newsletter, keep up-to-date and get special offers!