7 Things You Stop Doing When You’re Ready to Change Your Life

How to know you’re ready to move on.

Do you want to be in a completely different place a year from now?

Are you ready to move forward?

Do you dream of making big changes and sticking to them?

Let’s be honest, making changes can be hard. But the alternative is much worse because refusing to change is refusing to live. Resisting change is natural, and there are many ways your subconscious mind creates resistance to change. When you are ready to change your life, you make some important decisions. What do I mean?

You make commitments and decisions that set you on a different path. You have what psychologist Benjamin Hardy calls a “Point of no Return” experience where you become fully committed to a new path. These are moments when you know you must change or die trying.

Here are seven things you stop doing when you’re ready to change your life.

You stop loving your past more than your future

Doctor Joe Dispenza says if you want to change your life you have to “Fall in love with your future.”

When you are ready to change your life you create a compelling vision of your future that pulls your forward. How do you know you have the right vision? Simple. You can’t help but follow it.

Your vision of a better future must be more powerful than the pull of your past. Not only does it need to be big, but it should also scare you a little bit. You can see how to get where you want to go, but getting there will require you to show up as your most powerful self.

If you believe your best days are behind you, your vision for your future is not where it needs to be yet.

You stop hesitating

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. –Walt Disney

When you are ready to change your life, you do not ruminate endlessly over all the different options in front of you. Instead, you take consistent, calculated action toward your goals.

Will you still feel fear? Of course you will. Most people don’t reach their potential because they’re too afraid to take action. Plagued by fantasies of failure, they imagine how much better their life could be if things were different. But never do anything about it out of fear.

You may fail, but not taking action is a failure by default. If you fail while striving, at least you will fail forward. That means your failure will teach you something important about changing your life.

You can only reach your dreams if you dare to take consistent action.

You stop trying to control the process

Your journey and outcomes will be different than someone you admire. Just because it happened for them, doesn’t mean it will happen for you the same way. Your path is your path, and no one can travel it for you.

When you are ready to change your life you will have to let go of what Tony Robbins calls “the tyranny of how.” Most people get so caught up in how they will get to where they want to go that it becomes overwhelming. With so many uncertainties and unknowns along your path, trying to predict what will happen will only decrease your confidence and increase your anxiety.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. –Friedrich Nietzsche

It is your reason for making the changes in your life — your why — that will carry you through the unseen challenges you will face. No strategy in the world is as effective as a solid why when you face inevitable obstacles.

You do not get to control the process, you only get to control how you meet your challenges along the way.

You stop chasing the next shiny object

There are endless possibilities for you. That is a bad thing.

Having many choices means you have to make many decisions. When you cannot decide what to do, analysis paralysis sets in. You will want to jump at every new opportunity that comes along. This happens because you are not grounded, and you don’t know yourself very well.

To make the right choices, you need to know your limitations. You also need a firm grasp of what you want in life, and a mindset for how you plan to face adversity.

Make a choice, and commit to seeing it through until the end. When you make a definitive decision, you cut off other options and other paths. You cannot be an entrepreneur and also have unlimited free time. You must choose one.

While you might fear missing out on opportunities that come up if you make a definitive decision, the opposite happens. The opportunities that come once you decide are in line with where you want to go and the person you want to become.

You stop lying to yourself

Excuses are the enemy. As long as you make excuses about why you can’t change, why you are at a disadvantage, or why it won’t work for you, you will remain stuck.

Excuses are a sneaky way of lying to yourself, and you believe the lies because it is too painful to face the truth. You won’t be able to move forward until you can face the truth of your situation.

What got you here in the first place?

Why are you afraid to move forward?

How are you sabotaging yourself?

You can spend your energy telling yourself a story about why you don’t deserve the life you desire. Or, you can let go of your excuses and do what it takes to step into a new future.

What excuses are you making that are holding you back?

You stop trusting your ego

Excuses are closely tied to your ego. You make excuses to protect your ego from getting damaged.

When you face your reality, your ego will fight back. It will tell you that you deserve better. It will tell you life is unfair. It will try to make you believe you are special and above the rules.

If you are trying to make your life better, you can bet that your ego will try to hold you back. The only way to subdue your ego, according to Ryan Holiday, is to “always stay a student.”

A commitment to change your life is also a commitment to learning. Until you can admit you don’t know everything, that you are not above doing the work, and that you cannot be successful without help, you aren’t ready to make the change.

Do not trust your ego, and do not listen to that voice in your head trying to convince you of your specialness and greatness. Prove that you are both special and great by putting in the work and getting results.

You stop avoiding the work

A real writer writes. A real entrepreneur pitches. A real musician plays.

Dabblers and pretenders try to live the lifestyle of their dreams without ever getting their hands in the dirt. Making a change depends on you showing up consistently, especially when you do not feel like it.

As I write this, I finished my day working at my full-time job, ate dinner, and wrangled two little boys into bed. It would be easy for me to put my nose in a book or veg out in front of the television. But I am a writer, so I’m sitting here writing.

Some people avoid doing the work by numbing themselves. Food, alcohol, and drugs will take the edge off to make you feel less guilty. Endless “research” will make you feel like you are taking action on your dreams, but all you are doing is procrastinating.

If you want to change your life, you have to stop avoiding the necessary work.

I know it’s scary and uncertain. I know you are afraid you might fail, I’m afraid I might fail too. But making a mistake–even failing–is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Staying stuck where you are is.