How To Make Immediate Progress Toward Changing Your Life
What have you done this week that will improve your life?
Life is busy. Life gets stressful. It’s easy to forget what you really want. It’s easy to disconnect from your purpose and priorities. It’s easy to fall into autopilot and go through the motions.
And it’s easy to watch time progress and realize you haven’t made as much progress on your goals as you planned.
It’s easy to lean on consumerism instead of optimizing your life for creative pursuits. It’s also easy to concentrate on the conditions of your circumstances instead of your inherent resourcefulness and abilities.
One way to determine the direction of your life is to gauge how much time you spend trying to improve the quality of your life. Then think about the time you spend trying to change or maintain your life.
What have you done this week that will improve your life?
Change is challenging because there’s uncertainty. Familiarity is comforting, even if you’re unhappy. Most people naturally gravitate toward the familiar even if they’re unhappy. If you can become comfortable with the prospect of change, progress is easy.
Be courageous enough to create the change you need.
1. Work hard, but also work wisely.
If you’re working hard on the wrong things, you’ll never see any progress. Effort matters, but only if it’s applied with forethought. If you want to see real change, it’s necessary to spend time doing constructive things above and beyond what is required to live your current life.
2. Seek out new learning experiences.
Learning new information can help to create change if you use the information. What are you doing instead of learning? Watching the same TV shows? You’re maintaining the status quo. New information leads to new understandings and growth.
3. Expand the people with whom you surround yourself.
Hanging out with the same people each day is another good way to ensure that nothing changes. New people can change your perspective and introduce you to new ideas.
4. Do something new.
The same gym workout repeated over and over again will ensure that you neither gain nor lose ground. The same behaviors deliver the same, reliable results.
Going into the same job and providing the same efforts ensures the same paycheck. Thinking the same thoughts results in the same actions. Same hobbies? No changes coming.
5. At the end of each day, consider what you did.
If I lived this same day over and over for the next 20 years, what would my finances, health, social life, and relationships look like? Did I do anything today to take my life to the next level, or did I ensure that nothing will change in the future?
Write your responses in a journal. You’ll tire of not having anything interesting to write, and instead, you’ll spend more time trying to make a difference in your life.
6. Keep your goals in mind.
Do you measure your progress? Goals are nothing more than desired changes. If you have goals and you’re making progress on those, you can expect to see overall progress in your life.
If you’re working hard but failing to gain any ground, spend some time each day taking actions that will give you the chance to accomplish something new in the future. The more time you spend this way, the more progress you’ll make toward the life that you desire.
With great love and gratitude, Aurora
