How To Make Changes In Your Life

Greetings fellow human,

The key to making changes in your life is really quite simple:

1) Find good instruction. Make sure your source is not a guy in a suit who just repeats what everyone else says. Consider the best out there, but do your own thinking.

2) Take it to heart. Let it sink in. Wrestle with it until you can embrace that often-bitter pill of change.

3) Make the necessary sacrifices, keeping a healthy-view of reality in mind. Make room for new growth.

4) Start as small as you need to...seems obvious, but consider how many times you've undertaken something that was beyond your scope and ability. Your long-term potential is unlimited; in the short-term, you have to work with what you can actually do, right now.

5) Keep at it, day in, and day out. Remember, change is not just something you 'do', in addition to your already-chaotic lifestyle, but rather, a new way of doing life.

In fact, "the way of discipline is the way of life". I heard that this morning while listening to a scholarly, English rendition of The Book of Proverbs.

6) Be creative! You are trying to make changes, right? That means YOU have to CREATE life DIFFERENTLY!.

Your tools: What you think, how you manage emotions, what you say, how you say it, to whom you say it, and when you say it, as well as your work ethic, focus, initiative, willingness to take responsibility, energy, and raw-belief in the possibilities.

7) Pay attention to what actually works, and not what is 'supposed to work'. How do you know what is supposed to work, anyway? Have you made these changes before, given your current circumstances?

8) At some point, you'll have to pass on what you've learned and achieved. This not only helps you refine and reinforce your experience, but it benefits those who need a role model and voice of hope for their own endeavors.

Here's to calibrating change - before the New Year,

JG