The road towards reaching personal goals or attaining positive change is difficult, and, at times, frustrating. It’s easier to keep things as they are rather than put in the time and effort needed to become a better person.
But settling for things as they are is the easy way out.
Don’t overwhelm yourself with too many adjustments at the same time. It’s great to be ambitious, but trying to change two or three things all at once can be stressful and difficult.
For entrepreneur Nick Crocker, lessons in personal change came early and often when he was building his first business. He spoke about useful techniques he learned to improve his personal life during TEDx Darwin, which Jessica Stillman, author, summarized in her article 10 Small Steps That’ll Help You Become the Best Version of Yourself.
Here are 5 easy steps you can follow to get on the path towards positive change.
1. Change Your Environment
Change begins with everyone and everything around you.
Take a look and see if there are people you spend time with that are generally negative and discouraging – and spend less time with them. It may be difficult at first, but when headed towards positive change, you need to be sure that the people around you aren’t going to distract you from your goals.
Tidy up your physical environment by cleaning your desk and cupboards of junk. Unnecessary clutter and weighs you down – start fresh on your way to reaching your goals in a clean, distraction-free environment.
2. Find Support
Positive change is easier to attain with encouraging and supportive people around you. If you want to get in better shape, but have trouble staying motived to get outside for a run, find a friend that will run with you and keep you on the right track (literally, and figuratively).
3. Be Patient During the Process
Walk, don’t run (unless your personal goal is to run a marathon, in which case, run). Taking baby steps and breaking your goals up into milestones makes the goals much more manageable, and hitting milestones on a frequent basis keeps you motivated.
You need to stay patient throughout this process. It can be months until the end goal is reached, and failing to remember this will cause you to rush through necessary steps out of frustration. Stay patient. You will reach your goals.
4. Measure Your Change
Whether its crossing x’s on your calendar, tracking results on a smartphone app, or monitoring the numbers online, be sure to keep track of your progress to see that you’re actually working towards positive change on a daily basis.
Measuring your change also makes it easy to see what Crocker call “chains of success” – and the longer the chains of success are, the harder they are to break.
Try creating dedicated blocks of time set aside for one change at a time.
5. One Change at a Time
Don’t overwhelm yourself with too many adjustments at the same time. It’s great to be ambitious, but trying to change two or three things all at once can be stressful and difficult.
Try creating dedicated blocks of time set aside for one change at a time. Even if it’s part of one larger goal, creating dedicated sets of time – e.g. one month, or six weeks – keeps you focused, and makes your goals seem more attainable and immediate.