Change Your Life (A Step by Step Guide!)

If you could do anything right now, even within the restrictions of the pandemic, what would it be? What are your heart’s deepest desires?

Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn a new language or how to salsa dance or maybe it’s something big like a complete career change. Maybe you want to deepen your intimacy with your partner or learn how to draw better boundaries in your relationships. 

Whatever it is that you’ve had on your mental to-do list for a while that you never seem to get around to…now just might be the time to finally do it.

I got inspired the other day by something my dear friend (20+ years!) and long time mentor (he taught me how to meditate at the Chopra Center about a zillion years ago!) Davidji posted on Instagram:

“Imagine if someone granted you the opportunity to step away from the insanity of your conditioned life.  And they said, “take a month and do, study or practice anything you’ve ever dreamed of…(except travel)…”

“The gift is here. The universe just offered you the once in a lifetime opportunity to step into your power & your own impact…

So wadda ya gonna do with it????”

Talk about a powerful shift in perspective. But how do you take real action on the changes you want to make, big or small? 

One step at a time. This week, I’m giving you a step-by-step guide on how to embrace this time as an opportunity to create lasting, sustainable changes and elevate the quality of your one-of-a-kind beautiful life. 

If it feels particularly difficult to get motivated right now, that’s understandable. You might be dealing with overwhelm, massive amounts of stress, anxiety, and even fear in the face of the global pandemic we’re in.

Last week, I shared strategies to help you better manage fear of the unknown, so if you haven’t caught that episode yet, I highly recommend you go check that out first right here. Why? 

Because fear and our relationship to it impacts our ability to take positive action in our lives. In order to embrace this time as an opportunity for growth, you’ve got to really look at what’s going on under the surface so you can process and make space for the changes you want to make. 

Here’s why this time could be exactly the right time for you to do this work:

In both my professional and personal experience, some of the greatest opportunities for making big changes come when life throws us what I call a game-changer. 

For me, it was getting diagnosed with cancer in my early thirties. It’s basically a peak experience that shakes up your life so that you’ll never go back to the way things were before. It changes the rules, it changes your thoughts, it changes your priorities.

And if this Covid shit isn’t a gamechanger…I don’t know what is. 

Before we get into the steps, I want you to check in with yourself: are you an “all or nothing” type of person? If you’re nodding your head yes, I’m going to ask you to throw that kind of thinking out the window. 

Real and sustainable change happens in small, daily action steps…not all at once. Transformation is built on new behaviors, new choices and new decisions…step by step. 

In this week’s downloadable guide, I’ve created a series of exploratory questions to help guide you to what needs to change, what might be blocking you from achieving it and how to break down your goals into bite-sized chunks so you can actually get some momentum going and make changes that stick. You can grab the guide right here. 

Step One: Take An Honest Inventory

Make some time and space to think through all the things in your life that you might want to make some changes around. What’s working? What’s not? 

You can go through your life categorically and think about all the big and small changes you could make that would elevate the quality of your life and your relationships. In the guide, I give you questions to help you get clarity, so be sure to download that right here.

Step Two: Identify Your Limiting Beliefs

In this step, you’re going to identify any limiting beliefs or stories that might be holding you back from making the changes you want to make. 

You’re also going to raise your awareness of any habitual thought patterns (like your running inner mean girl commentary). We can only change what we are aware of, so this step is about bringing information about ourselves and our pasts that might be unconsciously affecting our actions in the present. 

We all have what I call downloaded blueprints for everything, from the way we approach change to love and abundance to communication. Inside your unique blueprint are the influences, beliefs, and stories you grew up with from your family and culture of origin.

These stories and beliefs can feel true, but upon further examination, we realize they aren’t. We get to choose new beliefs that better align with our heart’s true desires. A lot of the time, we don’t even know what they are, because they are just so ingrained in our minds and lives. 

In the step-by-step guide, I’ve included questions to help you uncover this important data about yourself so that you can rewrite your blueprint and make different choices. 

Make sure to download it right here. 

Step Three: Reframe Your Perspective

Time for that perspective shift. The only way to do that is to first get a clear picture of what your current perspective is. Are you generally more negative or positive? How do you feel about your worthiness and your capabilities? Shifting your perspective to a more positive one is crucial to the process of successfully making life changes. 

In the guide, I’m giving you some questions that will help you understand and review your perspective and give you tips on how to improve it so that you’re building those changes you want to make on a strong foundation of healthy self-esteem and positivity. 

Step Four: Sub-Steps

In this step, we’re going to take a look at the list you made in step one. Maybe you have a big list that feels impossible or just one thing that feels HUGE. It’s time to break down the big things into smaller, incremental sub-steps you can take to reach your goal. 

Here’s an example: let’s say changing careers is your big goal. Small steps to take might be:

> Finding out more about the industry you’re interested in making a shift to. 

> Talking to someone who’s in that career and getting some information about what it’s like to have boots on the ground.

> Doing research on any gaps in your education that you’d need to fill.

> Finding programs that would help you meet the credentials you need. 

> Brainstorm with people you trust. 

Do you see how I broke that down into actions that you could take in less than 20 minutes a day? These small steps are the building blocks to the big change you want to make. 

Step Five: Get It On Your Calendar

The last piece of this is for you to put those small steps in your calendar for accountability so things actually move forward and get done! 

You can set an alarm or notification for reminders. Remember, you don’t have to change everything at once. Just try to take one small action step each day. If you want to get an accountability buddy, that could be a welcome support. You don’t have to do this alone! And I’ll be cheering you on like a wild maniac!

I want to hear what your thoughts are on this whole entire process, so feel free to connect with me here by dropping me a comment, on Facebook, here or on Instagram @terricole! I would be so honored to witness you, so tag me! 

Thank you so much for all the comments on YouTube and heartfelt reviews on iTunes, it really does mean the world to me. Make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit the bell so you get notified when there’s a new episode so you don’t miss a thing. 

If you think this could help someone in your life seize the beautiful opportunity we have right now to make real, lasting changes, please share it with them. I would be so grateful. 

I hope you enjoyed this episode and it added value to your life! I hope you have an amazing week doing your homework (here’s that link to the step-by-step guide one more time!) and as always, take care of you.

P.S. If you need additional support right now, I’ve partnered with Better Help, an online therapy platform, and I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. It’s the largest network of licensed and accredited mental health professionals online, so you can get therapy when you need it right from home. Here’s the link to learn more.