Hey guys!
I set out at the beginning of July 2021 to take a shot at something — something I’ve heard about in quotes and memes and wanted for myself. Have you ever heard of people who change their lives for the better in 6 months? You may have heard people or seen memes that say, “6 months of hard focus can put you 5 years ahead in life.” I wanna explore that.
Basically, I’ve started that sort of process. A systemic change where I focus on a few key parts of myself — my mind and its neural pathways, my diet (not a specific diet, just simply what I eat) and my willpower and self-discipline. In these avenues, I’ve begun to develop more healthy or advantageous habits in and for my life.
There are a million you could focus on over a 6-month period. These are the ones that made the most sense for me to work on.
I always hear people saying that change is not easy. I used to believe that, but now I would amend that statement. I’d say, “Change is not instant and it’s not always what you expect.”
But, if you come into the process with those expectations in mind, then you won’t be let down by your own rate of progression as you go. The changes are overcomplicated, I feel. We all must be thinking, “It can’t be that easy!” The literal changes themselves are pretty easy if you think about it: believe you deserve what it is you want. Eat less non-nutritional food. Get back on the wagon if you happen to fall off. All those things in and of themselves are easy to do.
Yet so many of us have the hardest time starting them or keeping up with them. Why?
I think it goes back to expectations. Nobody in formal education really teaches you how to change for the better or other good things like how to retain wealth. So when we find ourselves in the gutter and ready to get out, we often have no reliable source of knowledge to draw from in our endeavor. The internet has really made a difference in this because if you know what to look for, you can find the answers to these questions in time. We’ll I’ve put in some of that time for myself and I want to share a tidbit with you. 😊
Falling off is a part of the process. That’s what many of us have heard time and again. What isn’t professed so often is the idea that getting back on the wagon, putting yourself back on track to get what you want, is literally the process of change itself! And we are so used to doing it the old, less effective way, we have to keep pulling ourselves back to get and stay on course. And we get frustrated when we have to do that literally 100 times in a day, anyone would. I think the particular way we overcomplicate this situation is in the fact that we are so hard on ourselves for seemingly not succeeding at this. We are so quick to not forgive ourselves when we get off track.
But again, changing your life is not instant. It’s a process, and it can be a beautiful one if we let it. So this is a call to action: pick something in your life to improve (unless you are already trying to improve something now), start doing the simple change to improve it, and then when you find you’ve gotten distracted or off-course, try to forgive yourself, and then simply bring it back on track. And repeat as needed. No one told me this till this year, but this itself is actually the process of changing yourself for the better. So, try that.
The inevitably challenging part of this is being patient and forgiving of yourself. When you have a moment where that gets especially hard, establish and remember your real reason for wanting to change in the first place. You’ll find power in that. ❤️
I’m practicing it right now. Best of luck, everyone!
Evan