As you ready yourself for positive changes ahead, watch how you talk to yourself, listen. There’s to be no more talking down to yourself, such as saying “Well, I blew it again.” Negative self talk is a dead giveaway that you need an attitude shift.
Thoughts and attitudes are where change begins. Don’t take this advice lightly because your thoughts have the power to control your destiny. When you feel or think there’s no hope, you are right. Understand that your thoughts control your emotions.
And that your emotions control your actions. What you concentrate on will happen. If your thoughts always focuses on rejection and failure, you’ll see a self fulfilling prophecy in your life. So change your thoughts, change your focus, and you’ll change the future.
Draw on strength and support from those you know who’ll support you. Fortify yourself so that you’re immersed in an environment where success can grow from success.
When you surround yourself with people, places, and things that inspire you, you’ll feel encouraged. Sometimes we think that all this “change your attitude” stuff is great, but it doesn’t just click at the snap of your fingers.
It’s true, unfortunately, our progress and results are rarely instantaneous. It can take a lot of effort to muster the mental and emotional fortitude that’s necessary to forge ahead when the support appears distant.
The Steps To Change
If you’re having trouble mustering the inspiration to change yourself, then surround yourself with the proper assistance that will give you the springboard you need.
Remind yourself that even under the best of circumstances, progress comes in spurts. There’s no sense in waiting for everything to be just right before rolling up your sleeves, because that time is never going to happen.
Fate isn’t just going to catapult you to the top without any scrapes or bruises. Sometimes, it will be a matter of taking three steps forward and one step back.
Other times, you’ll go through a phase of feeling like you’re not making any progress, and then you will suddenly leap ahead by ten steps or more. Never fight the natural growth curve you’re going to experience.
The Will From Within
Although the words bear similar meanings, “change” and “alteration” are not synonymous. Change is driven from within and governed by the right intentions.
Alteration is based on external factors, what others will think, what will impress someone, what will enable you to keep up, or maybe even just what will appease someone so they’ll leave you alone.
The trouble with all of this is that they’re most likely to cause greater insecurity, which in turn breeds lower self esteem. When you’re feeling low, you’re not as likely to feel invigorated and ready to take on your weaknesses, and a downward spiral results.
Change Is Uncomfortable
You’ve got to forget about any influences that lead you to look to others for approval. If you don’t, your happiness and success will always hang on the whims of others, and this reliance will only lead to a very frail emotional existence.
You’ll never get ahead because you’ll always be fretting over and worrying about keeping everyone else happy. You must concentrate on making yourself happy instead.
On the surface, most are open to change, but privately, or even subconsciously, they resist change at every turn. When you don’t make the changes you know are necessary, you feel weak and depressed.
Contrarily, when you successfully make changes, you feel positive and in control. Now here is a key thing to understand: It’s not the change that makes us uneasy or gives us anxiety, it’s how we perceive and handle that change.
Steps To Making Change
There are three ways on how you can make changes in your life. One of these ways is more powerful than the others in terms of conscious lasting change.
1.) Drastic circumstances require drastic measures. You could have a major illness, lose your job, or experience some other sort of personal tragedy. You might not have felt compelled to change your situation before, however, such events force you to change.
2.) The second way is slowly but surely. Gradual changes like this are more likely to evolve through personal relationships and circumstance, and other such long-term molding influences.
3.) The third change inducing factor is internal change. Both positive and negative factors can compel you. It’s under this unique method where you have willfully hit the pause button, and made a conscious transformational decision.
To Make Change Permanent
To get a change to stick, you must make sure that a few things occur.
• First, you must have a firm commitment to change. You need to have reached the point where in your mind, there’s no other option
• Second, you must be willing to pay the price for the change’s rewards, persisting even when you feel weak
• Third, you have to know where the change is taking you. How is this life transformation going to affect your life
Overcoming The Fear Of Change
What will the end results be? One thing that can really alleviate the fear of the unknown is doing your homework, so you know exactly what to expect. Carefully plan your steps toward success, even when you’ve never been there before. Remember, there’s a lot more security traveling new territory with a map.
When those closest to you seem to be the most discouraging, remember that they have only seen you the way you have always been. They have no experience with the person you’re going to become.
Fair or not, it’s the human condition that we’re judged, and that we judge others based on past experiences, rather than projections of their future potential. Some people may take these sentiments as extremely crushing to their confidence.
Make It A Habit
It’s been said that a new habit is made in twenty-one days. If such a short-term benchmark motivates you, go for it, but don’t believe for a minute that twenty-one days will make you home free.
Certainly, if you can persist in doing something for 21 straight days, you’re on the road to success. These short term successes are important because they enable you to start seeing and tasting what ultimate success might be like.
Also remember that even after two or three months of steady commitment, we can still topple from our new routines. Such an experience would be more closely aligned with alteration rather than true change.
The key is to continually reinforce your new habits and to hold yourself accountable to your new discipline. That way, you’ll never revert back to the old habits of your comfort zone.