Do you really want to change something in your life but can’t quite seem to take the first step?
Or do you get all excited and take action straight away but then find that your motivation disappears and you’ve gone back to exactly what you were doing before?
My guess is you probably do a bit of both in different areas of your life.
Does this struggle to change show up in your job, in career decisions, in your relationships or your health and wellbeing?
Change is really hard for us all, and there’s a reason for that. Don’t worry you’re not alone.
When we can understand a little more about why change can feel so challenging it can help us to become more aware of the tricks we play on ourselves to stay where we are.
Firstly, there’s fear. This is probably the one thing that stops us all the most!
Our survival instincts are strong.
You’ve probably heard of ‘fight or flight’, and in the olden days this instinct kept us safe and out of trouble. Ultimately these instincts kept us alive.
But in today’s society we perceive ourselves to be under threat almost on a daily basis, and this is what causes us to live with high levels of stress and anxiety.
We’ve all felt like this – when something unexpected happens and it feels like the rug’s been pulled from under our feet.
Or we cling to things so tightly, to something that we feel we wouldn’t survive if we no longer had it.
Some of us literally feel like our survival is constantly under threat.
So when you decide to take action to create something new and different our survival instinct kicks in because we’re not sure if we’re safe.
It’s safer to stay where you are, and so we don’t create the change we want so very much.
Secondly, there’s random action. This happens when we’re not really clear on what we want to change going forward.
We just know we don’t want to be where we are.
So, we take random action in the hope that it will get you away from where you are right now.
When you take random action things will absolutely change for you in the short term.
But random actions will always feels like hard work and an uphill struggle. That’s because where you’re heading is likely not where you want to be either.
You will quickly lose motivation, and then it’s quite possible that it feels like nothing much has really changed at all.
Here are some tips to create the change you want more easily:
- Decide why you want to create change. Get clear on what it is that you truly want in your life in 6 months or a year. Then ask yourself what will this give you? Why do you want to create change? Will this change give you freedom, peace, joy, love? Choose one word that describes everything that this change will give you. Be really clear on this one word and write it down.
- Take new micro actions. In order to create this bigger change in your life you have to change things right now. It’s unlikely you will get this bigger change straight away, and you might not be clear how to get there. You will need to take small steps first so the path becomes clearer. Ask yourself how many actions (there will 1,000’s) you do on a daily basis resonate with the one word you chose. If its freedom, like me, then check what actions resonate with freedom. Eliminate actions that don’t resonate to freedom, and replace them with new actions that do.
- Make your action your own. Don’t take new action because everyone else is telling you that’s what you should do. Be sure your actions resonate with what you want to create for yourself. This will get you to where you want to go far quicker.
- Be aware of fear. Fear is sneaky, it will creep up on you, and stop you from creating what you want. Be aware of it, make peace with it and know it’s trying to keep you safe. That way you can move through the fear knowing that even though there might be a little risk involved, you are still safe.
Remember: Start small and build from there.
Much love,
Natasha x
