How to make a change in your life: Small steps for lasting transformation

Perfection is not required on your journey to greatness. What is required is to show up even when it’s difficult to do so and take small steps. 

- Commitment
- Consistency
- Action

This is how you are going to grow toward the life you want and the person you are becoming. 

‍Start Small

Too often we convince ourselves that making a change requires massive action. Given that the prevailing mindset in today’s society is one of scarcity, particularly the belief that there is never enough time, it’s no surprise that people feel stuck and overwhelmed by the prospect of change. We simply don’t have enough time to commit to the massive action required to change.

The only cure is to stop listening to our inner critics and to start small. If you focus on who you wish to become and design a series of small goals that support this, you are more likely to achieve lasting behaviour change as you slowly and consistently build up new habits over time.

This is how you create a big change without worrying about the time involved. Habits become your foundation and when you change your habits you change your life. True and lasting change is really created in the small changes that you make every day to help you embody the person that you want to become.

“A slight change in your daily habits can guide your life to a very different destination. Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

Even when we know we should start small, we always start too big. What you want to do is make your goal so easy that you don’t need much motivation to do it. You are designing for consistency and that means simplicity is the key. The easier something is to do, the more likely you are to do it. If you identify small goals that don’t need much motivation, you increase your chances of attaining long-term change.

However, the way to maintain motivation and grow is to make sure that you are stretching your comfort zone because, not only does the greatest learning sit just outside of your comfort zone, if you make things too easy, you will get bored and give up. The key is to balance making sure that the goal is easy, so you generate enough satisfaction and pride in its achievement, whilst also being challenged, so you advance and grow towards the life you want.

Take action

Stop waiting for the perfect moment or for everything to be perfect and take action.

It will never be the right time, the right place, or the right anything, but just do something to start moving forward. Remember commitment, consistency, and action are your friends on your journey to greatness.

Accountability

Goals are easy to set. Staying accountable to them is the tricky part.

Accountability means being held responsible for your actions. 

Accountability helps you make consistent progress. When you hold yourself accountable for your actions and to your goals, you are communicating to the universe, and to yourself, that the goal is a priority, it’s not just something that may or may not get done. Writing your goals down and sharing them with others increases the likelihood of achieving them.

There are many forms of accountability, telling a friend and scheduling regular check-ins with them on progress towards your goals. Work with a coach, join Intogreat, or use an App. Choose the type that works best for you. 

Practice compassionate self-talk

Most people think motivation is the true engine of behaviour change. They think they can create a vision for their life, design goals, build new habits, and then motivate themselves to stick to them if they find the right rewards and incentives. BJ Fogg in his book Tiny Habits, points out that the problem is that motivation, by itself, is unreliable. 

Anyone can work hard when they feel motivated. It’s the ability to keep going when the change is uncomfortable and not exciting that makes the difference.

Experience has shown that the majority of people tend to place unduly hard expectations on themselves. When they decide to make a change in their life, they expect to make progress in a linear fashion, meaning they move forward, successfully, and consistently. If they don’t see immediate results or if they fall from alignment with their vision, they think of change as ineffective. This is when the inner critics get louder, telling them to stop wasting their time and energy. That they don’t have what it takes, and ultimately, that they will fail to achieve their life aspirations. I have seen people give up and settle for a life that they don’t dream of because they have believed the lie that what they want is unachievable. 

We all fall off track at one time or another because change is hard. It takes commitment, consistency, and action to achieve your goals. If you are taking action, no matter how small, then you are not failing because you’ve taken the hardest first step, committing to wanting more for yourself and your life.

The way you speak to yourself when you suffer a setback, get demotivated, or fail, matters. How do you make yourself carry on? My advice is, “If you wouldn’t say it to a friend, then don’t say it to yourself.” You are human. Not everything in life is meant to go according to your plan. It’s how you treat yourself in these moments that determine how successfully you can grow towards the life you want. 

When you fall from alignment with your goals, this isn’t a failure. It is an opportunity to learn, and learning is a fundamental, and often overlooked part of the change process. 

In these moments I encourage you to choose curiosity and compassion over judgment and giving up.

What are you learning at this moment that is going to allow you to create a stronger, better, and more effective plan of action? How might you need to refocus your attention? 

Recognise these moments for what they are. They are part of your journey, an opportunity for corrective action and for reinforcing your vision. Learn from that mistake, pivot, and move on, becoming better, smarter, and more focused on what you really want.

Celebrate the small wins!

Many of us think that the action taken is the reward itself, but taking time to celebrate our small wins can have huge consequences for our motivation and ability to keep moving forward. 

When we celebrate, we tap into the reward circuitry of our brain. Dopamine is released and processed by the brain very quickly so by feeling good at the right moment, we cause our brain to recognise and encode the sequence of behaviours and actions just performed. In other words, we can hack our brains to create a habit by celebrating and self-reinforcing. 

What causes one person to feel good might not work for another person which is why it’s important to think of something you can do or say, internally or externally, that makes you feel good and creates a feeling of success. This is why change is personal. The feeling of success is a powerful catalyst for change. Your confidence grows when you celebrate not only because you are creating new habits and achieving your goals, but also because you are getting better at being nicer to yourself. You start to look for opportunities to celebrate yourself instead of berating yourself. Celebrate those wins, no matter how small. 

Stay committed, and remember, you are building for the long term, so patience, consistency, and action are your keys to success.