I have a post up on Get Rich Slowly today about getting the ball rolling with financial management, where I talk about “cross-training” skills from one area of your life to another.
Here, I want to just quickly lay out a recipe I use for making meaningful personal change in any area. You may recall, personal change is kind of a kink of mine.
Here’s how I do it:
- Set an intention: it’s vital to be really clear about what you want to do, in as specific and realistic a way as possible. Not simply, “I want to be a writer” but, “I want to be supporting myself making X income doing this type of writing by such-and-such a date.”
- Know where you’re starting from. Thorn Coyle talks a lot about ‘knowing yourself in all your parts’. If you want to change something in your life, whether its a small habit or a major life change, you need to know who you are and what that part of your life is like now.
- To get that knowledge, keep a record. Just write down what you do. What you spend, what you eat, what you dream, what you write. Whatever area you want to focus on, to transform, put your attention there with a journal or a log.
- Energy flows where attention goes. Once you know what you are doing now, take action to change it into what you want to be doing instead. Remember that you can’t simply break a habit; if you cut something out of your life you need to replace it. Choose what to fill those gaps with as you create them, or life will pour in and clutter them up while you’re not looking.
- Make that action small, sustainable and as much fun as possible so you can keep doing it over the long haul.
- Repeat as necessary.
- Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
I’m curious how you all do these things. How do you change your life?
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