Are you one of the majority of people who finds it hard to make changes to your life? Do you actually want to make changes in your life? Do you know how to make changes in your life? Do you know where to start?
In my work as a Wealth Mentor, (which involves a blend of being coach, trainer and advisor) helping people make changes to the way they work and live is a big part of what I do. To be honest, I have had to make many big changes personally to be doing what I am doing today. Becoming aware of a deep passion to educate others to become more empowered to make better financial decisions has been a catalyst for me making many changes in my life. Clearly there have been other changes that I have made at times, such as losing weight or getting fitter, that have not always been directly tied to a passion. But even then, those changes were made in the broader scheme of improving my overall life and enabling me to better live my passions.
I believe discovering your passion is an important first step because it is foundational to your life purpose and hence helps you define a goal that is worth fighting for. There is no point deciding to make a change just for the sake of doing it, or because someone said that you needed to make a change or you heard a great idea at a conference. So are you living a life with passion? Having some clear direction, founded with passion will help you stay focused and committed while you go on the journey of taking your life to the next level.
The next aspect of making change is to discover what you need to change to live the life you have now defined for yourself. There will be some changes that are obvious that you know about. But there will be other changes that you are not aware of because you have blind-spots. So this really now gets down to looking at yourself in the mirror and getting objective clarity about both your natural strengths and struggles. We help facilitate this by the use of the Financial DNA profiles and some unique facilitation processes. Knowing your natural strengths is very important because this is the platform from which you drive your life and build confidence. Then, being aware of your struggles is important so that you can manage them and be more aware of their impact. Having this knowledge is very empowering because it helps give you a reality check on both sides.
A common area that we deal with in the change process is spending money. Well, typically you do not just tell a spender to stop spending. They will not hear it and very often there will be an emotional rejection of it. The key is to get this person to see that the spending habit is a natural behavior that is part of how they were wired from early in life. There will then be more internal acceptance of the issue and a platform has now been created to make the change.
Further, understanding where the natural behavior has come from will also be important to drilling in the need for change. In my case, I have come to see how many aspects of my behavior have come from events early in my life. Whilst it does not in many cases give me an excuse for bad behavior, it does help in providing a framework for making lasting changes.
By going through this process you will come to see that others in your life, whether they be a husband, partner, child, family member or work colleague, will also have areas of natural struggle. This will then help you accept the need to make changes because the isolation has gone. We all have to make changes somewhere in our lives.
The next aspect is "just doing it". You now know where you need to go. So now you need to set some realistic goals which fit who you are and the pace at which you can go. Then you need to introduce a new routine or exercise to help you stay on track with the goal. This is where having a proper accountability program involving a coach, mentor or even a good friend will help. Making sustainable change is not easy to do alone.
Good luck! Making change can be fun and there are great rewards for doing it, even for small changes.
Posts
