Grow Everyday
 |
| via pinterest |
Last night I came up with the novel idea to do something everyday that leads me closer to the life I want to live. Brilliant, right? But here's the thing, I am living the life I want to and I do feel that I'm on the right track for further enrichment. It's just that personally, I feel much better any day that is filled with things/thoughts/experiences/habits/people that line up with what I love, value and ultimately desire for my life. I don't always make the choices that I want to consistently because at times I get caught up in what I want at the moment instead of choosing what will lead me to what I want the most. I'm the kind of girl who craves change and growth and newness regularly so even though I'm so grateful for the person I am today, I'm equally excited about the person I am becoming. Want to join the fun?
Define your values
This means you might have to do some serious soul-searching. What are your core beliefs? What drives your major decisions? What do you desire most in life for yourself and for others? What do you need to feel purposeful, at peace, connected, loved and/or happy?
Identify small steps
Try not to be too over zealous here. You can't expect to go from 0 to 60 and sustain that long-term. That's what we want, long-term transformation, which will inevitably be slow and gradual. If you sit on the couch all day now don't decide to run 5 miles a day at 6am starting tomorrow. Instead you would start by taking walks after dinner or going to the gym for a class 2-3 times a week. It helps to look for evidence of the behavior that you desire in your current life. For example, you may want to read more daily and you already web surf for more hours than you'd care to admit. You could replace a few website views with reading a few pages of an ebook. The key is small actions that you can repeat daily without completely shocking your system.
Commit
Decide officially what you will be doing and when you will start. Write down your goals, this is very important! Tell someone who will keep you accountable like friends, family or a group of people with the similar goals.
Help yourself
Hopefully you know yourself well and you can recognize potential areas or times where you are more likely to give up on your goals. Use that to help you! Back to that reading example, you could set a timer when you first get on the computer to limit your web surfing and remind you to read your book. You could also change your homepage to something that will remind you to read instead of web surf for hours on end. Will power is never enough, its imperative that you help yourself with effective guardrails (for you).
Act everyday
Now it's time to do exactly what you wanted to do! Take it one day at a time, one action at a time. You can do this!
Forgive yourself and keep moving
You will fail. You will mess up. You will want to give up and go back to your old behaviors. Let's just get that out of the way upfront so there aren't any surprises. Dust yourself off and try again! We are going for overall consistency NOT perfection. You can still do this :)
Experience change!
Oh, did you want to hear what my 'change actions' are?
Exercise daily-I'll do short walks on rest days
Quite time daily-Doesn't mean I have to be quiet, but I will be centered on Jesus
Read something - Books, the Bible, magazines, articles anything that adds to my life
Create something- Write, make a video, knit, paint, develop an idea etc
I do all of these thing often and I've seen a lot of fruit from them, when I do them. Now I want to commit to intentionally do these things daily!
-Love, S
No comments
Post a Comment