My next several posts will discuss a detailed plan for personal transformation. I’m going to tell you exactly how to change your life. So if you’re ready to turn your life around, this blog post and the ones that follow are going to tell you how.
You have to do the work
But first, I must offer a brief caution by way of introduction.
Watching a couple of YouTube videos, reading some blog posts, listening to some podcasts, even reading the very best self-help books: all these things can help you to change your mindset, but unless you put in the work, not much is going to happen, in terms of actually changing your life.
If you really want to turn your life around, you have to do the work. Understanding the ideas is not enough. You have to follow through.
But of course, you already know that, and right now you’re looking for some motivation. And hopefully, that’s what I’ll be delivering here today. So let’s get started.
The Five-Step Program
Today I’d like to offer a general overview of the program that I’ll be explaining in more detail over the course of the next several posts.
The program is pretty simple and straightforward.
There are five basic steps.
Step 1: Mindset
First, you have to change your mindset. Begin by believing that change is possible.
This is where all the self-help books and YouTube videos and podcasts can be so helpful. Those types of motivational content are intended to help you change your mindset. And here’s the thing: that’s really, really necessary if you want any of the rest of this to work.
If you’ve been stuck in life for a long time, then it’s totally understandable if you have to work really hard to overcome your deeply entrenched belief that you will always be stuck and that you’re fated to continue living the sort of life you have always lived. That’s understandable. But if you believe that nothing is going to change, then nothing is going to change… well, not for the better, anyway.
You have to allow yourself to believe in hope, just long enough to make some changes that will have a real impact on your life; and those initial changes will give you the confidence to continue to believe in the possibility of change. There will be setbacks along the way, and you need to build up enough of that confidence that it will carry you through the tough times, so you can face those setbacks with resilience, and keep on striving towards your goals.
Step 2: Set Goals
So next, you have to identify what your goals are. Benjamin Hardy describes this in terms of your “future self.” Who do you see yourself becoming in the future? Envision that future version of yourself, in great detail: not just your job, but also your location, and your companions, your clothes, and your habits. Then, take the necessary steps to become that person. Change whatever you need to change: your habits, the type of clothes you wear, your companions who you spend the most time with, your location, and your job: until eventually you become the person you want to be. It might seem strange, but for most of us it’s pretty difficult to name the specific goals that we’re working towards in our lives. We might be able to come up with some generic, common ideas like, “I’d like to make more money,” or “I’d like to get married and have kids,” or “I’d like to retire and move to Florida.” But identifying, really really specifically, what you want to do with your life, how you want your life to have real meaning and purpose for you and for the world as a whole? That’s much easier said than done. Most of us have no idea how we’re going to accomplish that. We don’t have goals, so we go through life reacting to situations as they arise, instead of acting with purpose. So this is what you’re going to change first. You are going to begin to act with purpose. You’re going to set goals for yourself.
Step 3: Identify Steps
Once you have identified your goals, the next thing you need to do is identify exactly what are the steps required to accomplish those goals. Now, don’t let this step become an obstacle for you. It’s okay if you don’t have every single piece of this figured out at the beginning; there will be a certain amount of learning as you go. But if you truly have your heart set on a big distant dream, then you’re going to have to start walking in that direction. For example, if you want to be an author, you’ve got to start by writing a book (unless you’re the sort of person who gets a book deal because of who you are and then hires a ghost writer; but if you’re that sort of person, then you’re probably not watching this video because you’re too busy sitting on a beach in the Bahamas drinking mai tais, so for the rest of us, we’re going to have to take the necessary steps first). So you’re going to identify the steps. What are the steps you will need to take, in order to accomplish your goals? Write those down, don’t just try to remember them in your head, write them down; and then, identify the incremental steps you’ll have to take along the way, to move you along the path towards your goals. There are steps you’ll have to take on the way to your steps. Write those down, as much as you can figure out from where you are now. Be as detailed as you can.
Step 4: Follow Through
Now comes the fun part. This is the big one. It’s arguably the most important part of the process.
Once you have identified the steps required to accomplish your goal, you have to follow through. Nothing is going to happen unless you do the work. You’ve got to follow through. You’ve got to do the work and make it happen. Get it done.
It’s not easy. It’s going to take time, it’s going to take effort, and it’s probably going to be unpleasant, tedious, or boring at times. It’s going to take you outside your comfort zone; and depending on what you’re trying to do, it may be psychologically or even physically painful at times. But if you care enough about your goals, then this is what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to put in the time, you’ve got to put in the work, you’ve got to follow through. Put it on a schedule, and get the job done.
Step 5: Evaluate Results (and Repeat)
But that’s not the final step. Most people who get this far look back and wonder, “Hey, I’ve done a bunch of work, why haven’t I achieved my goal yet?” And then they give up. But if you truly want to succeed, there’s another step. You have to evaluate your results. You have to carefully examine what work you’ve actually done, and figure out how effective it was. Did it actually get you closer to your goal? Has your goal changed at all while you were doing the work? Based on what you know now, what steps are you going to need to take in order to achieve your goal?
This final step is crucial, and most of us skip it. But by analyzing our results and recalculating our plan, we ensure that we’re putting in work that will be effective. You see, your plan is not set in stone. Your plan can change as you learn and grow; and if all goes well, you will learn and grow a lot. So you take what you have learned, and based on that, you reexamine your plan. Make changes to your plan as necessary: update it, or even come up with an entirely new plan, so you can keep moving towards your goal.
And then you repeat the entire process. You remind yourself why you’re doing this. You visualize your goal. You develop a plan for achieving your goal. You do the work. You evaluate your results.
And then you do it again. You remind yourself why you’re doing this. You visualize your goal. You develop a plan for achieving your goal. You do the work. You evaluate your results.
And then you do it again… and so on, and so forth.
Try to repeat the process every six months. I’m just throwing that number out there because that’s how far in advance I was able to develop my current plan: it goes about six months in the future. Tim Ferris has said he prefers to work in four-month intervals. Some people prefer ninety days; some people prefer to focus on longer time periods, like nine months or even a year. But until you’ve been doing this for a while, I wouldn’t recommend going more than a year out. So much can change in a year.
If you try to envision a five-year plan, you end up engaging in so much speculation that it loses its value as a working plan. There’s simply too much that we cannot foresee. Life changes too quickly for us to develop really specific actionable five-year plans ahead of time, unless we choose to lead the same sort of predictable lives that our neighbors lead, where we just keep doing the same thing year in and year out until we retire. And if predictable works for you, more power to you!
But if you want to do something really amazing with your life, then my recommendation to you is to set really amazing goals, and then develop your plan for achieving those goals, defining the action steps you will take in the next four to six months. And when you get to that point, you may not have achieved your goal yet, but you’ll be so much closer to it than you would have been if you had just sat on your couch and done nothing.
This is your opportunity to go out and live an extraordinary life. Be the best version of yourself. Be as excellent as you can possibly be. I can’t wait to see what you will achieve.
Leave a comment and tell me about your hopes and dreams. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, and be sure to watch for my upcoming posts, where I’ll be talking in greater detail about how to identify action steps and make a plan for achieving your goals.
Thanks for reading, everybody, and I’ll be talking to you soon!
