You don’t need to go to a Utopian commune deep in the forests of Peru to enact personal and professional change in your life. The concept of change is simple, yet creating a new road map for your life is anything but. It takes work. Most of all, change requires mental fortitude in conjunction with a plan — a plan that you will put into action today and never look back!
Here’s 15 useful tips you can start using today to become the person you see yourself being a week from now, a month from now — and for years to come:
1. You must commit to your own development and make it #1 on your to-do list.
2. Make your personal development even more important than your career aspirations — after all, humans really aren’t designed to multitask!
3. This may sound cooky: Consider you were an investor looking to put up your hard-earned cash to someone, to help them achieve their personal development goals. How would you convince you (the investor) that you’re 100 percent committed and capable of becoming the person you want to be?
4 Give yourself a self-appraisal. I personally like Tony Robbins’ DISC Profile Personality Test. Be completely honest; you’re only lying to yourself and halting your growth otherwise.
5. Recognize that you’re making change because you want to, because something’s missing when you look in the mirror. Change should never be about conforming to someone else’s values, including the establishment.
6. Always reserve time for practicing what you’re good at, in addition to challenging yourself to improve your weaknesses. We tend to be at peace when doing what comes naturally. You can’t spend all your time toiling in the trenches.
7. Spend around 50% of your day improving weaknesses — weaknesses that are holding you back from being who you want to be.
8. Find a place to be alone once an hour or so and “incant” a specific goal you want to achieve or state (feeling) you want to be in. This has to be guttural incantation; not merely a soft-spoken, emotionless affirmation to yourself.
9. Find ordinary things to fill your day with that can help you develop. For instance, if you’re shy and want to be more outgoing: join a local sports team, bookclub, or volunteer at a youth center. Find something that forces you out of your shell.
10. Read or watch something personal-development related every morning when you wake up. I love everything Tony Robbins’ has out. Get the “Creating Lasting Change” audiobook series. Epic knowledge drops in that one!
Bonus Tip:
You have to become utterly dissatisfied with the way things are. As the master of change himself often says: “The pain of things remaining the way they are has to outweigh the pain you associate with change.”
Finding that pain trigger is the toughest part, no?
Share your thoughts…
Main image by Anthony Doudt
