If you want to bring about change in your life, it’s the small things you do every single day that are going to make the biggest difference. Life change, career change, mindset change – however badly you want this, it won’t happen overnight simply by you deciding upon it. You need to take action.
If your goal is to run 5k, and you follow the couch to 5k plan – you’ll start week one with 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of walking. Literally, small steps – taken every day. It’s the same with any goal – stick to the habits, work on them every single day, and you WILL make the change happen.
There are 4 things I’ve started doing over the last 10 years that have changed my life. I recommend them to my clients and I’d love to share them with you too.
Be thankful – Please don’t stop reading! I know gratitude is everywhere. But I promise, if you haven’t tried this yet, start today and if you don’t feel a difference then I want to know about it! Every morning think of 3 things that make you happy and every night 3 things which made you feel good that day. They don’t have to be a massive deal. Today mine were my health, the freedom to spend time with my daughter and the cuppa my husband had just made for me. Please give it a go, you don’t have to go out and buy a new notebook to do this, you don’t even have to write them down. Just start noticing them. Soon you won’t be able to stop at 3 and over time you’ll get deeper with it and they’ll become more meaningful.
Be positive - When you’re feeling negative, ask yourself “What good thing is happening?” Ask it out loud and see what you come up with. If you’re a Mum thinking of changing your career or starting your own business, you’re probably going to experience some negative thoughts. They can overwhelm you and hold you back. You could be asking yourself why you’re doing this, it’s too hard. If you can find 5 minutes every week to sit yourself down in a quiet space and ask yourself this question, you might not get rid of the negativity completely, but you’ll drown out it’s noise with your much louder positive thoughts and you might find you notice solutions easier too.
Write it down – When you have a problem, a negative thought, a worry – write it down. Journaling is a place where I put my thoughts into words. Where I can write freely and with honesty. It makes a massive difference to my day when I can capture the things that are playing on my mind and take them from my head to the page. There are so many options out there for journaling. Bullet journaling is a big thing at the moment, you could simply grab yourself a pretty notebook and start writing about a worry or try Morning Pages – stream of consciousness writing. I find doing a bit of lots of things helps me. Sometimes I write lists to do, gratitude, things to feel proud of, sometimes I pose myself a question and see where it takes me or use affirmation cards to give me some inspiration, other times I just free flow and see where it takes me.
Be - And finally, find something that gives you some headspace to just be. As a Mum and a business owner I spend a lot of time ‘doing’. Everything tends to have a purpose, to the point where, I lost sight of the fact that this is all supposed to be fun- not a race to the finish line. So I started to find things to do,’just because’. Things like, playing my guitar again, having a bath, reading a book, no end goal apart from enjoyment.
What does just being look like to you? It could be listening to Audible with a glass of wine in the bath, an early morning walk before the day begins, singing, knitting, drawing …the feeling of knowing you don’t have to DO anything is so refreshing and is often when our most creative ideas are produced.
Which of these 4 habits will you try? I challenge you to try one for a week and share the results in the comments below.