7 Steps to Changing Your Life in One Year
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How do you make a drastic change in your life? How do you get from point a to point b when you feel like there are a million miles between where you are now and where you want to be? How do you even get started? What do you even do?!
I get it, when you want to create a huge change in your life, it can feel daunting, scary, and overwhelming. That’s why I’ve put together this 7-step guide to help you navigate these large change you want to make in your life.
Remember, this is 7 steps to changing your life in one year and not one month or one week or one day because REAL changes take time and we need to be realistic about how long it actually takes and we need to realize that consistency is so important. If you stick with something consistently for ONE YEAR, you WILL see change and that change WILL last. It is inevitable. So don’t give up after one month, that’s not enough time, don’t give up after 3 months or 5 months, because you’re still going to need more time. Focus more on consistency and less on results and one year from now you will be amazed by what you’re accomplished.
Link mentioned in this episode:
Episode 44: The Number One Reason Why You’re Unhappy
Episode 28: Struggling? You're Not the Only One!
Episode 55: Journal Prompts for Staying on Top of Your Goals
Episode 174: Are You Living Every Day Better?
If you want more from me, be sure to check out:
Instagram: @embraceyourreal | @movementwithjulie
Website: www.juliealedbetter.com
Free ebook: www.juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook
Amazon storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/influencer-6bda1ca8?ref=cm_sw_em_r_inf_pub_influencer-6bda1ca8_dp_DgsIam9salgfi
Transcript:
Hey. Hey, beautiful human. Can I steal 5 minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace Your Real With Me, Julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned. If you're ready to embrace a real. Let's get it. Let's go.
Hello and welcome back to another bonus episode so pumped on today's topic seven steps to Changing Your Life in a Year. I want you to visualize yourself in one year from now. Where do you want to be? What does your life look like? How do you feel? What are the things that you're spending time doing? How are you spending your money? How are you spending your energy? I know that when that question comes up and that visualization is kind of directed, like, think about it. It might feel like there's a million miles from where you are right now and where you want to be or how to even get started or what to even do to get from point A to point F, right. So in today's bonus episode, I thought it would be cool to kind of just give you a seven step guide to help you navigate this large change that you want to make in your life. But before I do, I had to share this review. It comes from jenlilymadigabe. I think that's how you say. She gave a five star review and said, thank you. Thank you for these amazing podcasts. After recently losing over 100 pounds, your podcasts are inspirational, motivating and educational. I have been on a muscle building journey for the last six plus months and I have just recently started listening to your podcast and I am enjoying every moment. Well, first things first, Jen, this is amazing. I think your name is Jen. There's like five names in there. Jen, Lilly, Madi, and Gabe. Okay, four names in there. So I don't know which one is your name, but I'm going to call you Jen. First off, losing 100 pounds is. That's amazing. I am so proud of you. And I'm so proud of you for being on a muscle building journey for the last six months. I know that that's not easy. I know that it requires perseverance and discipline. And man, I couldn't think of a better review to add to this actual podcast of talking about changing your life. I'm sure that there are so many lessons that you've learned over this last season of you losing £100 and then now being on a muscle building journey for the last six months. And that requires a lot of planning and a lot of dedication. And so, first off, so proud of you. Secondly, thank you for leaving this review. I'm so grateful for this community. Every single one of your guys reviews, they seriously bless me, they bless our team. And they also allow other people who stumble upon the podcast to just kind of know like how or what people are gaining from this podcast. And that's what they base their decision off of when they come to the Embrace Your Real page on the podcast. So thank you for doing that. If you could scooch over to Apple Podcasts and leave a reading interview, I do not take that lightly and I appreciate them so, so much. So thank you in advance for doing that.
Let's dive into these seven steps that will help you change your life in a year. If you have a pen and paper or if you have your notes on your your notes app on your phone, now is the time to get it out. We are officially in a classroom. Okay, step one, you got to do a life on it. Doing life audit. It is crucial for pinpointing where to make adjustments and jumpstart your new journey. It's also really important to audit like what you're feeling and why you're feeling it and why you're experiencing what you're experiencing, what's triggering it, what's the root cause? Without doing an audit, we can't really see what the underlying cause is. So if you're unsure of where to start, you've got to figure out the eight areas, main areas of your life, which are health, finances, personal development, spiritual career, relationships, self-care and free time, right? So maybe your health is great, maybe your finances aren't, or maybe your finances are great, but maybe your health is suffering, or maybe your career is going great, but your free time is not so productive. You got to pinpoint where your unhappiness on your problems are stemming from by auditing those eight areas in your life. And then after auditing each area and seeing kind of where you stand, you've got to determine what changes will make the biggest impact on your life and focus on those first. I know it might feel overwhelming when you audit all of those areas, and I don't want you I mean, unless you have a few hours to dedicate, which could be a great Sunday afternoon activity if you. I know Sunday afternoons.
Well, now we're going into football season. Well, that actually might be great because our spouses are watching football. We can actually take a few hours to ourselves and we can kind of do this audit and we can ask ourselves, but that might feel daunting. So if that feels daunting and you don't have a few hours to spend kind of sitting down and doing the life audit, I want to encourage you to do it over the course of a week. So maybe take like one or two areas each day and just kind of audit how you're doing. So how are you doing health-wise? How are you doing financial wise? How are you doing so? Spiritual wise. What about your career? What about your relationships? All of those different areas and kind of just audit them so that you can have them a down on paper, number one. And number two, you can kind of prioritize where you stand on each one and which one is a priority to start with.
Number two, make a mindset shift. Now, your mindset is truly what sets the tone for everything in your life. Honestly, changing your mindset is what will change your life. What we think and what we believe is what we act upon. And the one of the best things that we can do for changing our mindset is breaking this victim mentality, breaking this I can't mentality breaking this. Oh, poor me. I went through X, Y and Z mentality. When we're feeling unhappy or when we're feeling depressed in our lives, it's easy to think that everything is working against us and that everything is out of our control. And the fact of the matter is, if you are a spiritual person, I have my relationship with God. Everything is out of our control. But the most comforting thing is that everything is in his hands and everything might be working against us. But the most comforting thing is we already know who's the victor in the end, and we already know that he is going. And he promises to walk through every single thing that we go through. But it's really important that we kind of identify these things. It's really important that we stop this mentality of like, I can't move because I can't do anything. You have to place your trust in God and you have to remember that you're not going to be able to control everything. And that is okay. That is okay, that you can't control everything. But what you can control is your attitude. What you can control is what you choose to focus on. So focus on the things. Focus on the small things that you can control throughout your day. You can control how you spend your time. For the most part, of course, there's going to be times where you're like, Julie, that's just not the case. I get it. But for 95% of the time, you can control how you spend your time. You can control the extra ten or 15 minutes that you have. At the end of the day, are you going to be scrolling on Instagram or are you going to do something that nourishes your soul or that maybe feeds your mind, maybe educating yourself on something, you can control things. So stop telling yourself that you can't control all of these things. While you might not be able to control everything, right? You can control certain things.
Step three Create a vision. Now, having a vision means we have a clear purpose. It means we have a much larger purpose and picture for ourselves other than just the short term goals, right? Yes, short term goals are great, but they're oftentimes a surface layer, but a vision, an actual vision of how you want to live your life that gives you a greater picture of what you want to do or where you want to be or how you want to show up. You need to know exactly what that vision is, and then you have to have the purpose behind the vision. Why is that your vision? Why is it that you want to do X, Y and Z? And when you have that vision and you have the purpose behind that vision, that's what's going to help you stay motivated to make your vision a reality. I want you to think big, but also get very specific on what it is that you want to achieve and make this vision as clear as possible.
Step number four Create a roadmap. So once you have your vision, then you've got to figure out where you want to go, right? Without a vision, you don't really know where you're headed or how to get there. But once you have that vision, you can then kind of work backwards. Where do you need to go in order to make this vision a reality? What are the habits that you need to adopt? What are the smaller goals that you need to achieve? What are the obstacles, maybe, that are going to come in your way that you need to overcome? Without this roadmap, you will never get to where you want to be. You can't have a vision and just hope that one day you'll make it there. You have to sit down and get strategic about how you are going to bring this vision to life.
Step five Work on yourself daily. So once you have your roadmap, you need to execute and you need to execute daily. Consistency is key. Nobody is going to drive the car for you. You got to put in the work to achieve your goals and to change your life and to change your habits. Consistent daily practice is how you're going to make this happen. It's not the big grand gestures that make toward improving your life. You have to remember this, that it's not the big grand gestures that you make. You have to remember that it's not the big grand gestures that actually take you to where you want to go to improving your life. It's the tiny things over time daily that you do. Those actually compound and that's where you're going to see the biggest results.
Step number six, you got to visualize the destination. I have said this a thousand times before, but I don't believe even half of you are spending the time visualizing. So I'm going to repeat this because I know for me, when I first heard about visualization, I was like, This is kind of hokey. And the fact of the matter is, I truly believe that. And there have been many studies that have been shown in the psychology realm that visualization is so critical to you actually achieving what you want to achieve because you've already seen yourself do it. And our subconscious brain really does not know what was vividly imagined and what is physically real. And so the fact that you can do this and you can help yourself get to where you want to go by visualizing is awesome. So a silly example, if you can't picture yourself going to the gym today, do you think that you'll actually get to the gym? Probably not. If you can't picture yourself being the healthiest version of yourself, then it's going to be really hard for you to become the healthiest version of yourself. It might not look entirely exactly the way that you thought it would look, or maybe it does. I know sometimes I visualize something and it looks identical to what I had in my brain, and other times I visualize something and the feeling was the same. But the way that I got there was a little bit different. I know that it's difficult. I know that it sounds hokey, but start visualizing whatever the vision is for your life. You've got to visualize it. You've got to visualize it. Even if it's for a couple minutes in the morning while you're brushing your teeth or while you're driving to work, you don't need to close your eyes to visualize it. You can you can stay focused on the road, but you've got to quiet your mind. You've got to quiet your heart. I also in visualizations, I also invite God in and I ask God like, God, what is it that you want me to see? Or What is it that you want me to do? I'm like, Can I see a clear picture of this? And there's been so many times, you guys, when I invite God into my visualizations, I just feel like I have seen a whole new layer of things that I never have seen before. And it's because the Holy Spirit's real and he's speaking to you, and he wants his children to ask him things. He wants his children to come to him and say, like, Dad, give me a vision. Where is it that you want me to be? So definitely encourage you to invite God in to that process.
And then step number seven, find joy in this find joy in this process. If you are so obsessed with the outcome, you're going to feel miserable on this journey. And if you feel miserable on the journey, you're not going to stick to your roadmap. If you don't stick to your roadmap, you're going to struggle to bring the vision to life. I want you to celebrate all the wins, the small wins, the big wins, everything in between. I want you to develop. I want you to develop habits that you actually love. And I want you to find enjoyment in the process of it all. If you enjoy the process, it's not going to feel like work. And when it doesn't feel like work, you're going to be consistent. And if you are consistent, you will bring that vision to life. So if something doesn't bring you joy in the process, figure out why. Change things up and keep adapting your process until you actually start enjoying it. And lastly, remember this. This was seven steps to changing your life in a year, not a month, not a week, not a day. You have to remember that real changes take time, and we need to be realistic about how long it actually takes. We have to realize that consistency is so important. If you stick with something consistently for a year, you will see change and that change will be something that lasts. It's inevitable. So I want to encourage you. Don't give up after a month. That's not enough time. Don't even give up after three months or five months because you're going to need more time, focus, more on consistency and less on the results. And one year from now, you will be amazed at what you've been able to accomplish.
I hope that this helps lemme recap those seven steps for those of you list takers, or maybe you are now by pen and paper or your notes app and you can write them down. Step number one do a life audit. Step number two, make a mindset shift. Step number three, create a vision. Step number four, create a roadmap. Step number five, work on yourself daily. Step number six, visualize the destination and step number seven, find joy in the process. I have a few episodes that I want you to listen to as you are on this journey, so I will link them in the show notes. But I also want you to note these down so that you can go listen to them. Next Episode 44 The Number One Reason Why You're Unhappy. Episode 28 Struggling You're Not The Only One. Episode 55 Journal Prompts For Staying On Top of your Goals and episode 174 Are you living every day better? So I will link all of those in the show notes below. I hope that this episode was helpful for you. I want you to be unrecognizable in the best way. This is not just a physical thing. This is I want you to be unrecognizable spiritually, mentally, relationally, financially, all of those other areas in your life that matter. I want that for you. I want you to feel like you are finally on the right track. And so it's going to take some work. It's going to take perseverance, it's going to take patience. And most importantly, it's going to take having a vision with a clear purpose behind the vision. I love you so much. I hope that this episode helped you. If you have a girlfriend or someone in your life that you feel like would benefit from this episode. You can copy the link, screenshot it, posted up on your story. You can send it to them in a text message, whatever it is. I appreciate you spreading the message and I will talk to you and say I love you. All right, sister, that's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so, Julie. A lot better. Yes. It's women in the middle for that daily poser about real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me and means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember, that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace the real because you're worth it.