I’ve experienced significant changes in my life. For example:
- I don’t drink to gain acceptance (I don’t drink; I accept myself)
- I’m no longer drowning in debt (I never did find my cure in clothing)
- I don’t use people to have childhood issues met (years of therapy met that need)
- I don’t work too much (I’ve found my value in more meaningful ways)
- I am no longer trying to fix you (because fixing myself is a full-time job)
- I no longer eat chocolate to make me feel whole (strike that)
With my own life changes in mind, let’s get to how these 3 Tips for lovely, lasting life change might help you.
Tip #1 for significant life change:
Stay with it.
You’re not going to like it. Who wants to change? Change takes effort, energy, awareness. We are not a people who welcomes awareness. We spend our money, our time, our energy doing every possible thing to NOT be aware. That’s why we drink, shop, eat, play, work, and exercise. It might be why we live. It’s all to avoid our very real selves, our very real lives, our very real relationships, and our very real (and LARGE) problems! Trust me, if you are like me or any person on the planet, you are not going to want to stay with change. So Tip #1 runs counterintuitive: Stay with it! Stay with the inkling that you should change! Give change a chance. Stay with it!
Tip #2:
Stay with it.
That’s not a misprint. Stay with it. You tried tip #1 and you’ve considered something, some tiny little minuscule morsel of change. Now you are about to try it out. This might be the walking into the class you signed up for on Boundaries. It might be the 12th step meeting your therapist gently suggested. It might be the conversation you know you need to have, the phone is in your hand, and you are pressing buttons! It might be the exit strategy out of “something gone horribly wrong” and you’re about to make your move. With tip number one, you considered. Now you’re about to take some type of a-c-t-i-o-n, action. This is where Tip #2 comes into play: Stay with it. You can do this. You need to do this. It’s for your own good. It’s for the rest of the planet’s own good. Stay with it. Stay with it! Now let’s move on to our final Tip for amazing change.
Tip #3:
Stay with it.
Yes, smarty pants–you Change-Resistor you! Tip #3 is in fact Stay with it. Here’s what I mean. You are so resistant to anything fabulous in your life that you still want to cut and run and well, stay the same old sad way. The old and familiar is feeling pretty fine about now. That’s pathetically empty and you know it! You can say you tried –maybe you showed up to the welcoming boundaries class or tried the First Step or said “ah, pocket dial” before you hung up–but did you really give change a chance? The 3rd Stay with it, goes best with the other two Stay with it’s, it is cumulative adding up to something BIG, like this: “Stay with it. Stay with it. Stay with it.” Don’t ask me how, but the 3rd Stay with it packs POWER! It gives you something, like Gu or Red Bull, it’ll take you to the finish. That little something extra that allows you to run uphill or crawl even, like a grunt under the wire, to complete that last “point two” of the 26.2 mile race for change I promise you, is:
Lovely, lasting, life change.
So, Stay with it. Stay with it. Stay with it!