Making positive life changes using self-reflection

Making any significant positive change in our lives is challenging. Much of it comes down to the development of new habits and reinforcing self-belief in why the change is important to you.

Interestingly, one of the hardest aspects of building a new habit, can be genuinely committing to the path and sticking to it. There are different takes on how long it takes to build a habit, but most people suggest that it takes between 3 weeks and 3 months.

Change takes time, patience and commitment and the significance of that change compounds those factors. Nothing truly great was achieved easily; we need to practice the behaviours that will lead to achieving the results needed to change.

It can be frustrating and many people give up or lose focus as soon as they hit a roadblock or curveball. Is this the reason why people avoid change so vehemently? As they say, “change is scary”, but why is that?

I have always taken the mindset that change is exciting; it leads to new and exciting things, it allows us to grow and to improve ourselves; our productivity; our working environments; or really any facet of our lives should we choose to take the leap.

But here’s the catch, we rarely get it right the first time. The more significant the change, the less likely we are to get it right. To increases our chances of success we need to be somewhat pragmatic about our approach to change. Accept our own weaknesses and that we are going to have missteps and failures along the way and look at these as opportunities to do better.

My secret for successfully implementing change is to tackle things bit-by-bit, the smaller the mouthful, the easier it is to swallow. Breaking down the change activities into smaller milestones or achievable pieces will;

Reduce the risk of being overwhelmed

Breaking our change objectives into smaller milestones reduces the risk of being overwhelmed because it is easier to visualise how we’re going to succeed.

Balance any setbacks with wins from other activities

On top of that, along the way there are many opportunities for wins and that can keep you feeling positive and motivated about the change when you do have a setback or loss.

Learn from mistakes and make active adjustments

Finally, with smaller milestones, we have the opportunity to make active adjustments along the way and this is where self-reflection comes into play!

By adopting a self-reflection tool or process, like My Reflections as part of your vision for change; you can reflect on the broken down components; identifying highlights, lowlights and adjustments that will keep you on the appropriate path and make minor corrections when things do not go to plan.

As shown in the above screens you are able to target an activity and extract critical learnings from them. Especially important where we have those setbacks or losses to identify decisions made, that should not have been; triggers that lead to bad responses or behaviours.

So despite the challenges associated with significant changes in our lives, we have outlined a relatively simple strategy that can be used to reduce the risks associated with feeling overwhelmed and increasing their likelihood of success. When we are talking about life-altering changes like fixing a personal vice; living a healthier lifestyle or bettering ourselves we should not shy away from change; we should embrace it, be excited by it, take pride in it and give it the appropriate amounts of time and energy to enjoy our successes.