It’s great if you can make little tweaks in your habits or find hacks that improve your life. However, sometimes, that’s just not enough. Sometimes, what you need is a complete overhaul. All the same, change can be scary, and it’s both common and normal to resist it. The tips below can help you make that big shift.
Identify the Specific Change
Sometimes, you know exactly what needs to change. However, what’s more common is that you have a sense that something should be different but you aren’t quite sure what it is, or maybe you even have the wrong idea about the type of change you need. Whatever the case, you need to dig down deep and figure out precisely what it is you want. “I want a new career” isn’t concrete enough. “I want to go back to school to become a nurse” is much better. “I want to go back to school to become a nurse practitioner and have my own clinic” is even better, but sometimes you need to take the first big step before you can refine it. Even if you identify two or three things that need changing, keep your focus and concentrate on just one to begin with.
Look at Practical Obstacles
Next, you should identify what is standing in your way and how you will solve it. For example, if you are going back to school to get a master’s degree in nursing, you might need to figure out how you will pay for it. One way you can pay for your graduate medical degree is by taking out a student loan from a private lender. You may be able to borrow more than you are able to get from federal aid, and the process of checking your eligibility is typically fast.
Hone Your Habits
Big changes are not actually all about the big gestures. They are about the incremental steps that you take each day in order to get closer to your goal. That means making time to study each day if you’ve gone back to school or to train regularly if you’re getting ready for a big athletic event. Think in terms of creating regular habits in your life that you do without thinking because they are woven into the fabric of your days. This will help you avoid procrastination.
Eyes on the Prize
The gap between deciding to make a change and actually arriving on the other side of it can be a long one. In the meantime, you should keep your gaze on what you are working toward so that you can stay motivated. You can also build in rewards for gains along the way. Choose a way to track your progress. For some goals, this is easy to do. Maybe it’s your word count toward completing a novel or your mileage on runs. For other goals, you may need to choose a more arbitrary measure of success. Just make sure that it is something concrete and measurable.
