If you clicked on this, you would likely not describe your life as easy. And the fact of the matter is that living a fulfilling life is almost never effortless. A life worth living requires countless hours of hard work and dedication. But what happens when you feel like you’re working as hard as you possibly can and still not getting closer to the kind of life that you want?
I’ve been there many times. I’ve always been willing to give all of my available time and energy to my job and my family, but it still wasn’t enough. It felt like no matter what I did, nothing was making life easier. I knew it was time to change my approach. There had to be a better way.
If this sounds like you, just know that you can break the cycle. There’s a way to align your actions and your goals in such a way that you’re swimming with the current, rather than constantly paddling upstream. The process I used to pull myself out of my fruitless cycle was not easy by any means. But it was simple, and it did make my life easier in the long term.
Here are a few key insights to consider when trying to change your life for the better.
Hard work doesn’t always pay off
One myth that perpetuates time and time again in our society is that the harder you work, the more success you will achieve. This is simply not true and moving through life with this belief alone can make you crazy, not to mention far less successful than you were imagining. Think back to the phrase, “work smarter, not harder.”
An entire human life (just like the one you are in right now) has endless complications. It’s a tangled web of choices, relationships, decisions, habits, emotions, and outside circumstances. To weave your way through these never-ending factors without a plan about how you’re going to accomplish what you set out to achieve is rather… insane.
Whatever you do, do it with vision
You must approach your life with the end result in mind. Consider the kind of person you want to be remembered as. Dream up what you’d like your life to look like when you’ve really “made it.” Once you know what you want out of life, look at what you are currently doing. How do you spend each day? Long-term goals are achieved with the actions taken on a daily basis. Often, we forget that.
If the things (tasks, people, habits, etc.) you currently fill your days with aren’t the things that are going to help create the life of your dreams, then something has to change. You may look at the life you want and wonder how you’ll ever build it with the tools you currently have. I’m here to tell you that you can. I built a life even better than the one I imagined with exactly what I’d been given﹘ that and a whole lot of resourcefulness.
Plan what’s possible
Life takes time. There’s no way around that. Your dream life might not be something you can possibly accomplish in the next year (or even in the next ten years), but there are steps that can be checked off in the next couple of years. There are even smaller steps that can be done in a matter of months or weeks. You just have to determine what’s possible and act every day (or even just most days) in a way that gets you closer to these manageable milestones and therefore closer to the life you know you deserve.
The clearer and more manageable your goals are, the more likely it is that you will one day reach them. A huge goal seems unattainable because it is actually thousands of tiny goals that still need to be named. It’s like building a house without a blueprint. You can pour all the energy and resources you want into it, but it probably won’t turn out anything like the picture you dreamed up in your head.
Show up for yourself
With actionable steps in place and the resources (and resourcefulness!) to do the task ahead, there’s nothing left to do… but do! Let’s be honest, you can write down what you want to achieve all day long, but without consistent action, you won’t get very far.
Many people have a difficult time keeping themselves accountable for the things they said they would do for themselves. It’s much easier to follow through with something you’ve committed to doing for another person. Outside accountability can be a great tool for keeping you on track and moving forward. Maybe it’s telling a close friend about your plan. Perhaps it’s a meeting with your business coach once a week. If this is one of your weaknesses, here’s a way to make it one of your strengths.
Are you already comfortable with keeping yourself accountable? Maybe all you need is a reminder you can see to nudge you in the right direction. Perhaps it’s a weekly time log to ensure that you are setting aside the bandwidth to build your dream life. Remember, life takes time. Leave yourself enough time to focus on what you are working towards. Therefore, if you don’t, the most well-thought-out plan in the world can go to waste.
Steps you can take today
If you’re ready to dive into creating the life you want, you’ve landed in the right place. Additionally, I’ve taken many of the lessons learned on my journey thus far and compiled them into a book to help others follow their dream of success and freedom.
In my book, I also break down how to create a plan and execute it in a way that’s manageable. The result is big goals you can reach by executing small steps consistently over time.
