Written by Notable.ca Founder, Julian Brass, #TheUpsideNow (tweet: #TheUpsideNow) is a special Notable.ca feature dedicated to our young professional readers. #TheUpsideNow focuses on 1 tip or trick that driven young professionals (YPs) can add to their YP toolkit of success secrets to live a healthy, prosperous, and happy life. Enjoy …
It’s a new year and you’ve heard it before. So have I. Many times. Too many times. As our resolutions are declared, our newfound ability to not follow through is also realized. Congratulations – not!
Make a change. Do it now. It’s easier to make the change than to not. Trust me.
I speak to young professionals all day, every day. I read emails from our valued YP readers constantly. I often hear about their success and also the times that aren’t going as planned. I’ve heard both and experienced both personally as well.
Why do we insist on staying status quo? …On working jobs we don’t love, hanging out with people that bring us down, eating food that takes our energy (rather than feeding us energy), choosing sleep over exercise, staying in shitty relationships, not reading more, not volunteering with those less fortunate, taking more courses, looking for the positive in every situation, and just smiling because we are alive and living in the best country on earth?
Let’s make a change now. It takes about three weeks to make or break a habit; I’ve done it, and concur.
Ladies and gents, here’s an example: if you tell someone who has been putting off getting in shape and exercising for years that, once you’re in the zone of regular routine exercise, it’s actually easier to go to the gym and stay in shape then it is to not, they won’t understand. But, on the flip side, if you have consistently been exercising regularly for years and then can’t for several weeks, the feeling of not working out and not pushing yourself and not breaking a sweat is far more difficult than it is to go and do it! Same with change – when you become change savvy, constantly bettering yourself, it becomes addictive. But addictions aren’t bad if they are actually making you a better person!
When you become aware that each of us, including you, possess a raw and often underutilized power to make change in our lives, then not making changes becomes more difficult (seriously way more difficult) than just making them.
A few tips to successfully make a change now:
Decide on what the change is
Before a change can be done we need to decide on what we really want to change. You know what you want to change. I know I do. So hone in on the change and accept it.
Analyze the consequence of not making the change
Let’s say you don’t make the change, what will that result in? Think short-term and long-term.
Associate pain with the consequence
Once you realize the consequence of not making a change, the pain that staying stagnant will cause, I’d bet, will become painful on it’s own; but if not, well, make it hurt! Associate staying in a job you hate with being miserable for years and not being able to do your best at work (realizing your full potential) and to being your happiest outside of work. Associate staying in a pathetic relationship with not giving yourself the chance to experience a deep, unwavering love, a “Hollywood-sort-of-love” – it exists. Associate a lousy diet with not being healthy on the inside (your body hates you) and looking lousy on the outside (your mirror is starting to wonder “what’s going on here?”)
Forecast the challenges that you face when making the change
Sure, you might be tired for the first few weeks of waking up early, you might be lonely after breaking off the relationship, you might be uncomfortable going for job interviews, your muscles may hurt from exercising, etc, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah! Short-term pain for long-term gain; we’re all in this for the long-term, remember that. We might as well make it unbelievably amazing. Believe that you can.
Visualize how you will feel after successfully making the change
Get excited. Get really, really excited! Smile. Seriously, ear to ear, baby – show me some teeth! This is where you see how proud of yourself you will be. That feeling of being deeply proud of ourselves is something that we all deserve to feel. Be proud, you’re about to make the change that you know you want to make. I’m proud of you for even being open enough to read this far. Now it’s time. Visualize!
Accept that change is part of life
“The only thing constant in life is change.” It will happen to all of us whether we like it or not, sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse – but generally negative change we can’t control. Change is constant. Positive change is up to us to create. Since change will happen, both positive and negative, why not make a positive change now? It’s our right. At least this sort of change is actually up to us to choose to do. Drive it. It’s only fair that if we have to deal with negative and uncontrollable changes in life we also get to enjoy the amazing changes. Don’t be a passenger to change.
After the overwhelmingly positive feedback that I received last year for the eight or so #TheUpsideNow articles that I wrote for you, our Notable.ca readers, I told myself I would make a change. That change was to write more and share more video blogs with you. So I woke up at the crack of dawn today to make the change that I told myself I would make and that was to write this for you.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts on twitter at @JulianBrass and use #TheUpsideNow.
Stay Notable,
Julian Brass
Founder, Notable.ca
Other popular #TheUpsideNow articles: Just Noise, Everyday is a New Life, More Than You Think You Are, Be Bigger and Better