If you want to make changes in your life you need to look at two places, where you are today and where you want to be in the future. The trouble with these two questions is that they are far too wide ranging, are these really fair questions or is there an easy way to break them down.
I have asked this question of myself many times because it seems that some people make great strides in changing their life and some people seem to be stuck in a rut for years at a time. I myself have occasionally made big changes but my life but just like most people these changes are a bit more random than I would like.
So what is the secret to making changes in your life that are lasting and are what you really want? What do you really want?
Well a little while ago it dawned on me, the real secret is to make the small decisions in all parts of your life and then incorporate those changes.
What do you want in the future
Look through your day and see what you want to get out of it. Go through your weekend and see what you want to get out of it. Go through your workday and see what you want to get out of it. Take a look at your life in general today. How does it look? What are you happy with? What are you disappointed about. Take a day and write these things down (You didn’t think nirvana was a 10 minute process did you?).
Let’s say that you now have a broad idea of what you would like to keep and what you would like to change in your life. This is a very broad list so do not get hung up on it. The list is a general direction that we can look at and then apply then next step to try to put our life into alignment.
A lot of little questions
The next process is 100 questions or so that you need to ask yourself in a deliberate manner from the moment you wake up in the morning until the moment you go to sleep at night. Some of these questions you ask too often and some of these questions you never ask yourself. This is the stuff of your life and once you question it you can make 100 little changes and your life will never be the same
Here is the question list
Morning
What time did you get up?
Should you get up earlier or later?
When you woke up what did you think, and I mean the very first though? Positive or negative?
What did you do next? Shower? Eat? Exercise?
What do you want to do?
Get in shape?
Sleep more?
Organize before work?
How long is the time that you take to get from bed to leaving for work?
Would you like some relaxing time?
Do you get too much relaxing time?
Do you eat at home?
Do you read the paper?
Watch TV?
Listen to the radio?
Going to work
After leaving for work do you stop to eat?
Do you go to a restaurant for breakfast?
Do you have enough time to get to work?
How do you get to work?
Do you take a bus?
Do you drive?
Do you walk?
Do you carpool?
Do you go to the home office/ desk and work?
Once you get to work do you plan your morning?
Surf the net?
Have a meltdown because everything hits you at once?
Look at email?
When you get into work do you eat breakfast?
Do you drink coffee?
Do you have a donut or Danish?
The Workday
As you go through your day at work do you get hit with tasks or do you create your schedule?
Do you go to meetings or set meetings?
Do you allocate your time or do you just get hit with whatever is someones bad planning?
Lunchtime hits, do you go out for lunch?
Did you bring lunch?
What kind of food do you eat?
Do you have lunch at your desk?
Lunch with others?
How long is lunch, 30 minutes? An hour? 2 hours?
After Work
After you get off work do you go straight home?
Out for drinks?
Out to a park?
Out for dinner?
Stay at the office until you are too tired to work?
Evening Schedule
In the evening do you stay home to watch TV?
Do you go out to the bar?
Do you go to a hockey or baseball game?
Do you rent a movie?
Do you have friends over?
Do you go over to other peoples homes to visit?
Do you go to a gym or fitness center?
At night do you read a book?
Watch TV some more?
Fall asleep watching the tube in bed?
Sleep and rest
Now that the day is over do you sleep 6 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours?
Do you get enough sleep?
Do you pack the sleep in on the weekends and sacrifice weekday sleep?
Was that a lot of questions or what? Actually that is only about 63 questions so you could ask a lot more if you would like. Now in answering all of those questions do you think that you have a better method of changing than just using an affirmation of “I want to lose weight” or thinking about exercising? This method should really give you a better set of ways in which change can be made
Time is on your side
I think that realistically we all have about 16 hours of time between the time we wake up and the time that we go to sleep and even if you go to work for 8 or 10 hours a day this still leaves a lot of time that we have a lot of control over. These are just all of the questions for a weekday. You can probably do the same for the weekends, or planning vacations, or changing jobs to something that you want to do more.
The essential thing is that if you are not happy with the answer to anything in your life then ask yourself more and smaller one or all of the questions what do you do about it? You have the opportunity to change any part of your life and just by asking a lot of small questions you will make those big changes that you want to make but do not know how.
I am sure that this process is the easiest way towards change. If you want to lose weight ask all those eating questions and exercise questions and research a good answer. If you are single and want to change that ask all the questions of the things that you do yourself and get others involved in them. If you want to take more control of your life ask all of those questions for work and home that you let others dictate and answer them the way that you want.
The real key to all this is to go to those first few questions that I said to ask about your life and what you want. The really broad questions are a direction and get hints from all of these little questions as to what you do next to make that big thing happen.
After 40 years of living a happy as well as unhappy life I wish someone had told me to ask as many of these small questions as I have laid out here. I hope that all these little things do in fact change you life into the type of life that you are looking for.