Sometimes you see red flags that you need a change in an area of your life. Whether it is in your business, your health, your relationships, your finances, etc. there are steps you can take to make these changes. I share 3 steps to making a change in your life and encourage you to join me.
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ANNOUNCER. Welcome to the “Author Audience” show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, and change lives. Here’s your host, Shelley Hitz.
SHELLEY. Welcome to this episode of HitzBlitz. I want to talk to you today about three steps to making a change in your life. Many times we can feel stuck in a situation and we want to have something different, do something different, be something different, get different results, but we feel stuck or we don’t feel motivated, or we don’t see anyway to change. So, today I want to talk about three steps to making a change in your life.
I recently have realized that over this last year I have not run as much competitively, I just haven’t run as much at all. Last year, many of you know, I completed the Pike’s Peak Assent—it’s a half marathon up to the top of Pike’s Peak—and it was a really difficult time. I finished, I met my goal, I finished even faster than my highest goal, and then after that I just stopped running. I think it was a little bit burned out. So this year, 2015, I just haven’t run very much, I’ve hiked, I’ve walked, and as a result I’ve gained a few pounds. I was realizing the other day, I usually don’t weigh myself, but I’ve gained about five pounds; my legs are less muscular and more flabby. I still look fine, my clothes still fit me, but I can see the road that I’m starting to go down.
Some of you may be seeing some red flags, whether it’s in your health, in your relationships, in your business, in your finances, maybe you’re starting to see the debt rack up a little bit more than you want to on that credit card, or maybe your relationships are more strained than they used to be, or maybe you’re just not feeling as well health wise, or there may be other red flags, and you know you want to change. I have known this for months, literally months, and people that know me know I’m an action taker, I’m a doer, let’s go! Still, for some reason I have not been able to get myself to get back into a good routine with exercise.
One of the steps I took was I purchased a treadmill, it’s an inexpensive treadmill, I should eventually have a blog post where I show my set up. What it does is I’m able to make it work with the desk that I have, so I have a treadmill desk now so I’m getting a lot more steps in during the day. That doesn’t completely solve the problem because it’s not really fat burning or burning a ton of calories, but it is getting me moving. So the other day I came home from vacation and I realized that I’m not happy with the direction that my health is going, with my weight and with how I’m feeling, with how I’m starting to look, and I wanted to make a change.
Many times the first step to making a change in your life, if you want different results, you need to do something different. The quote that says, “what is the definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results.” What area in your life have you been doing that? Maybe it’s in your marketing, your social media marketing, you’re doing the same thing over and over and over and you’re just frustrated that you’re not getting different results. Maybe it’s time for you to try something different. Maybe it’s with your relationships, you just feel like you keep hitting a wall with a certain person in your life and it’s just over and over and over but you keep doing the same things and expecting different result; or your finances, or your health, exercise, eating right, whatever it is. It begins with a decision to do something different.
That was the first step for me. Right now you can’t see me, but I’m sitting here in my office with my brand new shoes, my Nike shoes. I’m a Nike girl, they fit my feet well and I like them, and we have a Nike outlet not too far from us in Castle Rock Colorado, and I got them for a great deal too. I love bargain shopping, I love getting great deals. I came home from vacation and I realized, “I want to feel different, I want to change the direction that things are going with my weight, with my health, and so I need to do something different.” I decided it was time anyway to get new shoes; my other ones were getting worn out. So, I got all my new shoes—you know how that feels exciting some times? This time of year I just got a new planner, I’m getting ready to start on January first, it’s kind of exciting! It’s getting something new! That was the first thing that I did, I was tired of coming home from vacation but my husband CJ was getting ready to go to the gym so I decided to go to the gym with him. I walked and jogged, I ran, for a good portion of the time. The day before yesterday I was walking on the treadmill and then I have a little app on my iPhone and it’s a seven minute exercise routine, and I did it two times, it’s strengthening and it’s just a step in the right direction, it’s doing something different.
That’s the first thing. Sometimes when you want different results you need to do something different. The second thing, I’ve been listening to a lot of different training and audios, and reading books on planning and setting goals, and getting different results in your life. I am preparing for a virtual planning retreat. It’s going to be open to all the Author Audience Academy members, and you can find out more about at PLANITDAY.COM it’s a spin on words for Planet Day, the subtitle is “the world is waiting”, and I’m getting ready for this virtual planning day and I’m really excited for it.
So, the second step is that you sometimes simply need to take responsibility and realize that you can make a change in your life. If you’re not happy in an area of your life, there are certain circumstances out of our control, but there are always things that are within our control. Number one is our attitude. I posted something about this on Facebook this week and a lot of people resonated with it, you can go to my personal Facebook page and still see it. I posted the quote by Charles Swindoll about our attitude, and he believes that 90% of life is not due to our circumstances but due to our attitude and only 10% really relates to our circumstances. Yes, 10% of the time there are certain things that we can not change, that we are not in control of, but we can take responsibility for many, many things.
So, I encourage you to think about what is something that you can take responsibility for and realize that you have control, you have the ability. For me personally as a Christ follower God has gifted me with the ability to make decisions, to take action, and he doesn’t expect me just to sit around and pray and ask him to have things fall from the sky, he expects me to do my part, to trust him, to have faith, but to do what I can do as well. That’s the second step, to take responsibility.
The third step is to start somewhere. I’ve been listening to a lot on Zig Ziglar, I love him, he is a mentor of mine even though he has passed away. He was a business person who integrated his faith in a powerful way, people would come to know Christ at his conferences, and yet he is known world wide, and even people who are not Christians respect him and his advice in business. I really, really like his stuff and encourage you to read some of his books and listen to his audios. I was listening to his audio on goal setting the other day and he was talking about his own life and how he got started into losing weight. He first said just to start walking, I think he said he would walk around the block, and then the next day he would walk a little further, and then a little further, and then you start running. It was one little step at a time, and basically the moral of the story is that our small consistent actions over time are what will make the biggest difference in our life over the long haul. It’s not the big things usually, because you can have a big thing that really goes, but in order to truly make real big gains in your health, in your relationships, in your finances, in your business, it’s going to take consistency; those small consistent actions over time.
So, start somewhere, start small, I started with that seven minute exercise app; seven minutes, I can do that! That’s something that I can do. If you are struggling with your finances, just starting to pay off the smallest credit card. My husband and I did that years ago, we were in tons and tons of debt, and we used the Dave Ramsey Snowball Method where we started with the smallest, paid that off, and then you roll what you were paying on that card into the next payment and pay that off, and you just keep going forward on that.
So I encourage you today, what is one area in your life that you want to make a change in? This is the time of year when a lot of people think about what they want to do differently, resolutions. So take these three steps:
1) If you want different results you need to do something different. What is something different you can do in that area?
2) Start taking responsibility for what you can control for the things you can make a change in, the things you can do.
3) Start somewhere, even if it’s small. Like for me, just getting on these pair of new running shoes and going running the other night, it felt like a break through! I can’t explain it, but there was something that happened, even mentally, in just taking that step.
So I encourage you to get started on something new, and I would love for you to join me in our planning day that is coming up, it’s PLANITDAY.COM and I want to help you have an amazing year next year. This will be a training that will be available ongoing, so even if you’re listening to this podcast months or years later, you can access it and get all the information at PLANITDAY.COM. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast, I appreciate you so much and I’ll see you next time.
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ANNOUNCER. Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Author Audience” show. Connect with us online at AuthorAudience.com where you will find all the resources mentioned in today’s episode. While you’re there, grab Shelley’s free video training on how to write and publish your book using her “6-Step ASCENT Method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.
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