How To Change Your Life In 6 Months

Any sustained change has a consistent influence behind it. You know, if you want to change your health, how consistently in the last month have you been exercising, getting enough sleep, you know, eating the right things and hydrating and all the things that lead to good health? If you want to change your career, how consistently have you been building the skills and competencies and achievements needed to get promoted or to have a bigger impact in your market or. Or how are you adding value and solving problems on a consistent basis in the last month? And again, if you want to change how you feel every day in the last month, how often have you meditated? How often have you done something that you absolutely love just for the joy of it? Have you created art or crafted something out of nothing? You know, how have you connected with your community in the last month? The key point behind each of these scenarios is that consistency is what gets the job done, and it doesn't matter if you're even horrible at it when you start. You know, for me, years ago, I started training for a marathon without actually being able to run for 15 minutes in a row, right? I would run for a couple minutes, have to stop, right? I was that out of shape, overweight, right out of college, and I was so bored and stressed out for financial stuff. I'm like, what can I do for free? You know, it's a really good idea. I'm gonna spend $100 to register for the Chicago Marathon, and I have nine months to figure this out. This is the thing that I'm doing to kind of manage stress. So I was that stressed out at that point in my life. But that's another story. What's key to this idea of if you want to change your life in six months is that, you know, you can, right? So I started. I was barely able to run. And, you know, as I was trying to figure out, like, okay, how do I get to 26.2 miles when I could barely run for 15 minutes and a quarter, right? Or whatever, maybe half mile, however long. And the first thing that I started to do was to just consistently get out of the house, right? So I would put on my running stuff and, you know, lace up my shoes and get out the door. And some days I would run a mile. Some days I would walk a mile. Some days I do a little bit in between. And some days I get out, look around and be like, yep, and go right back in and take a shower, right? But what that did for me was it made it easier when I figured out the second half of, you know, what was the plan to run 26.2 miles in six months. And that was a book from Hal Higdon called How to Train. And that was really good because it had mileages every week. And I can go into that, but after like eight months of following that plan, six months after that plan, you know, I was running, you know, tens of miles. But I had a 20 mile practice run before the Chicago Marathon in eight months. And it all happened because I was consistently waking up every day and running or doing something running related to help me survive that race. So how did I get from running 15 minutes at a time to running 20 miles over the course of three and a half hours over eight months? It's consistency, right? But how can we maintain that discipline, that showing up, you know, wherever we are in our life to make sure we have that change, right? The first thing is to have the time scheduled, right? Like I mentioned in my story just a minute ago, every day I would wake up, I would run at the same time right after work to help kind of de stress and shift into trying to get some sleep, which is again another story. But that first part of me just getting my getting ready and getting out the door built that first step habit, right? Of, okay, I had to show up. And if I showed up and didn't do anything, like, that was fine early on. But, you know, that, that consistency for a month of doing that and running as much as I could or felt like helped me show up when I had to run three miles to start that training plan, right? And that leads to the second point is know the plan, right? Nothing kicks the motivation out of people than trying to figure out what you need to do when you need to do it. And why is that? Well, you know, for me, like, if I didn't know the route I was running or how long I needed to run and it was time for me to get out the door, and I'm like, oh, I got to do some research. What that ended up happening is inevitably there'd be a cat video involved. Nine hours go by, the sun's gone. And so was my motivation. And so having that everything pre planned, like when I got into the habit of every Sunday being like, okay, here's my mileages. How am I going to run my routes to get the mileages that I need? In that particular example, okay, now that I know what I need, I need to do this loop two times. I need a new loop to do it once. It's about the same mileage. Okay, I'm good to go. Get out the door, out the schedule, time, knew how long I needed to run or where to go, good to go, right? So you might be thinking like, Earl, Sean, like, how do you deal when you don't want to get up off the couch and go run or, you know, go to that, take that class or do that extra thing for work that you know will help you build your career? Well, that's why you need this third point, which is called the mantra of intent. And what that is, it's just your important why for doing what you got to do. So with the marathon training, especially early on, when I be like, I lace up or think about getting ready and I didn't want to be like, okay, like I signed up for the Chicago Marathon, that's 26.2 miles, I'm going to run it. So I don't want to die during this race. So my mantra was let's not die during the race. Which is pretty high stakes, I guess. But it got me to be like, okay, let's get up, let's get going. I don't want to die. I want to prove that I can do this to myself or do this for myself. I guess do it to myself too. Marathon training is kind of brutal, but that mantra got me into action. So if you are trying to make a big change in your life, what's your mantra? Like, what's your guiding principle? What's the reason for you doing it? And how can you make that a trigger when you feel that resistance to say, oh, that's not die, let's get going so I can make this right. Super, super motivational and important. Let's see, fourth point is to stagger progress, right? So the genius of Hal Higdon's book, How to Train was the staggered progress. So it'd be like taking two steps forward, half a step back behind, right? And that became such an important psychological win during that training time. Because, you know, if in a three week period, you'd have two long, you know, long runs and like a rest week. So you might run for your long run, five miles, week one, then you might do six miles, week two, then a week seven, you do four, right? So you're doing less miles. But for someone that couldn't run for 15 minutes, it's still, you know, four miles is still a lot. And it seemed a lot easier than five or six. So you do that, you know, shorter run, your body kind of recovers and is acclimating to the running. And then the next week you're doing seven miles and Then eight miles and you're dropping down to five, and you're like, five is no big deal. So having that those planned, like, pushing the edge of your ability, and then something, something that's easier to kind of regroup and recover is super important. When you're doing any type of change, and it feels really good when you're like, oh, this is an easy, like, 10 miler, when 10 miles was so far away from you at that moment in your life, then the fifth thing to remember is to do an easy win. And then add, right? So I talked about that first month of just showing up ready to run and then doing the best that I could. That built the habit of as soon as I got home, put on my clothes, got out the door, and then it was, you know, in action in my fitness plan. And so there's got to be these easy, tangible wins that give you a little bit of momentum. So anytime it's much harder to, you know, not do the run when you're ready at the starting line in your neighborhood, when you got to go run, versus thinking about how tough it's going to be when you know, it's cold out and home's warm and all that kind of stuff, all the distractions can get to you. But if you're like, okay, like, all I have to do is get to the first step, and that's a super easy thing to do where it's like, I don't even have to run. Like, I just had to show up. That was an easy win. Then again, you know, you have that inertia, and you're like, well, I should at least try to run, right? I don't really want to, but I'll start. And then before you know it, you've run, you know, five miles, three miles, however long it was that day. So if you want to change your life in six months, you need consistency and discipline in the things that are going to help propel you forward. And you need to know what change you want to make. Number one, right? You need to know the plan on how to do it. And then you can use these five strategies to make sure that over six months, you are consistently moving forward and consistently, you know, building to it. And before you know it, you'll be able to run 26.2 miles. You'll be able to know what your worth is in your job, so you can shop jobs around if that's you, or, you know, what you need to do to reach that next level in your business. So. And if you need help with figuring that part out. Of course I always have a strategy session that you can sign up for the link below here. If you want a free 30 minute just mini coaching session on something that you're struggling with, you can do that below. Also that gets posted to YouTube for an upcoming YouTube series. So so that's why that's the free option. You can also get an hour strategy session with me for $99 below here. But yeah, so that choice is up to you. If you need that extra help. If you're enjoying these videos, just let me know. Comment below. Wherever you're watching this on the blog or whatnot, let me know what you took away. I really love to hear what you guys are thinking and yeah, we'll see you guys next week. In the next video we talk about the things that prevent people from getting a progress that they want in their lives and what to do about it. So if that's you, if you're interested, continue watching over here. Okay, see you guys in the next video.