Personal Change Is Not Always Easy. But It Is Usually Most Beneficial.

Plan Your Life Journey. Don't Let Life Happen Haphazardly. 

All self development programs and processes you undertake will result in some change in you. Personal and professional development also requires an upfront amount of change and commitment from you, both to get started and to be maintained.

Improvement, change, adjustment and learning are part of everyone's life cycle. Unfortunately for most, these events happen randomly and haphazardly. It need not be this way for you. 

Planning your Project You Life Journey has numerous benefits that will make the road to attaining your hopes, dreams, desires, and goals both easier and more enjoyable.

Implementing any change in your life is a three-step process: start, build momentum, and maintain persistence.

Getting started, of course, is often the hardest part. We procrastinate. We wait for the "right" time. We focus on other "priorities" even when these are not important. We wait for a "sign" to give us a signal to begin. We are afraid to take the first steps. Or, most important, we are afraid to commit.

Commitment takes resolve. It takes dedication. It takes having a constant conversation with yourself that this is a permanent change and that you are not going back to your old ways. When it comes to implementing change, commitment and resolution are verbs, not nouns. Verbs command action. And that is what it takes to implement change that results in personal or professional development.

Beginning to change something in your life is not always easy. But it is rarely life threatening either, unless you decide to pursue a high risk adventure sport (and even in that case risk can be modified and reduced through proper training and caution).

When assessing a potential change, a simple listing of pluses and minuses on a single sheet of paper will suffice. Down the middle of the page draw a line. For the left column write a header "Things I Can Gain" and atop the right column write the heading "Things I Could Lose."

Now spend 15-20 minutes brainstorming points for each column. When you are finished, put the paper aside for two days. Your brain will continue to subconsciously think of more pluses and minuses, which you can add to your list at any point over the next couple of days. 

Within a few days you will have a list of advantages and disadvantages related to the change you are contemplating. You are now in a better position to make your decision to either proceed, not to make the change, make the change in a modified fashion, or even put the decision aside until a later date. 

But why wait? As we highlighted in the last Project You Life Blog post, your personal growth starts now. 

Find 15 minutes in your life today and start listing the gains that you will reap from making changes in your life that you know will benefit you. 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.