How To Change Your Life in Six Months

Any sustained change has CONSISTENT influences behind it.

Want to change your health? How consistent have you been with exercise, sleeping, and eating right in the last month?

Want to change your career? How consistent have you been building skills, looking at similar jobs, finding and solving problems, or working towards impacting the market more significantly in the last month?

Want to change how you feel every day? How often in the last month have you meditated, created art or crafted, and chilled in your community?

CONSISTENCY is what gets the job done, even if you are horribly bad at something starting new.

For example, years ago, I started training for marathons at a point in my life where I couldn't run for more than 15 minutes at a time. So I signed up for the Chicago marathon with nine months to figure out how to run the dang thing.

So I started running my max every day and researching how to train. I found a book called, 'How To Train" by Hal Hidden that helped beginner runners finish their first marathon. It suggested mileage per week, so I started doing that.

In eight months, I ran 20 miles in training and survived! 

The actual marathon is another story - it was canceled halfway through due to extreme heat.

How did I get from being unable to run 15 minutes at a time to safely completing 20 miles?

CONSISTENCY!

So how can we get disciplined so we can change our lives in six months?

1. Scheduled Time - There is a certain amount of inertia when you have to do the same thing at a specific time. It's why most jobs start at the same time in the morning; people are used to getting up a 6 am to be in the office at 8 am.
2. Know The Plan - Nothing kicks people out of discipline and consistency quicker than not knowing what they need to do. Why? Because if you know you have to run but don't know where or how long, you start researching on the internet, find some cat videos, then 9 hours go by. The sun is gone, and so is your motivation! 
3. Mantra of Intent - Why is it important for you to show up and do the thing daily? My mantra for marathon training was, "I don't want to die running this race." Whenever I thought I should skip running today, I would immediately say this to myself and go, "Uhg. Ok, time to lace up and get runnin'!" It works every time, so what is your Manta of Intent for your thing?
4. Stagger Progress - The genius of Hal Higdon's book is the scheduled "rest" times. More specifically, planned times when you did less to recover. So if your long runs the last two weeks were 7 miles and 8 miles, this week you would "rest" with an easy 5-miler. Five miles was still WAY more miles than I ever thought I could do, and it seemed way easier after doing eight. My body recovered quicker and was ready for the next week of 9 miles.
5. Easy Win, Then Add - When we start a new habit, the best thing to do is to get some small wins in immediately. Before getting into the bulk of my marathon training, for example, I had a month where all I had to do was get my shoes on, and get out the door. Sometimes I ran a mile; sometimes, I walked a mile. Sometimes I started to walk, then turned back. At the end of the month, though, it was easy to do the first part: get ready and leave home to run. So when the training got hard, I was already conditioned to start running.

If you want to change your life in six months, you need CONSTANCY to make the change happen. Identifying what result you need, what you need to do, and then using these five strategies can make all the difference.

If you know you NEED to make a big change in your career, health, relationships, or wellness and are not clear on what that looks like, then let's do a coaching session.

You can apply a free 30-minute coaching session that will go on Youtube to inspire others. Learn more here: https://www.shawnbuttner.com/free_coaching_session_on_youtube

If you'd like a private session, you can apply and pay for a 60-minute high performance strategy session here: https://www.shawnbuttner.com/your-strategy-session