Three Simple Steps Towards Changing Your Life

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed when you think about making big changes in your life? Does that feeling of overwhelm often result in anxiety, confusion or even worse, total apathy? Do you do find that your dreams and heart’s desires seem only farther away because of the enormous weight of how hard it is to change your life?

Well, first let me say “Congrats!! You’re totally normal!”

Look, changing your life and heading in a new direction is not an easy thing to do, and as we get older and our responsibilities, stories, comfort zones and realities settle in deeper, it can become more difficult to make changes in our lives. It becomes scarier to rock the boat and start in a new direction. It also can become equally terrifying to consider not making those changes, and so the stress from both sides can make you feel like you’re in a bit of a pressure cooker.

Here are three simple steps that can help you in taking one real step TODAY in the direction of the life you want to be living!

1. Give Yourself a Break

First, give yourself a break. Remember that everyone who has created the life of their dreams has had to go through a very similar process. No one becomes great or incredible without some big challenges and hurdles to leap. If you’re even reading this and feeling the call to change your life, then you are in the company of many others who have either gone through feelings of overwhelm or who are going through it now with you. Relax. You’re OK, and you’re right on time. Let go of the story that you “should” be anywhere but exactly where you are right now.

2. Break It Down

With anything in life that feels overwhelming and intense, one of the first and most important steps is to break it down. Take a look at where you are now, and where you want to go. Visualize your future self and see what you’re up to, where you live, who is with you, the smile in your heart and the people you serve. Let yourself rewind that future moment into the present reality and notice what steps you had to take to get there. Make a list of the perceived obstacles. Break your journey down into bite-sized chunks that are manageable and organize that list into goals for yourself to achieve.

3. Take One Step Today

Now that you can see the tasks at hand, take one of those goals and break it down into action steps. For example, say your dream is to learn tango and go study dance in Argentina. Your perceived obstacles might be your family, not enough time, your job, insufficient finances, being too old to start dancing, etc. Once you’ve broken it down, you’ve decided that your first goal is to carve out one night a week to enroll in a class, and maybe your second goal is to go to Argentina. Take one step today towards that. Call the dance studios, find out how much it will actually cost to fly to Argentina and save $5.00 today by skipping your late afternoon Starbucks.

What’s important here is that you tell your mind and the universe that you are serious by taking one step every single day towards your dreams. It doesn’t mean you are going to be there tomorrow, but by taking one step, and by showing some kind of attention to your dream, it will start to bring itself closer to you. Start today. Start small.

One small step can lead to a life you will love!