When it’s Time to Change by Stephen Moegling (Guest Blogger)

Your job. The relationship that’s a dead end. That boss who seems to delight in your suffering. Stepping on the scale and seeing the number go up, not down. When it’s time to change, our minds often need to catch up to our hearts. Our minds like to be practical. We come up with loads of reasons why now isn’t the right time to change. But we have to change. I’ve learned the hard way that change is hard. In the last five years, I’ve lost 70 pounds. Gotten a divorce. Gotten remarried. Sold the shares of a company where I was an owner and had worked at for 18 years. Then joined a new company 1,300 miles from my home. That’s a whole lot of change, not including losing my father to cancer and also grieving the loss of my mother-in-law. Change can be chaotic, messy, and stressful. I’ve also learned that change can be transformational. I want to share with you five steps for making lasting change that can help you with the changes you seek, with as few setbacks as possible. Step 1. Write down what you don’t want. Most of us don’t know exactly what we want from our change. For example, when I set out to lose weight, I didn’t know I wanted to lose 70 pounds. I just knew I needed to get healthier. Only later in my journey, as I got more experience and clarity with my physical health I had clarity on the weight and body composition I wanted. That’s why I recommend starting by writing down the things you don’t want in your life. You’re acutely aware already of what you don’t want, hence your soul’s encouragement to change. Later on, you’ll have more clarity to name the things you do want for yourself, including the feelings you want to experience. Step 2. Name the feelings you want to experience more. We do things for the feelings we want to experience. As you reinvent your life with the changes you seek to make, name those feelings you want to experience more often, such as:

• Feelings of peace, hope, equanimity
• Feelings of joy, gratitude, happiness
• Feelings of confidence, security, ambition

Use these feelings and states as guideposts for your decision-making and the process of working through your changes. Step 3. When you have a setback, have a meeting with yourself. I’ve made a lot of changes in my life and I have failed, failed, failed so many times. I used to beat myself up when I ordered the pizza instead of kale salad when I am working to change my scale weight. But beating ourselves up makes changing so much more difficult, if not impossible. Now when I fail, I call a meeting with myself. I invite my higher self (the wise, long-term thinker part of me) to have a meeting with the part of me that keeps getting in my own way. The meeting often goes like this: Higher Self Stephen: “Hey friend. You know that drinking a bottle of wine by yourself isn’t going to help you lose weight.” Lower Self Stephen: “Yeah, you’re right. But it was a Friday night. The weather was awesome. And I just kept pouring myself another glass of Cab until I realized I had drained the bottle.” Higher Self Stephen: “If you keep doing that, will you achieve your weight loss goals?” Lower Self Stephen: “No…” Higher Self Stephen: “So…” Lower Self Stephen: “Okay, wiser version of myself. No wine until I hit my weight loss goals.” Higher Self Stephen: “And…” Lower Self Stephen: “And after that, I’ll assign myself one drinking pass every month. That way I can enjoy my Cab without turning an occasional night of fun into a consistent pattern.” Higher Self Stephen: “Good strategy, dude.” Step 4. Learn and share with others. As much as I try to learn from my wiser, higher self, I know I’m toast if I only seek counsel from myself. For any meaningful change to stick, I have to seek the counsel of others who have faced similar challenges and succeeded. I also have to have a support system to share my feelings. As you change and transform yourself, you will someday be a support to others who seek change. Step 5. The final step is to take a step. Momentum is what powers our souls. Get early wins by taking small steps, one at a time. And the farther down the path we go, the clearer the path to transformation appears. “Before” and “After” photos are inspiring but deceiving. Between those photos is a whole lot of messy stuff. But in that messy stuff lies transformation.

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Stephen helps people to grow their businesses and live abundant lives. In his career, he has helped his clients to achieve $1 billion in revenue. Stephen works for Hailey Sault, a healthcare marketing and branding firm with offices in Duluth, Manhattan, and Richmond. Stephen writes a Friday email series called “Pass the Wine” to share insights and strategies for having abundant businesses and living an abundant life. Sign up here.

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This blog post was curated and/or edited by The Ardent Reader, Esther Hofknecht Curtis, BSOL, MSM-HCA. The views expressed in this blog post are those of the guest blogger. Visit Esther's page at www.parrotcontent.com for more information.