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It’s not easy to admit, but it’s okay to wake up one morning and decide that you want to change your life completely.

Typically, you’re incredibly quiet and reflective. Now, you have a desire to make every room you walk into notice you immediately. Or the reverse could be true: you constantly draw attention to yourself by being loud and the party’s life. Now you want to be a wallflower and observant. Whatever your reasons and wherever you fall on the spectrum of personalities, it’s okay to change yourself.

Humans are superfluid, multi-faceted and interested in various things (speaking from an incredibly privileged point of view). Some ideas of human nature say the moon and birthdays influence our moods and decisions. The example I’m about to allude to is poor, but you can also see this when you look at the lives of some disciples of Jesus. Some went from being interested in persecuting people, to loving them and abiding by the rules they hated. If we look at it from a worldly point of view, people like Bill Gates probably never thought they would go from a college drop-out to creating one of the biggest and most successful tech companies in human history. We change.

If you happen to relate to any emotions from this post, a desire to adjust things in your life and (for me) become the woman you’ve always dreamed of, here are a few tips that have helped me manage this thought process as well as slowly bring it to fruition.

1. Find your reason why. You’ll regret it if it’s to satisfy someone else’s version of you. Humans come and go, but you’ll be stuck with the change forever (or however long hair dye lasts). Good reasons for changing will accomplish personal goals. Poor reasons will sound like, “maybe this will help them like me more or make them see me in a ‘better’ light.”
2. Create a Pinterest board or mood board. Have a visual representation of what you want to look, act, and live like. Determine who you want to be. You could print it or create a collage as your cellphone background. The goal here is to have a physical sense of your dream. You could have a photo of how you wish to dress. You could create an ideal work schedule. You could even write down affirmations that clearly state what you want. Anything to remind you of what you’re working towards.
3. Change your mindset surrounding the changes. It’s been well-documented that how you think affects everything you do. There are famous sayings like “thoughts become things” or “train your mind.” Even in the Bible in Mark 9:23, “All things are possible for one who believes.” How you think about your life greatly affects your effort and outcome. I recommend the Bible if you want guidance on this, but I’ve also heard that Atomic Habits, 12 Rules for Life and The Power of Habit are life-changing. I’ve just recently ordered these on Amazon, so I’ll be able to tell you for sure in a future post. But, zeroing in on how you perceive yourself and these changes will make a world of difference.
4. Make little changes daily. I find that the easiest way to fail is to try to accomplish everything at once. I tend to over-extend myself and give myself too much credit for how much I could achieve in a short time. And while that might be true on a productive day, I don’t have many productive days, if I’m being honest. Many days, I wake up, go to work, come game, cook and go to bed. And that’s okay. The point here is that you should be giving yourself little goals regularly. For example, one of my personal goals is to have natural, healthy hair. I relaxed my hair earlier this year and have regretted it ever since. I miss my curls and my versatility. I miss how my face looked with shorter hair. I miss the texture. So now that I’ve identified what I want, my daily goal regarding hair is to keep her moisturized and protected. At least until she’s grown enough for me to feel comfortable doing a big chop again. To achieve this, I only need to take an extra 5 minutes at night to moisturize and wrap my hair instead of just going to bed with a bonnet. This small change will help me love my hair in its current state and encourage me to keep this habit when I do my big chop.
5. Give yourself grace. Be gentle when you mess up or fall back into old habits. Please recognize that you’re changing routines and habits for your ideal and that it’s hard. My biggest pet peeve about myself is that I speak negatively when I think I’ve failed at something or know I could be doing better. Coincidentally, words of affirmation are also one of my top love languages. However, I’m learning to be kinder to myself. I have no problem giving others grace and making excuses for poor behaviour. But when it comes to myself? I’m terrible at it. To achieve change, this fits into a mindset where I must tell myself, “it’s okay to miss a day. You needed rest. Just pick back up tomorrow. You are not worthless because of this.”

And those are my tips for changing your life! Please, leave me a comment if you have any to add. Or let me know what you’ve done in this area.

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