You know what you want. You crave big change, but you can’t seem to get there or even gain momentum toward the life you really want. We’re going to look at three blocks to making a change, and more importantly, what you can do about it.
Block 1: We fill our calendars.
We see an empty hour and we say yes to a playdate. We see an empty day and we say yes to volunteering all day at our kids' school. We see an empty weekend and say yes to the birthday party, the show, and the neighborhood cookout.
Work ends at 5, we run to get kids by 6:00 we need dinner on the table by 6:10 for the rest of our evening to work. We don’t make time for the things we say we want to do. We literally schedule ourselves out of our own lives.
Let’s change that.
- Build in space. Go through your calendar and schedule space — ramp up and ramp down time, blocks of nothing gets scheduled time, transportation time, 10-year plan time. Get really real about how long things take.
- Make time for the important things. If you really want to eat better, schedule time to meal plan and prep. If you want to write a book, put that time on your calendar and hold it sacred. Put it on your calendar so you don’t fill that space with the things that don’t matter.
- Commit to one doable change at a time. Big changes happens as small actions we take again and again. You aren’t going to lose 65 lbs in a day. You won’t write your book by the end of this week or have meditation part of your morning routine overnight. Set yourself up—in your calendar—to make one change. Set aside 5 minutes to meditate every morning next week. Set your alarm. Get up. Do it. Plan your meals. Stick to the plan. See what happens when you set yourself up to move toward your goals. Really fit it in your change. Feel curious. Maybe even have some fun.
Block 2: Our calendar system limits us
Do you keep all the parts of your life separate? Kid rosters are stuck on the fridge. Your meal plan is on a chalk board in your kitchen. Appointments and work show up on your phone. But everything is separate and all over the place.
We’re reacting to what’s coming in and not what’s going on big picture.
Let’s change that.
We need a plan that has the whole picture in it. We need a plan that honors our seasons and cycles. Plan for the next 90-day season. What pieces of your big plan can you work on during those 90 days?
But when we look at this, we need to look at our lives holistically. That’s why I created the FLOW process. FLOW stands for:
Food
Lifestyle
Om (selfcare and down time)
Work
What do you need to focus on in this season to work toward this life you crave? Maybe you are focused on one category right now, but often categories affect each other. Making a choice has magic in it. One member of FLOW365 was working on a big change at work, but she kept coming up against barriers. She decided to focus on clearing clutter at home for the next 90 days, and as she did so, the work stuff fell into place.
Trust that you are going to live in this bigger way of living and that what you choose now to move you forward has less pressure.
Block 3: It’s hard to be different.
It is hard to be different. We don’t have a blueprint for parenting, for entrepreneurship, for so many of the things we want in our lives. We get input from the media, from our community, from the Internet … we don’t even hear what we want.
I hear this a lot around food changes. “I feel good when I don’t have all the sugar” or “I want to go gluten-free” but how do I go the party or have dinner out?
Let’s change that.
Put your big why someplace you can see it regularly. Let your why to pull you forward instead of feeling like you are constantly pushing to make a change.
We’ll talk a lot more about this block in the next post: Make Big Changes Without Feeling Like an Outcast.
