Hey girl, it's good to see you, braveheart. How are you doing? If you're not exactly in the zone, and you and I both know what I mean when I say in the zone, isn't it great when we are there? But if you're not exactly there. Today's episode is going to help you move the needle to get you back into the place where you're ready. I'm going to give you five tips or five necessary things on how you can make self-improvements in your life this year. And so, let's just dive on in. Let's get ready!

This is a meaty episode and be sure to make your friends aware of it, like it, share it, do whatever you have to do. Help me spread the word. Let's get this out there so that we can be an army of midlife women ready to tackle what's next in our lives. We're not ready to give up. We're just getting started. So, all right, first of all, you just need to, number one, decide exactly what it is that you want to improve in your life.

Sometimes, we have this feeling of just being a little bit unhappy. We don't feel fulfilled. Maybe we feel bored with our life. But what we don't do is just literally take time to sit down with the journal in our lap, you know, your bravehearted planner. Put that in your lap, put on some quiet music, and just think about what you really want in your life. Don't choose too many things for this year, or at least the first half, quarter one, and quarter two. But think about it: if a magic wand were waved over your head, you could instantly have something different in your life.

What is it that you would want? This is a clue for you to say. This is what I need to change. This year in my life. I want you to think of about three to five things and write them out in your journal. Be specific, because self improvement starts with desire, and even discovery. What do I want? What am I longing for? What is this gnawing? What is this dream that's been knocking in the attic? If you will, of my soul or the basement of my soul, probably more specific. It's rumbling around, but I don't give it voice. I don't put vocabulary to it. And so think about that.

Let me give you a few things. First of all, what about finances? Do you have any financial goals? Well, I don't have enough money to reach my financial goal. Well, that's a financial goal. Incrementally, how much money would you like to increase in your life? Or do you like to put it away in your savings? Do the math. Figure it out. Write down the sum and then decide this is how much I want to save each year.

Or what about health goals? What about stretching goals or toning goals? You might say, you know, I have a goal to, maybe I want to be able to reach my toes this year. What about your house? How's it look? Do you need some redecorating? Do you want some new furniture? Maybe you just need to clean it and declutter it, take some old things off the walls, give it a fresh coat of paint, and make your canvas of your home a little bit more peaceful or soothing or lively or contemporary.

Maybe you have some self-improvement goals as far as personal development and growth. What books do you want to read this year? You get the point. Maybe you want to go back to school and get that certificate. Or you want to start that language class. You want to learn a new language. Whatever it is, the first step in anything is to decide exactly what you want.

Don't be foggy. Without clarity, without clear vision, you can just continue to exist and go on day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and pretty soon you'll look back and say, I really feel like I kind of just wasted the last few years of my life. Don't let that be the narrative for you this year. This is your year to make the necessary improvements to reimagine what is yet possible for you.

Hey, pro tip, by the way, get around some other people who are dreaming big dreams. Do you know that your life will change? Significantly, you surround yourself with other women who are dreaming, believing, scheming, and preparing to reach big goals. In fact, statistics say it's as much as 63% that you will improve your life, grow, and change when you just hang around people who have the same motivation or even more motivation than you.

So, be very clear. If you see nothing, you can expect nothing. When the vision is clear, the results will appear. That's a statement that I'm quoting Terry Savelle Foy on that one. She is a genius when it comes to these things about vision, but let me give you the number two tip. The next thing that you need to do, and a lot of people miss this one. This is something that others don't talk about, but I want you to be prepared for it.

Number two: What are you willing to do to achieve it? Let's say now you've conquered number one; you know exactly what it is that you want. You can see it, you can envision it, and you know how your life will improve if you achieve it. You can feel that, and yet you're willing to give up that goal. How? How bad do you want it? What are you willing to do to achieve it? If you're willing to do what it takes to get there, you're on your way. And that also means discovering where it is that you might fall off the rails.

Where is it that you'll get hung up and not provide for yourself? If you drive past your favorite bakery, your goal is to lose some weight, but you know that you love that blueberry muffin, and you keep driving by it. Probably about day three, you're gonna pull in and grab that muffin. What are you willing to do? Add five minutes. To your route on the way to work or school or church or the store or wherever it is that you go and say I'm going to take a different route because I'm willing to go out of my way to get a goal that's really important for me.

So that's a question that has to be answered as we begin to embark on this journey of receiving this year what we really want and the improvements that we want to make and decide. Give a big yes. Best yes to yourself. Hey, are you willing to do what it takes? To answer that, what are you willing to give up? What are you willing to change? And to adjust, just an inch, just a baby step, just make a small idea. I want to remind you to make these ideas so easy that you can't fail.

Here's another pro tip. Discover what's bringing pain into your life. Think about that pain. Think about how beautiful your life would be if you didn't have that pain. What hurts? What's hurting you, my friend? What's really got you upset in your life? What brings some regret to you? Or some grief to you? Well, empower yourself. Make a small baby decision. Well, make a good decision. But a baby small tweak or step toward reaching that goal.

Number three, and this is another secret, and a lot of us don't want to talk about this one, but if you really honestly have decided what you want and you are really willing to do what it takes to get there, then you gotta do this next one. You have to become accountable to someone. There has to be someone in your life that you're willing to become vulnerable with, and they can ask you the tough questions, and you're willing to risk what might feel like judgment. If you have to tell them you didn't do it, you have to become accountable to someone in your life. There. I said it. Because it's true.

Any significant change in your life, anything that's worth having, is going to require accountability. You have to submit to it. I said it just a moment ago. Most of us, or many of us, don't like that because we do fear that judgment. What if I fail? What if they, you know, shake their finger at me? What if they scold me? Or what if I get a chewing out and I don't want to go through that? So many of us will avoid accountability. We don't want to answer to someone. We don't want to be vulnerable, like I said a minute ago, and we'll often say, Well, I don't need accountability. I can do it. I can do this on my own. I got it. I don't need the support. How long are you going to tell yourself that lie? You know, if you really want to be honest, how long have you had maybe this same goal year after year? How many of us have said every year, I want to make more money. I want to read my Bible more, I want to lose weight, I want to read more books, whatever it is, and yet we don't do it. The secret is that we don't hold ourselves accountable or let someone else hold us accountable.

So, if we really want the transformation that we say we want, we need to be willing to be held accountable. And accountability is the number one catalyst. That's the number one result-producing element in our life that gets us to where we want to go. The difference between successful people and people who just talk about what they want is your willingness to be held accountable.

Accountability is a catalyst to bring us to the decision that we need to make a change. However, accountability keeps us in the process of making those changes. Okay, back to our list of the five things we said already. Number one, decide exactly what you want to improve this year. Choose three to five things at the very most. Write them out in your journal. Oh, and by the way, make sure you keep that journal very visible. We keep it visible because you become what you behold. When you see your list of things every day that said, this is what I said I want to change in my life, you give your brain an amazing target. When you give your brain a target, it goes to work for you to bring you closer, to bring you into proximity to the very things that you said you want to have in your life. It's incredible how this principle works because it's God's principle. So make sure you write them down. They're all biblical truths. Write down exactly what you want to change and put it in front of your face. I mean, put them on sticky notes, put them on your mirror, in your bathroom, in your closet. If you have a shower, put it in some cellophane and post it in the shower. Do whatever you gotta do so that you see it every day.

Number two, decide exactly what you're willing to do. To get there, I'm willing to give this up. I'm willing to make this change. I'm willing to adjust my schedule. Okay, and number three, make yourself accountable. Who do you trust or who do you really, really respect? If you want to, you feel proud of yourself when you do something, and so they would really be motivating for you. Make yourself accountable to that safe, beautiful, motivating person who will help you reach your goal.

Number four, it is time to take action. We put those things in place. We've written them out. They're everywhere. We've made ourselves accountable. Now, it's time to get going. You gotta take action!

So, I don't want this to be a random action. I want you to think and plan the action steps that you're going to take on a consistent basis. Every day, every morning, or every week so that you reach your goal.

So, for example, I say I want to drink more water. That's one of my goals. One of my health goals is to drink more water. When do I want to do that? I want to do it by 10 am every morning on my nightstand. I have my bottle of water that I literally want to drink before my foot hits the floor in the morning. When I wake up in the morning, I've put it there. It's an actionable step. It's easy to do. And I already feel like a winner actually before 8 am in the morning.

So, what specific action do you want to take? What is it that you want to do? Make it a baby change. Make it so easy that it's impossible not to do it. For example, if you say, Yes, I want to touch my toes this year. Okay, when are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? What's going to be the trigger to cue you to say, Oh, this is that moment. How about rolling out a yoga mat at the end of your bed so that when you get up in the morning, you know this is your moment to begin to stretch? You say, well, I don't have a yoga mat. Okay, well, get a yoga mat. Well, I don't have money for a yoga mat. Great! There's your next goal. A money jar that says, I'm going to purchase a yoga mat. See, that's how easy I want it to be. Then you say, well, you know, I don't have the money to put in the jar. Are you buying a coffee? What are you willing to give up?

So, we go back to step number two. Don't make this. An excuse-ridden experiment. You can do this. You can make it. You can reach your goals. I'm trying to show you how easy it is to get, how granular you can get, and what baby steps you can take. Put your tennis shoes at the end of your bed before you go to bed at night. Lay out your workout outfit, whatever it is. But I want you to take action, make a plan, and remember that we don't fail in our efforts; we fail because we don't make a plan.

I can't tell you how many people say, What's your plan to reach your goal? Well, what do you mean? I mean, what's your plan? To reach your goal, picture the life you want, see yourself there, visualize it, and then lay out clear, small, actionable plans. You don't have to upend your whole life, but take baby steps. When you do it with consistency, it moves you closer and closer to reaching that goal. Set an intention. I intend to do this. Set a standard. I will never allow myself to go below this or above that. I'll never allow myself to do this, this, or that. See how that plan starts to come together. And then you can navigate that with resilience because you're prepared for maybe what it is that will take you off track or derail you.

Jeff Olson wrote a book called The Slight Edge. I love it. The Slight Edge changed my life. If you haven't read it, I include some of those principles in The Making of a BraveHearted Woman, which is my latest book, the culmination of my life of all of the books and all of the coaching and all of the training that I've received for the last 10 years are packed in that book. So you don't have to read all of the 20 books that I read. You can get The Making of a Bravehearted Woman, which, by the way, is my gift to you this week. When you see the link. I'm selling it to you for $3. If you go to Amazon, it's $17.99, but if you come through that link, you're gonna get my book for $3.

Alright, and finally, here's what I want to leave you with. Number five, you gotta reward yourself for being brave. Take action and plan your life. That's the fifth step. I don't know how often it is that I scold myself or find myself shaming myself or talking negatively to myself, and I used to live there a little bit longer.

Now, I don't. I reframe very quickly. Part of resilience is that I get back on track quickly. Why? How can I get back on track quickly? Because I've learned the secret. How to motivate myself. I know I get back in my journal. I read my goals. I read my scriptures, and I see the plan that I've put in place, and it pulls me back. It just helps me get right back on track. Then, I reward myself in a number of ways, and that is through positive affirmations where I say, Good job, Dawn. You did it, girl. Awesome.

Maybe I've even purchased little gold stars because who doesn't love gold stars on their calendar? I exercised today. Gold star. I made my bed today. Gold star. I read another book. Gold star. Whatever it is that motivates you. Maybe it's a treat that you get once a week. Maybe it's you gives yourself permission to go out and buy a new dress or a blouse or whatever it is that you enjoy but make sure that reward is part of your plan because neuroscience shows us that those little bursts of dopamine that we get when we reward ourselves help us create New neural pathways that we actually crave the good behavior that we've been practicing.

So there you have it, everybody. I don't even want to say everybody. I'm talking to you today. If you've got your earbuds on and you're at the gym right now, or if you're cleaning your house and you're listening to this podcast, I'm talking to you specifically. I want you to make it. I want to be that voice right now for you. That I sometimes need in my life where I say, hey, don't quit. You're running a good race. You can make tweaks. You can improve and change your life in a matter of days and moments so that this time next year, you look back and say, Wow, I did it. So, let's get accountable.

And if you need help coaching this year, give me a shout. I'm here for you. I want to walk with you. I want to help you. I want to motivate you. All right. So that's what I got for you today, my friend, my brave heart. Keep going on. It's time for you to find your brave and live your dreams!