Transform Your Life: 10 Steps to Real Results

A person who is ‘out of integrity’ is like someone whose spine is out of alignment – their total being is unable to operate at its optimum capability. When your life is out of integrity, things tend to go wrong and you’re highly likely to blame others. You’ll know when you’re out of integrity when there are significant gaps between what you say and what you do.

You can start to enhance your own personal integrity by identifying 10 areas of your life where you’re not currently telling the full truth – either to yourself or others. List them and then write next to each one the actions you will take to address it and the date by which you will have completed them.

I’d like you to tackle two of these issues each week over the next month or so until you know you’re living a fully authentic life.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind!

William James

Don’t ‘Should’ on Yourself

When you’re out of integrity and out of alignment with your own true self, it’s likely you’ll find yourself doing things because you feel others expect it of you rather than doing things because you really want to do them. This is where the ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ come in. Coaches have a very useful phrase: ‘Don’t should on yourself.’ In essence, if you say you ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ do something, unless you know it’s something you genuinely need to do, the chances are the statement is coming from someone else’s agenda and not from your own.

Be aware in your day-to-day life of how many times you say ‘I should do this’ or ‘I should do that’ – for example, do you ever say to yourself ‘I should lose weight’ or ‘I should change jobs’? Stop and think. Ask yourself: ‘Is this something I genuinely need or want to do?’ I’m not suggesting you abdicate responsibility for things that it is necessary for you to do. We all have things in life that we don’t particularly enjoy doing (housework or paperwork, for example), but we know we need to get them done. These are basic needs that you knuckle down and get on with. Equally, you may be required to take care of the needs of someone else (a sick relative perhaps), which is a question of facing up to your responsibilities. From a realistic viewpoint, I’d like you to be aware of your needs, responsibilities and wants and make choices accordingly. If your ‘should’ is neither a need nor a genuine responsibility nor a want, I suggest it is not a true expression of yourself and not appropriate for you to do!

Be aware of your language over the next few days and take note of how many times you say ‘should’ and ‘ought’. List your 10 most common ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’, decide whether they are things you genuinely need or want to do and if they are not, consider what you are going to do about them.

I actively encourage you to connect as much as you can with the real reasons why you do things. If something doesn’t feel right to you, don’t do it. For example, if you find yourself working extra hours each week, ask yourself, ‘Is there a good reason for this? How is it serving me?’ If the answer is that this is something you need to do, because you’re being paid overtime and you need the extra money perhaps, or the project is important to you, your company, client or customer, and you will all benefit, then the justification is there. However, if the real reason you’re working longer is because you feel you ‘should’ because everyone else does or you’ve just got into the habit, stop and ask yourself whether you can do this differently. Are you ‘shoulding’ on yourself? Would it serve you better to develop ways of becoming more effective and productive in fewer hours?

Your life will become more fulfilling when you eliminate any sense of obligation to things that don’t really serve you. Do the things you want to for your highest good – it’s your life!

Be Proactive

Being proactive means taking the initiative and not waiting for things to happen to you. People who are successful in life tend to be proactive – they are aware every day that the life they live is their own choice. It’s not so much what happens to you in life that’s important – it’s what you do with what happens. Equally, it’s not so much how you fall down that matters, but how you get up again!

As you embark on transforming your life, you’ll encounter many choices and will start to become a real expert in making decisions. The more choices you make, the easier things will become and the freer you’ll feel. Before you’ve finished reading this book, I want decision-making to be like falling off a log! But first, consider:

What are the main factors that you think are limiting the choices you have in your life?

Taking these factors into account, what changes could you make to become more proactive?

Adopt a Positive Attitude

Every second of every day we can choose how we view the world. Our own reality is held in place by our perceptions and our current state of awareness. So it goes without saying that the more positive your attitude, the more easily you’ll be able to cope with transformation.

Is your cup half full or half empty? The moment you start to acknowledge that life is essentially ‘good’, your perceptions of the world automatically shift you into a new way of being. You may not be quite ready for this shift now, but if you are willing to open yourself up to the possibility, you could find a gradual sense of positivity creeping up on you as you transform your life.

When you start to adopt a more positive outlook on life, you still accept reality, but choose to live in a more fulfilling way. You find positive things start to happen to you and that you attract more positive people into your life.

What evidence do you have now of positivity in your life? List the three most positive elements of your current life.

There are various ways you can adopt a more positive mind-set. Some suggestions are appreciating and expressing gratitude for the good things in your life, and making sure you choose your words carefully, using positive, empowering language to express yourself and not undermining yourself with a negative inner dialogue or self-belief. Terms such as ‘I can’t’ or ‘It’s impossible’ set you up for failure before you even begin!

What changes are you willing to make to become more positive in your life?

Be Willing to Extend your Comfort Zones

It’s not uncommon to fear change and the unknown. We’re only human and it’s human to suffer from a lack of nerve sometimes. As you work through this process I would like you to accept your own humanness. Accept that it’s alright to feel nervous, allow yourself to be comfortable with your ‘discomfort’, but then go beyond that and have the confidence to take perhaps the tiniest step towards the changes you want to make.

Making changes can result in successful or less successful outcomes. If you really want to transform your life you have to feel comfortable in accepting that sometimes things may not work out as you would like them to. However, don’t forget, you’ll learn from every action you take. As you go through the coaching process you’ll stretch yourself, make a few mistakes along the way and learn from them. Once you accept that by living with uncertainty you will have the space to make the right choice, life becomes a lot easier. I want you to be willing to make mistakes and take steps into the unknown.

Trust your Intuition

Inner confidence and faith in yourself are valuable qualities and the more you can access them, the more readily you’ll be able to manage the changes in your life. You can develop more of these characteristics if you pay attention to yourself and become more aware of your inner wisdom. I want you to make your intuition your ally, trust yourself and go with your ‘gut’ feelings.

How does your intuition speak to you? Do you receive information in words, do you get insights coming into your head or feelings in your body? If you’re unfamiliar with accessing your intuition, ask yourself where you feel things in your body. If you have a decision to make, sit quietly and see where you feel something. The chances are you probably feel ‘excitement’ in one part of your body (maybe a fluttering sensation in your stomach, for example) and fear or foreboding in another area (your throat drying up perhaps?) You can use these feelings to interpret what your intuition is trying to tell you. Create the time and space to access your inner depths, be patient and allow yourself to discover your own answers when the time is right for you. Ask your intuition questions and pay attention to the answers. These might come to you as a quick flash of inspiration, an insight in a dream, a sense of ‘knowing’ in the pit of your stomach or perhaps a well-timed coincidence that endorses your own thoughts or makes sense to you in some way.

As your coach I want you to learn how to ‘get out of your own way’, to develop the ability to get out of your head and into your heart so you connect with your own inner wisdom on a regular basis. Getting out of your own way means putting your ego to one side and getting in touch with your own truth.

Often transformation begins with faith rather than fact. You need to have faith to trust your body’s instincts, your heart’s intuition and your mind’s ability to work things out. But as you learn to step aside from your ego and learn to be really yourself, you make more room for truth and happiness.

What actions can you take to access your own intuition.

Have Confidence & Act as though You’re Already There

People with confidence tend to move their lives on fairly quickly. Confidence is a very sexy attribute. We’ll be working on it more in Step 4 (#litres_trial_promo) and Step 9 (#litres_trial_promo). For the time being I’d like you to become aware of how confident you feel. Even if you do not feel very confident now, acting as though you are already achieving what you want will propel you forwards in life. You’ll be surprised how your confidence catches up with you!

What do you think is stopping you from being more confident?

What are you willing and able to do to overcome these obstacles?

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.’

Robert Browning

Picture your Results at the Beginning

One of the key principles of success is to know your outcome, what you want to achieve. It’s only by understanding your objectives that you can work out the relevant strategy to achieve them. Also, knowing your desired outcome helps to keep you on track when you start to focus on the details.

As you start your transformation process I’d like you to be clear about what you want to achieve. To help you, take a look at the following questions:

How, specifically, will you know that your time spent following the 10-step process will have been worthwhile? What would have happened in your life?

If there was one important change that you could make in the next three months, what would it be?

Is there something that you need to start (or stop) doing that would have a significant impact on your life?

If you could give this next phase of your life transformation an overall theme, what would it be? (Examples could include ‘Creating Space for Me’, ‘Developing a Life I Love’, ‘Moving my Business to the Next Level’, ‘Attracting my Ideal Life Partner’ and so on.)

My theme is:

List three specific goals you want to achieve over the next year.

List three specific goals you want to achieve in the next three months.

Looking at your life now, what’s the biggest opportunity that you’re not taking full advantage of?

What’s getting in the way of you having the life you really want?