7 Positive Choices To Change Your Life

Personal and professional growth doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not one big change that you make that leads to a drastic 180-degree turnaround. If you’re expecting it, you’re in for a big disappointment. Life just doesn’t work that way!

The truth is that change is a gradual process, one that you have to push for every single day. Long-term, visible change takes time and a whole lot of effort. Only after days, weeks, or even months of making those small changes will you notice a big difference in your life.

Whether you want to change your professional life or your life at home, here are a few small choices you can start making to effect real, long-lasting, and visible change over time:

Celebrate Your Wins

Life is full of hardships, stressors, and struggles, so we all need a bit more positive in our lives to counteract the negative. Next time you have a win, celebrate it, and celebrate every win from now on. Even the small wins—the ones that might seem inconsequential or only provide a little forward progress—can lead to huge victories down the line. Focusing on the positive outcomes in your life can go a long way toward improving your outlook.

Actively Work Toward Your Ideal Life

Almost everyone has read The Secret by now… but there is more to it.

You see, it is one thing to just visualize an outcome and hope it happens. You must hunt it! I use a process of mental focus I call “streaming visualization” and it requires you to not only visualize  the outcome you desire, BUT to also feel the emotion when you have achieved the result.

The question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” isn’t just designed to trip you up in a job interview—it’s also a question you should ask yourself regularly, visualize it AND feel it.

When you start planning your life and future, you develop a concrete plan of where you want to go or end up. Once you know the destination, it’s easier to take steps down the right path. 

Take some time to think about what your “ideal” life is. After that, start thinking about things you can do every day to push yourself closer to that goal. Every day, choose to take at least one action that will help you achieve that ideal life. Over time, those tiny actions will add up, and you’ll propel yourself faster and faster down the road toward that future you want.

Embrace Failure and Success Equally

Success teaches you what works, but it’s equally important to learn what doesn’t work so you can know to avoid it in the future. Treat success and failure as equally valuable opportunities, and make the most of both experiences.

Yes, failure sucks, and it can hurt to see all your hard work come undone or your carefully laid plans go awry. But if you stop seeing failure as a bad thing and instead approach it from the perspective of a learning experience, you’ll find you come out well ahead next time around. After all, you’ll know what steps not to take and what paths to avoid, so you’re far more likely to walk down the “right” path—the path that leads to success!

Face Your Fears

Fear comes in all shapes and sizes: fear of the dark, fear of snakes, fear of rejection, fear of isolation, fear of failure, and the list goes on. These fears can stop us from living a full, rich life, both personal and professional. If you let them hold you back, you will never go as far as you have the potential to.

Time to face those fears! Dig into the fears and find out what’s causing them. Not the surface fear, but the underlying psychological root that is causing these fears to manifest.

Once you’ve found the source of the fear, take active steps to confront it. Only by facing your fear will you be able to get over it. Fear is powerless—it controls your mind and actions, but only if you let it. By facing your fears, you can prove that it won’t stop you. Going forward, you’ll give future fears far less agency because you’ve already defeated fears in the past.

Commit to Growth

Flying helicopters isn’t just something I wanted to do for fun. It has created physical changes in my brain and the way that I think. You MUST be willing to grow.

Growth isn’t just taking those actions that will help you reach your future goals, but it’s actively engaging in activities that will grow you as a human being and a professional in your field.

Commit to reading self-help books or taking courses that will help you to become a more effective person at home and work. Commit to rooting out the fears and anxieties that hold you back. Commit to enrolling yourself in new courses and training programs that will teach you valuable life skills and develop your professional abilities. Commit to a new hobby, one that helps to relax you and give you an outlet for your innate creativity.

Growth takes work, but it’s always worth it. By committing to growing in at least a small way every day, you’re pushing yourself down the path toward betterment and a fuller, richer life.

Cut Toxicity From Your Life

There are so many things that can be toxic: the negativity and drama of reality TV, the cutting comments on social media, the fear-mongering in the news, the backbiting and arguments of your “friends”, and the list goes on.

If your life is full of toxic things and people, you may find they contaminate your life and fill it with negative energy and hostility. Time to cut those things and people out!

That doesn’t mean you should try to isolate yourself in a bubble of peace and bliss where nothing ever goes wrong. But look for the people and things in your life that are dragging you down instead of lifting you up, and make a conscious effort to get away from them! 

Release Your Past

We’ve all got baggage that can weigh us down and sit like heavy burdens on our souls, but carrying that around for the rest of your life won’t make you a better person, only a bitter one.

Choose to let go of the things in your past that have hurt you, that fill your life with negativity, and that weighs on you. Forgive yourself and others for mistakes made, and release your grip on anything that binds you to the bad things you’re better off forgetting and escaping.