At Energy Health Concepts, we make the connection that behavioural change is a key health and wellbeing strategy towards living a healthy and balanced life.

Today we are going to look at the topic of change, and we are going to identify some key strategies that you can start implementing in your life, so you can move closer towards the goals you want to achieve.

Okay, so let’s get real here – change is often tough, and in some cases, near impossible.
But does it really have to be that difficult, and is change itself the real challenge, or the real issue here?

Change becomes difficult when we haven’t committed to it, or we haven’t thought too much about it.

Need some proof? When was the last time you set a new year resolution and followed it through to completion, let alone even started it?

Chances are it was done on a whim, with not a lot of thought, further impeded by little or no action, and was probably moth balled 15 minutes later.

You see, that’s where change gets a bad name. Change never had a chance to get off the ground in that situation.
Change itself wasn’t the problem – the strategy and approach was.

To initiate real change, we need to buy in to that change.
Hoping things will change, praying things will change, may be the icing on the cake, at best, but first up we need the cake to put it on!

Change is often difficult because we develop habits that challenge the very change we want to see in our lives.

We may want to give up a bad, or more to the point, an unwanted habit, but if we keep reinforcing behaviours that perpetuate that habit, that feed that habit, then change is not going to happen anytime soon – or ever.

So in simple speak, we need to change our behaviours to reflect the change we want to see and experience.

The key is to build on your successes, and to acknowledge the efforts and the evidence you are achieving towards the change you want to see – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant those changes might appear to be.

You have to be able to see the long game, and build towards it celebrating all of those moments of success along the way.

This also means that sometimes things are not always going to go exactly to plan.

For example, you may want to give up drinking alcohol everyday of the week. You enjoy a drink, but find it’s costing you too much, putting a few more kilos on you than you would like, and it’s ruining a lot of your weekends with long sleep ins and hangovers.

The first week you manage to reduce your alcohol intake. You managed to get out of bed early on a Saturday for the first time in 5 years, and you also spent $50 less at the bottle shop.

Now before you get to week two, it’s important to acknowledge what you were able to achieve. In fact, you should document your victories in a journal so you have REAL evidence of your efforts.

It’s this evidence that will demonstrate to you that you are starting to challenge, and change, old habits.

Week 2 might see a step backwards, a little more intake than week one, but all in all, some moments where you were able to change old habits.

Document the successes. It might have been 1.5 glasses of wine on Wednesday night where in the past you usually drank two or more.

So what can you start doing today if you are wanting to change some things in your life?

Get a journal. Document everything you do that demonstrates your efforts to change. Focus on the things or the situations you want to achieve… NOT… the things you cannot change.

You need to build momentum based on the things you are achieving, and the behaviours you are experiencing.

Focus on what you want. Behave your way to success. Build on your strengths. Acknowledge you may have a way to go, and keep focusing on the change you want to experience.

And if you haven’t already, go back and read our recent post on gratitude, and see how strategies around appreciation and acknowledgement, can ramp up your chances for real change in your life as well.