Step NINE to Create a Life You Love: Making Adjustments to the Change Process Through Self-Reflection

“But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.” —Esther Dyson

Step 9 to creating a life that you love is about understanding how new learning can be integrated throughout your personal change process and how you can apply it to all areas of your life. Most likely you will need to make adjustments, and these will be based on constant self-reflection. Fine tuning your change process by taking personal responsibility for your life is a big part of this step. You continue to deepen your self-reflection and self-awareness in order to stay motivated and connected to your vision. This process ensures that you continue to feel good about the person you are growing into on a daily basis. You will also give yourself space to celebrate all of the shifts and changes you have created up to this point in the process.

As humans we are driven by and respond to rewards. Rewarding, celebrating and staying focused on what is going well throughout your change process helps to create this subtle shift in growing in the direction of who you want to be and how you want to live. As you celebrate and apply your new learning it is helpful to share those insights and skills with others. When you share with others you solidify and strengthen what you have learned. This sharing process makes it more real, more solid and more grounded within you.

Taking personal responsibility for your life is closing the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. As you have formed new habits, focused on what’s going well and accessed your support team as needed, living within the ability to make choices based on your vision is essential. This demonstrates the ability to take personal responsibility for your life. This is where many people get stuck. They struggle to keep going, to stick with the practices that work once they feel good and complacency can start to creep in… complacency can destroy your vision.

When you take personal responsibility for your life, you essentially ask yourself before each choice, decision and undertaking you make, “does this choice support my vision?” If the answer is no, then is it worth it? Ultimately, you have to decide this, often multiple times a day. This is where reviewing and staying true to the process of change is essential. The thing is, you don’t just go through the steps once and create a life you love. You have to review, redo and keep moving forward by taking personal responsibility for your life every single day. When things go awry it’s easy to look outside yourself for where to place the blame. This is not taking personal responsibility. When you can look within and reflect on your own blind spots, your shadow and patterns, you have the ability to continue to fine-tune them. 

While self-awareness is the heart of step 1, it’s necessary throughout each and every step to build on your self-awareness through constant self-reflection. This is how you can make the necessary adjustments. One way to do this is through integrating rewards and celebrating what is going well. Step 9 is really about constantly reintegrating all of the previous steps so that you don’t find yourself in a state of complacency, that where you’ve made it to is good enough even though your vision is much greater. In step 9 you remind yourself not to settle, to keep moving towards what you want and remaining aligned with why you want it.

When you engage in regular self-reflection, make the necessary adjustments and celebrate your wins, you will find yourself closer to living in alignment with your vision. When you take personal responsibility for your life, stay in alignment with your greater vision and reward yourself for your shifts no matter how small, you will find yourself creating a life that you love.

Step SEVEN to Creating a Life You Love: Moving Forward & Creating True Self-Leadership

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple and it is also that difficult.” -Warren Bennis

Step 7 of the 10 steps to create a life you love is about creating a deeper understanding of how to continue to lead yourself through the change process at a steady, manageable pace. This step offers opportunities to evaluate and adjust your plan as needed, to continue to forge through any residual resistance and personalize your change process. Witnessing the transition from planning and following action steps into internalized habits is a primary focus of this step. Understanding leadership skills and becoming a strong leader for yourself is emphasized—so that you can maintain the progress you’ve made and feel the impact of the new habits you’re creating. We are often used to either being led or leading others, however, leading yourself is where your true internal power lies.

With the earlier steps all about reflection, awareness, creation and action, this step is more about witnessing and making choices. Here you will witness your progress, the new action steps that are turning into behaviors and transforming into habits. The integration of these new habits sparks a need to witness these changes and continue to look inward at your change process in order to feel as though you are leading yourself. When an action step was first created as a part of the goal that supported your vision, you had to really plan, work at it, convince yourself, deal with resistance and build resilience. Once all of that hard work is done, the action step turns into a behavior and then into a habit. Once this new habit is formed, it becomes automatic.

When you no longer have to work at it or try really hard or force yourself to do this action step, you know that you’ve integrated this behavior as a habit. When you keep your pace steady, it is more likely to deeply integrate and you can experience how automatic it feels. When working in my practice, one of the first areas that many people struggle with when it comes to emotional eating is fear that they won’t be able to eat what they want to eat. They fear that they will have to give up the foods that brings them pleasure. They recognize the struggle, but fear the change. If the vision is having a healthy relationship with food, we break it down and start with goals.

One example of goal, would be to get adequate nourishment. No matter what else they choose to put in their mouths, start with increasing vegetable intake, preferably leafy greens by one serving per day. This change is often met with resistance, they bought it but it went bad, they don’t know how to prepare it, they don’t like it… Once we work through the resistance and find tasty recipes and the vegetables that they find satisfying, they have to work at it. They have to create plans for when they are going to eat their leafy greens. They have to do some preparation to ensure they eat it and keep a log to ensure this happens. Then they notice changes they are experiencing within their bodies such as improved digestion, more energy, or feeling inspired to make other healthy choices. Through this evaluation they feel empowered and also notice certain general food cravings diminishing. Then one day it happens, they just do it. It becomes part of the routine, part of meal prepping, part of what they purchase at the store. Eating a leafy green every day has become a habit.

Once increased nourishment has integrated in this automatic way, we celebrate! The steady pace, practice and ultimate change happens and then they are leading themselves. They are making the choices, doing the inner focus and making decisions based on what they know their body needs to feel nourished and healthy and this translates to feeling strong, empowered and hopeful. While this small change does not heal emotional eating, it does create a shift, it is a step towards self-leadership and healthy habit forming that they desire, yet initially feared. When you break down change into doable, actionable steps, the change happens over time and it feels really good.

Here are some primary leadership skills and how to apply them to self-leadership as you continue to assess your progress and move forward:

Communication: how you talk to yourself is important, it is essential to be kind in your self-talk and focus on your strengths.

Motivation: giving yourself a reason to do the work and finding what inspires you to do is vital.

Be positive: giving yourself reasons to move forward with a positive and healthy mindset.

Being creative: finding solutions to tricky problems, (like charring broccoli and using a delicious sauce and making it taste AMAZING rather than mushy steamed broccoli) is extremely useful.

Giving feedback: doing this in a diplomatic way is essential as a leader, so being able to get real with yourself, or access the support person who will!

Responsibility: this is where you close the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

When you lead yourself to the next place to begin and how to get there, you open yourself to these powerful shifts and new automatic habits that are healthy and desirable. When you rush, force or use punishment and deprivation as a strategy for change, you most likely won’t get very far. When you lead yourself with focus, determination and access any helpful support, you open yourself to living a life that you love.

Step SIX to Creating a Life You Love: Creating a Support Network

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
– Anais Nin

You are now half-way through the 10 Steps to Create a Life You Love! Have you been working on any change in particular? If so, you can see how in depth and what a process change really is. Now it’s time to dive into step 6. Step 6 emphasizes the need to have a strong support network on your side in order to make the changes you desire in your life. Without support, change is way more difficult. Without having others help to support and move you in the direction of your vision, life can be difficult, lonely and stagnant. On the other side of that, when you do have support, you can reach out, connect, stay motivated and feel inspired to move forward even—or really especially—when it’s difficult.

Through step 6, you will evaluate the nature of your relationships, acknowledge the ones you’d like to improve, explore how to continue to develop new healthy partnerships all while improving your ability to communicate assertively, compassionately and effectively. Have you heard the saying that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with? That can be a good thing and it can also be a not so good thing. Consider these five people in your mind right now. What does that bring up for you? Are you ok with the influence of those people? Do these people encourage you to be your best version of yourself? Do they support you and inspire you? Do they lift you up or pull you down? These are important questions to consider when thinking about how you ask for and receive the support you need as you embark on any change in life.

Support feels good. It feels good to be believed in, to have your capabilities, talents, and unique qualities mirrored back to you in a way that feels encouraging, motivating and inspiring. As you begin to consider your support network that will help you meet your goals, who comes to mind? Each person in your life will serve different aspects of the support you need. Sometimes you may need a shoulder to cry on, or someone to just listen and care, while other times you might need encouragement, coaching, accountability and an excuses detector. What one person in your life may be able to give you, another may not—and that’s ok! If you think about yourself as the CEO of your life, who would you want on your board of directors? Who do you trust, feel connected to and know would support you in living your vision? Who do you want on your team? Write down your greatest current supports and how you feel they could support you in different ways.

If you feel like this is all well and good, and yet when you look at those five people you spend the most time with, they do not exactly light you up in a way that is motivating, helpful or inspiring, you may need to expand your circle. This can take time and be daunting, but it is worth it to create connections that are meaningful and that will help you grow into the best version of yourself. Not all relationships do this, it is essential to form some that do. (And if you could benefit from improving any of those relationships you can read more about the health benefits of close core relationships here!)

If you have no idea where you could meet people, start with simple steps, first thinking of what goal you want to achieve (for inspiration you can read more about the benefits of a strong social support here). Where might other people working towards this same goal hang out? Could you hire a coach and/or join a local support group connected to this goal? Could you reach out within your community and get involved in a new way? Is there a book club that interests you, or that you could start? What community classes are available? Look outside what you are currently doing if you need to expand your support network and begin to create it in an intentional and meaningful way.

Once you have the people in mind and know how you’d like them to support you as you strive for change, it’s helpful to let them know what you are attempting to accomplish. When you let them in on your vision and what it means to you create a life you love and any areas where you are struggling, you create opportunities to improve your relationships. You can ask directly for the support you need and they are free to agree to support you and they are free to not. It’s up to you to ask. This reaching out process is so valuable because it makes your vision more real, and to feel more possible when you share it.

Many people keep their dreams to themselves and want to either surprise people with their changes, or not feel pressured if they don’t make the changes. This creates isolation, loneliness and may cause disruptions in your relationships. Communication, sharing and allowing yourself to be vulnerable can not only improve your relationships but help make the process of achieving what you want more accessible.

The concept of needing and accessing support is essential to personal growth, development and change. When those who care about you know about your goals it will help you determine who will be there for you as you grow and change and who may not support you in the changes you make. Finding out who will be there for you, who you can trust and rely on is so helpful. Many of us live fast-paced stress-out lives. It’s time to slow down, evaluate and relax into life. Having a board of directors to assist with that process will enhance your ability to grow and change and live a life that you love.