Taking It Step By Step To Happiness

By Donna Gates, as seen on:

How to make a lifestyle change work for you? Whether it’s a new diet, meditation, or workout routine? People usually feel overwhelmed when approaching changing their lives because they fail to plan properly. The most important thing is what we call in Body Ecology, the Principle of Step by Step. You don’t need to do everything the first day. Make time to plan and organize. Take the enthusiasm you have from being inspired by a new pursuit and find a way to incorporate it into your daily life.

Here are some suggestions…step by step.

Step One: Have a clear goal.

Having an objective in mind makes it easier to reach. Most people never clearly define what they want to achieve which makes it very difficult to gauge where they are in the process and what they have to do to get there. Is it finishing a project, losing a specific amount of weight, meditating for a specific period of time, or overcoming a health challenge? Decide down your goal and keep it in a place so that you will see it every day.

Step Two: Take a look at what you already have.

Evaluate what you have. Most likely you already have many tools you need to get started. From a diet perspective, what staple foods do you have on hand, and what do you need?

Step Three: Reorganize your life so it works for you.

Arrange your schedule to put feared things first. Why? Because by the end of the day we always have many reasons why not to take that next step toward the life we want. How can we prepare our day and our environment to support our change? If writing or painting, clean up your desk and put inspirational objects in view. If meditating, make your space comfortable and quiet. When starting a diet, the kitchen must be a friendly space. Put the things you will use most frequently in easy reach. You might even want to make sections inside your refrigerator, with one shelf for leftovers, one for fresh foods, etc. Or organize it by meals, breakfast foods here, lunch foods there; or divide it by days or by household members.

Step Four: Get the essentials.

What is missing from creating that perfect space for your lifestyle change? What tools may you need to incorporate to make your new routine easier and more enjoyable? With a new way of eating, make a shopping list to remind you what to buy. Note the foods you already enjoy and the family recipes you can easily adapt.

Step Five: Celebrate your progress.

When changing our lives we often seem to miss that the joy is in the journey. Taking the process step by step and not being rushed to reach the end goal may be difficult at times, but is the key to success. Trying to see what lies in each moment for us to learn from will allow achieving that goal to be more blissful and can even make a misstep an exciting learning opportunity. Whatever our desire, there is something about ourselves that we must uncover on the way. Celebrating your progress is being present. It’s part of nature’s own way of doing things, trusting and nourishing our intuitive selves. Finding balance in each step manifests exciting opportunities to create the world as we really want it to be.