They say change is hard. That can be true. It’s especially hard when we force change to happen from the outside in.

It’s the old metaphor of rolling the boulder up the hill. You could do it if you could just get it moving… alas the boulder is too heavy to move, so you just stay with the boulder at the bottom of the hill.

We experience this feeling in all aspects of our life, right? We hit a plateau in our career or we find our relationships distant or our wealth is stagnant or that we’re not growing personally or our health is not where we want it or we’ve lost our spiritual connection. Or maybe some of all of this…

If you identify with any of these symptoms, you likely also feel like there’s a boulder in the way before you even go up the hill of change.

There’s a better way. Four steps to actually make change happen.

First, you must get rid of baggage. Baggage is negative emotions, limiting beliefs, internal blocks. It’s the boulder. Before you can truly change, you have to get rid of the boulder.

Typically, this baggage is picked up somewhere in our past through experiences that we view as negative. The more experiences we view as negative, the more baggage we carry. To release the baggage, we must change our perspective. When you can look at what once was a negative past experience and see it for the learnings you gained, it will reshape your current thoughts and emotions*. The boulder stopping you from going up the mountain disappears.

Once our baggage is not holding us back or getting in our way, we next can set a goal and create a vision for ourselves. Through my work with people, they usually have a goal that is not being met. What’s interesting is that once baggage is no longer weighing them down, the goal becomes clearer and the path illuminates.

All goals need to be SMART… specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Earning 6 figures by next year. That checks the boxes. Losing weight & being more healthy does not. Without the baggage, you can actually see yourself as that person from the start.

Step three is to take action. Change doesn’t happen in our heads. It requires doing something. So you must do. And do something different.

We run on habits. You probably have not been acting like the person that you want to be… if you were, you’d already achieved what you want. The baggage can be gone, you have a crystal clear goal, yet the habits and programs that you’ve always done are still there.

Get intentional about baby steps. Baby steps gain momentum. The avalanche doesn’t happen without the first little bit of snow. Taking action is crucial to change.

Finally, we must focus. There you are… light from letting go of your baggage, clear goals & a vision for who you are, taking steps and action and it’s the focus on the goal that keeps you on the path and not veering off. We can drop back into old habits and old actions if we lose our focus. Weekly, even daily focus on who we are helps us to do the actions that ultimately give us the results that we want.

The 4 steps to change: Release baggage, create a goal & vision, take action and focus is the model for creating the change that delivers what you want.

*Note… this is not eluding to serious trauma or making light of traumatic situations. If anyone has experienced trauma, a licensed expert in the field is likely the best resource to seek help.