Without giving up everything.

I’ve been creating on the internet for the last 4 years.

I can safely say, it’s changed my entire life. It’s changed my financial future but more importantly than that, it’s taught me to be disciplined and to show up even when I don’t want to.

If there’s any skill to master that helps you shift things, it’s showing up when you don’t want to. Stop relying on motivation and start doing things because you can manage your emotions.

It’s so hard to master, and you won’t always get it right but these are all the things I’ve learned about changing my own life, and hopefully, they’ll be helpful to you.

Difficult isn’t a sign you’re doing things wrong

I used to think if things felt hard, I was doing something wrong.

I thought that if I was struggling if things weren’t going my way, it was a sign that I was doing things wrong, that I was on the wrong path, that I was making a mistake.

The trouble was, whilst trying to conquer doing my own thing, I was listening to the stories of others. Success stories that seemed so polished, so linear, so perfect.

The truth is, when people describe their success, they often are showing you the highlight reel, not the real story. And so when my reality didn’t match their highlight reel I thought things were going disasterously wrong.

Turns out, I didn’t have a good grip on what it takes.

When things get difficult, it’s not a sign you’re doing things wrong, it’s a sign you’re on the right path.

Realize you’re not broken

Achieving your goals feels great. That much is true, it’s liberating to know that you can, if you try, achieve the things you thought were out of reach.

It builds you into this person that believes in yourself and that can only ever be a good thing.

We all need more confidence in this world.

But, one big realization I’ve had in this journey, in the journey to become better is that actually, I’m not broken. Setting and achieving goals won’t solve all my problems, success doesn’t mean everything else stops.

In fact, I’ve learnt that success is this never-ending wanting if you’re not careful.

A great realization of my last 6 months is whilst I’ve loved this journey of becoming better, I certainly wasn’t broken in the first place. And you’re probably not either.

Little and often

There is a reality to life that the world does a good job of forgetting.

On paper, when you write down who you want to be, you forget all these realities. I did it for years. At 24, my goals were to make $1 million on the internet, renovate my entire house and run a marathon.

A gross miscalculation of my abilities at that time.

I used to do this all the time, I’d get sick of the fact that I wasn’t making progress in eating better, exercising more and making more money, so I’d sit on Sunday and write things like this:

• Eat 8 fruits and veggies a day
• No junk food ever
• Run 6x a week

It was completely unrealistic and of course, it lasted all of five minutes. Goals like this make you feel good in the moment but they never last because they lack reality.

Starting a new habit is hard, life gets in the way, so your best bet is to start little and often. Set the bar so low you can walk over it, and raise it over time.

Become your own coach

If you want to change things, the best advice I’ve got, the thing that moved the needle the most for me, was to change the voice in my head.

For years, the voice in my mind ripped me to pieces day after day.

Of course, I never acknowledged that fact, but it did. Week after week, the negativity caused me to spiral and question the life I’d created for myself. It was when I realized how I was talking to myself that I started to change it.

Bit by bit, I built myself up rather than tore myself down.

I worked on coaching myself, instead of belittling myself, I quizzed about how I could have done things better, found opportunities for improvement, and started backing myself.

It’s a much nicer way to live and it leads to way better results.