Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes

Welcome to The Sunday Starter, a weekly email of tools and techniques, that will help navigate the journey to just get started and keep moving forward.

For a lot of my life, I shouted that I wanted things to be different but I failed to understand a simple concept…If I am unwilling to change then nothing could possibly happen that will be impactful.

Changing is hard because there is a commitment that has to be made to make the change take shape.

Commitment takes time. We don’t always see great results upfront. The journey can be hard.

→ But it starts with making a mindset shift to commit.

That’s the basis of today’s email.

Change can come in many forms but I believe we start to “commit” to changing through our daily actions.

Nothing happens overnight.

As an example, If we want to get in better shape it is a multitude of different things we have do to over an extended period of time:

• Proper Exercise

• Eating healthy food

• Getting enough sleep

And then each of these have their own sub-categories like:

• What to do?

• When to do it?

• How often?

It can get overwhelming.

Let’s make it simple.

Step 1: 

Write a list of all the areas of your life you want to improve in (a relationship, a job, improving fitness, getting better sleep, managing money better, etc). Take 2 minutes to jot these down.

Step 2: 

Which one is the most important to improve from that list right now?

Side note: When it’s written down it becomes more real. We may not work on all of these today but they can be top of mind as we slowly put in the work and build from one to the other.

Step 3: 

Okay, we picked one.

Now, where are you currently lacking in this specific area? Be honest with yourself. It’s important.

Step 4: 

What is one action you can commit to in order to make a positive shift forward with your answer from #3?

Remember, nothing changes if nothing changes.

Just the fact of walking through the steps above, acknowledging where you want to improve, and committing to one action for growth is a massive step forward.

Many are unwilling to do this because it makes them uncomfortable.

Do you feel uncomfortable? That’s not a bad thing. You’ve opened your eyes to areas in your life where improvement would bring more joy and happiness.

Bravo! 👏👏👏

Not let’s build a repeatable process to make this stick.

Here’s My Challenge:

For the next 7 days, let’s turn your one action into a repeatable habit that becomes a staple of your daily activity.

How do we do that? Let’s filter it through a simple process.

In James Clear’s best-selling book, “Atomic Habits” (highly recommend 🙌) he shares the 4-keys to making habits stick.

1. Make it obvious

2. Make it attractive

3. Make it easy

4. Make it satisfying.

As you consider your action item, use James’s 4 keys as a guidepost to constructing a repeatable habit.

As an example, if I was trying to add more exercise into my life here are two opposite approaches I could take:

Good: Go for a 15-minute walk around the neighborhood every day at lunch

Bad: Go to the gym for 2 hours a day every morning at 5 am

One ✅ all of the boxes of the 4 keys while the other will be extremely hard to maintain.

→ It doesn’t have to be monumental. You can’t win the race on the 1st mile. Pace yourself.

By building in one repeatable habit that is impactful it opens your eyes to the possibilities.

One becomes two and two becomes four.

You replace a bad habit with a good habit.

You start to gain momentum.

What’s Coming Next?

Next week, we’re going to chat about the importance of sleep in helping us get started.

🙏 Thanks again for your support with this newsletter

❓What did you think? I’d love feedback in order to continue to make this a superb resource for everyone. It can be positive or negative. Nothing is off limits so reply to this email and I’d love to hear from you.

✅ When you complete the challenge, I’d love to hear what one area of life and one action item you chose to create a habit for. Reply directly to this email and please share.

How can I support your journey?

One of the coolest things about building the Just Get Started community over the last several years is the amount of interactions with new and interesting people that are on the cusp of getting started or early in their journey.

If I can support you in any way, please let me know. You can reply to this email and let me know what’s going on in your world. I’ll try to help where I can!