#1: Accept Reality: There Are No Shortcuts.

Real Change Requires a Real

Process.

Lets first get the uncomfortable shit out of the way.

Anything worthwhile in life will require a worthwhile effort. There are no

shortcuts. There are NO silver bullets, NO magic pills, and NO secret sauces. If
youre still trolling the internet looking for this stuff, move along. Youve got the
wrong forum, the wrong article, and the wrong author.

So lets start with the old guru mantra take action!

We say it a lot around here: Take action! Take action!

While action is important, action isnt what creates change .

Taking action, by itself, is just an event that produces little, if any results. In fact,
taking action is right behind do what you love as one of the biggest guru
hoaxes ever perpetrated on the self-improvement industry.

Blasphemy?

Heres why.

Taking action is merely a micro-task to a process, and a process is what

precedes real change .

Whats a process? A process is a systematized series of focused actions. A process

is repeated. A process is taking action X 1000" and making adjustments along the
way.

Once a process is established it then becomes a habit, which then integrates the
process into your mind as automatic, instinctual, and almost subc onscious. It
actually becomes woven into your existence. The result is
a lifestyle which ultimately creates the change you want . The change isnt fleeting
or short-lived, but permanent. Short-cuts are short for a reason they dont last.

Unfortunately, most people leverage taking action into some sort of mental
masturbation trick designed to give us a fleeting "feel good" moment. Its a
temporary exercise orchestrated to fool yourself into thinking that you are doing
something, when in actuality, youre just painting lipstick on the pig. Youre
committed to the idea of change, but not committed to the process of change.

Hit the gym the first week of January. See all those people? Theyre committed to
the idea of change (which are just fleeting thoughts) but not committed to the
process (which is the focused action). By February, 95% of them will be gone.
You see, going to the gym constitutes taking action. However, if you never
return, will anything really change? Not a damn thing except for that moment of
feel good which is now, long gone.

Want to eat better and shed a few pounds? Great for lunch you have steamed
halibut and broccoli. Awesome choice. Healthy and nutritious, a perfect decision
for your goals. Unfortunately, for dinner youre back at the old double-bacon
cheeseburger with fries. Again, absolutely nothing has changed despite taking
action.

Ever hear someone say Im on a diet? What theyre really saying is this:

I am NOT committed to permanent change.

I am NOT committed to the process.
I am NOT committed to a transformation from action, to habit.

The word diet implicitly means FAIL. Diets are event-driven based on taking
action but the word implies temporary, which implies failure of process.

Diets die and only succeed when they become lifestyles, making the diet, no diet
at all but a simple way of living.

You see, your lifestyle is what produces the real change you seek. Thats how you
make a difference in your life. No pill, no diet, and no book can give you the
secret the secret lies within yourself, your process, and your expectations of
that process.

Focused action > Committed and Repeated > Habit > Lifestyle.

#2: Identify What You Want

What exactly do you want?

Envision yourself time-shifting 1 year into the future at a New Years Eve party.
Envision yourself celebrating the year that was, the year that changed
EVERYTHING. Take a moment and reflect on the accomplishments you are
celebrating in this moment.

Do you want to lose 60 pounds and did it? Did you eat better and got your
cholesterol down to 180? Did you enter a fitness competition and placed in the
top three? Did you start a new business and doubled your income? Quit your job?
Met your soulmate? Complete a full length novel?

Identify EXACTLY what you want to feel in this moment and envision yourself
there.
If you don't know where you want to go, you don't know the road that will get you
there.

#3: Apply Mathematics To That End Goal, If Possible

Now that youve envisioned how awesome your new year will be, attach
a numerical figure to your goal.

If lose weight is the goal, this would translate into Lose 25 pounds or Get to
15% bodyfat. Likewise, if your goal is to start a business you would need to
identify a numerical number, say sales, profits, or # of customers.

The mathematics of the change is crucially important as subjective milestones

cannot be measured, and often are action-fakes for real progress.

For example, if start a business is the goal, what measure identifies meet ing the
goal? The moment you get business cards? Or a fancy logo? The moment you
launch the website?

While these milestones are apart of the process, they are merely circle -jerking
action-fakes designed to make us think that weve accomplished a goal, when the
real goal should be a sustainable mathematical momentum that keeps us moving
toward habitual and addictive producing results.

If it cannot be sustained, it isnt real it isnt habit and it isnt lifestyle.

#4: Segment The End Goal Into Its Daily Take-Action Step

After you isolate what you want to achieve and quantified it, break down that
achievement into its core take action component, or what I call the daily
target. What daily routine will get you there?

For example, if your objective is to write a novel, your daily target could be to
write 500 words everyday, or a minimum of 2 hours. If your objective is 12%
body fat and six-pack abs, your daily target would be to either workout and/or
eat no more than 2,000 calories. The important thing here is to isolate the micro-
task that builds the process.

If your goal cannot be measured, use a daily accounting instead. For example, on
my attached spreadsheet I have an end goal as education I want to expand
my knowledge. In order create change in this area, I will strive to learn something
new everyday. Doing so completes the task.
#5: Identify What Threatens The Daily Target.

In other words, you need to identify what IS NOT working. What can and will
threaten your daily target? Theres that old adage: The definition of insanity is to
keep doing the same thing while expecting different results. In other words, the
choices you made this YEAR resulted in the CONSEQUENCES you have NOW.

In order to hit the daily targets youve set, youve got to identify exactly WHAT
will stop you from achieving them. Why have you failed for the last 10 years?
What things do you need to stop doing to make this happen THIS YEAR? Success is
more about what you need to STOP doing versus START doing.

Are you spending 5 hours a day on Facebook playing the latest and greatest
game?
Are you jumping from one idea to the next with no focused action or plan?
Does your ego require an expensive BMW? Which then requires you to
maintain your 60 hour a week soul-sucking corporate job?
Are you giving into false narratives (I have no money! I have no skills! I'm
not a morning person!) that preclude you from making a change?
In order to tackle the hardest part of process, which is committed and repeated,
you have to dig down into your life and expose everything that is thwarting
process.

It all boils down to one thing: Your choices.

"Greatness is a lot of small things done daily."

What are you choosing instead? What bad habits are stealing your time and
derailing your progress?

The bottomline is, if you dont have what you want, its because of one reason
only: Youre simply not making the required sacrifice. You are choosing actions
not correlated to your goal.

#6: Target Threats By Identifying Where the Battles Are Won and Lost.

Most people fight their wars on the wrong battlefield, resulting in loss after loss.
If you only knew WHERE and HOW to fight, you would have a fighting chance to
create the change you want.

For example, if you want to lose fifty pounds, you have to first identify where the
battle is won and lost.

Most people think the battle is won at the refrigerator. As you open up the door,
the battle begins:
 OMG, dont eat that ice cream! Pick something else!
Oooh, look at the cheesecake! Should I eat a few bites? No dont!
Mmmm, I would love an ice cold Pepsi right about now but I shouldnt.
Dont eat that block of cheese! OMG I cant stand it!
No, dont grab that gallon of ice cream! Oh, just a little dish wont hurt

Sorry champ, but youve already lost.

The war youre fighting isnt fought at the refrigerator, its fought at the grocery
store. The moment you put this crap in your shopping cart, is the moment youve
lost the war. Youre fighting a war with sticks and stones while your enemy has
an AR-15.

Been spending hours watching mindless reality television? The battle you need to
fight isnt on the couch with the remote control, its on the telephone. Pick up the
phone and cancel the freaking cable TV.

#6) Attack bad habits with inconvenience and/or pain.

Once you identify the battlegrounds, your bad habits are now ripe for attack.

How do you attack them?

By leveraging your natural human instinct which is to seek the path of least
resistance. In other words, make your bad habits a royal pain in the ass to
continue. Make them invasive. Inconvenient.

In our refrigerator example, if youve won the war at the grocery store, you now
have attached inconvenience to the bad habit. If you want ice cream, youve got to
hop in your car, drive to the store, troll the grocery aisle, buy it, and drive home.
Not super complicated, but certainly not super convenient.

If youre trying to stop playing video games, pack up your XBOX console and sell
it. Or throw it in the attic. Now if you want to play, youve got to climb a ceiling
ladder and crawl through a dusty attic to unpack it, wire it up, and play.

Again, not very convenient.

#7) Reward Daily Action-Taking Accomplishments with a Physical Cue.

I dont know what it is, but Ive learned that crossing-off line-items on my to-do
list is addictive.

It feels good.
I love seeing that X being marked off as it gives me a sense of reward. If you can
do the same with your daily action taking we can encourage process and habit
changing behavior to take place.

Ive attached a spreadsheet that can help us accomplish this. It also outlines this
entire exercise in procedural change.

Going back to our lose weight example, your daily ritual should include a visit to
the gym and a better diet. Each day this is done successfully, mark down its
accomplishment in a journal or a spreadsheet. On my spreadsheet, its
achievement is marked by an X.

The objective of the spreadsheet is to create a mental map of your action taking
so it eventually forms a process.

The goal is to get vertical with the Xs as much as possible for each goal target. If
you target ONE X MINIMUM for each day for each row, you will
experience KAIZEN, or constant improvement.

Over the course of thirty days, you will see noticeable results.

In a year, you wont recognize yourself!!!

Optimally, you want to create columns of Xs on consecutive days for each

objective. The minimum goal should be at least one X on each day this means
you are improving yourself every single day. To get started, I suggest a simply 30-
day challenge, or baby steps, a 10-day challenge.

Pick a goal, line up some Xs and see how to goes for you.

On my spreadsheet, I have several categories. Each are designed to improve my

life in a different facet. This challenge also exposed an interesting "false
narrative" in my life ... The last 2 weeks, I've been getting up at 4:15AM and
hitting the gym. While the early days were a struggle, I'm to the point now where
I discovered that "I'm not a morning person" was simply a narrative I told myself
so I didn't have to exert the discipline to get up.

So, who wants to change their life in the next 30 days?

KAIZEN: Japanese for "improvement" or "change for the best", refers to

philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes.