#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 subconscious. 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

meeting 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.