Welcome back to our Life List Club members. If you’re not already a Life List Club member, all you need to do is subscribe to this blog or to one of the other writers’ blogs. You’ll find the other writers, Jess Witkins, Jennie Bennett, Sonia Medeiros, Gene Lempp, and more listed in the blogroll in my sidebar.
I had touched on this topic of small changes =big results in an earlier post, and my friend Lisa Rivero at her Writing Life blog wrote a post recently entitled 30 Days of Small, Sustainable Changes. Her post included a video explaining the concept of small changes. you can view it below. Please visit Lisa’s blog for the rest of her post.
When we are setting goals and working toward them, we can run into a period of time where we are overwhelmed with obligations and can’t keep up with working on our goals. When that happens, don’t panic or stress and give up. Take one of your goals and break it down into manageable bites until your obligatory loads lightens.
If you haven’t set up your Life List yet, compose it with 30-day chunks of small changes that will lead to one or several big results. Using exercise as an example, if your List states ‘exercising for one hour everyday’ as a goal, you may try to accomplish that but then will hit a few days when you just can’t squeeze an hour out of your day to devote to exercise. Don’t give up! Decide how long it will take to get back to your routine, say 3 weeks, and opt for exercising for 10 minutes everyday for those 3 weeks, just to keep the commitment to exercise in place.
Watch the video and take from it the concept. Then adapt it to help you with your Life List and achieving your objectives.
Other things to try for 30 days:
- If you’re a picky eater, try a new food everyday for 30 days.
- Have trouble finding time to read? Sit with a book for 15 minutes. Do it for 30 days.
- Learning to golf? Practice your swing everyday for 30 days.
- Say ‘Thank You’ daily to a different person for something they did for you. Do it for 30 days.
- Little time to write? Write one page everyday for 30 days. You’ll have 7,500 words in one month, or a whole book in one year, if you repeat the exercise every month.
What small changes can you make in 30 days to create a big result?
I love hearing from you and anxiously await your comments! Join the Life List Club today by subscribing to my blog. You’ll be eligible for prizes on Milestone Fridays!
Don’t forget! I’m giving away a copy of NYTimes best-selling author, Robyn Carr‘s book, Wild Man Creek, when my LIKEs on my Facebook author page hits 100! Please go click the LIKE button at the top of the page today!
Marcia Richards 
Pingback: October Brings Goblins, Witches and Ghosts…Apple Pie! | Marcia Richards' Blog
Pingback: Creating Bite-sized Life Goals | Marcia Richards….Married With Stories
A much needed reminder and help to once again establish the small steps for my goals…I will get back to you perhaps even in a apost…loving this whole concept of Life List…
Great reminder on how to set goals that are achievable and work towards them over a longer period of time. Like Pam mentioned, even if you don’t hit your mark by the time you wanted to, it’s important to recognize progress and learn from our setbacks, which will happen, and that’s ok.
Great post. I think the best part is the reminder that not making your mark for whatever reason is not a reason to panic. That’s ultimately what leads people to giving up. I’m trying to write 2 hours a day and work out 1 hour a day while working full-time, but life often makes me make hard choices. When that happens, I try to remember that writing for 1 hour and working out for 30 minutes instead, or being in the gym 4 days a week instead of my intended 6, is still a lot better than what I was doing without setting the goals!
So, true, Pam. Yes, when life gets complicated, just keep doing as much as you have time for. Thanks for your take on it.
Cheers to Pam, you’re so my hero right now. Thanks for sharing what motivates you!
Excellent advice Marcia. The biggest thing with accomplishing our goals is never to give up for any reason. Life will always interfere, that is how life is. By breaking things down into to easy to manage chunks we can continue to advance our goals. Sure it may not be in the time frame we originally envisioned but if we stop, then it will never be in any time frame at all.
Thanks 🙂
You’re right, Gene. Manageable chunks…that’s the key.
This sounds fun. I think I’m going to try and walk everyday for 30 days and see where it gets me. thanks for the advice!
Great idea, Jennie! Keep moving, stay healthy!
Very good advice. I think we tend to make big, sweeping goals. When they turn out to be too much, or we don’t build Rome in a day, we give up. Your advice is something to think about when I’m frustrated and discouraged.
I’m glad, Catie. Yes, we tend to think we can accomplish much more than is realistic. We have to remember to be reasonable…if only to save our sanity!