6 Steps to Change Your Life for the Better

by John C. Maxwell

You can change your life if you really want to. You can improve it, make it better. And it all starts with changing the way you think. So are you ready? I am going to walk you through a six-step plan for achieving positive change.

Step 1: When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs. Change begins with looking into your own mind. What you believe—what you think—is a collection of continual thoughts that have formed themselves into a conviction. When you break down the process of thinking into a manageable number of steps, you can reduce the perceived risk associated with change.

Step 2: When you change your beliefs, you change your expectations. Belief is the knowledge that we can do something. It is the inner feeling that what we undertake, we can accomplish. For the most part, all of us have the ability to look at something and consider whether we can do it. So in belief there is power… our eyes are opened, our opportunities become plain, our visions become realities. Our beliefs control everything we do. If we believe we can or we believe we cannot, we are correct.

Step 3: When you change your expectations, you change your attitude. Your expectations are going to determine your attitude. Most people get used to average; they get used to second best. Nelson Boswell said, “The first and most important step toward success is the expectation that we can succeed.”

Step 4: When you change your attitude, you change your behavior. When our attitude begins to change, when we become involved with something, our behavior begins to change.

Step 5: When you change your behavior, you change your performance. Most people would rather live with old problems than new solutions. We would rather be comfortable than correct; we would rather stay in a routine (rut) than make changes. Even when we know that the changes are going to be better for us, we often don't make them because we feel uncomfortable or awkward about things feeling different. Until we can get used to living with something that is not comfortable, we cannot get any better.

Step 6: When you change your performance, you change your life. Yes, a person can fail, but they can turn around and understand their failure to make it a success. But I want to tell you, a person who makes excuses for everything will never truly succeed. I promise you, when you excuse what you are doing and excuse where you are and you allow the exceptions, you will fail to reach your potential. It is impossible to turn excuses into possibilities.

Hope is the foundational principle for all change. People change because they have hope. If people do not have hope, they will not change. You are responsible for the changes that you make in your life, but the good news is, you can make the changes you need to make in your life.