A Practical Guide to Creating Lasting Change
If you want to know how to create lasting change in your life, you’ll need to reshape how you think and see yourself.
When we focus on challenging who we think we are, redefining failure, and committing to consistent action, transformation becomes sustainable and deeply empowering.
Let’s explore these three tips in detail, offering practical steps and profound insights to help you create meaningful, lasting change.
Who do you think you are?
If you believe you have to just ‘do’ lots of things to create the change you want in your life, you’re missing a trick.
At the heart of every lasting transformation lies a shift in who you think you are and how you are in your day to day interactions in life.
If you only focus on what you need to do, without considering how you need to be, change will feel temporary and simply left to the mercy of the random outcomes of external factors.
By reimagining yourself and considering the way you are (how you be), you unlock the power to act in alignment with your goals.
Practical steps to being
Define your future self: Take a moment to visualise your goals and what you want to experience. Write a detailed description of this version of yourself, of you fully aligned to your goals and how you are being. How are you thinking? How are you spending your time? What habits, attitudes, and beliefs are you embodying?
Ask powerful questions: Use a question like, “What would my aligned self do in this situation?” to guide your decisions in the present moment.
Being authentic: Begin embodying your future visualised self now, even if it feels a little unfamiliar. However, take it step by step. You have to believe in yourself in this way of being. It must feel congruent. Otherwise, it may feel inauthentic and you may not be able to sustain or integrate the behaviours. Focus on feeling comfortable in your skin, focus on what you can control – what you say and do.
Insights on yourself
Your actions stem from how you see yourself. If you identify as someone who is “bad with money,” you’ll subconsciously reinforce that belief with poor financial habits. However, when you shift your identity to “I’m someone who is learning to manage money wisely,” your behaviour begins to align with this new self-perception.
If you want to learn how to create lasting change in your life, sign up for The Clearing.
Lasting change is a process of becoming. It’s not about adopting temporary behaviours, but transforming how you experience and define yourself.
How to embrace failure
Failure is one of the greatest barriers to change because it often feels like evidence that you’re not capable of achieving your goals. However, when you redefine failure, it becomes a powerful tool for growth instead of a reason to give up.
Practical steps to embrace failure
Shift your perspective: Instead of viewing failure as the opposite of success, see it as part of the process. Ask, “What did this experience teach me that will help me improve next time, grow or pivot?”
Write it down: After every setback, write down three things you learned, one action you’ll take differently moving forward, and celebrate the courage it took to try.
Separate outcome from self worth: When you take action, do you throw your self worth into the mix? Are you pinning your self worth on others’ reactions? Notice what you’re gambling when you take action. Recognise that not getting the outcome you wanted does not make you a failure.
Insights on failure
Overnight successes are exceedingly rare and never the norm. Failure is a factor of every single person’s growth.
Failure can breed resilience if you will let it.
I remember once at a martial arts grading- I thought I’d failed because I couldn’t complete a ‘move’ and fell over. I got up and carried on, giving it my all, but I was convinced I’d failed or at least got a low mark. In the end, the instructor came over and congratulated me for my resilience and determination and I scored just what I had hoped.
How to overcome perfectionism
One of the most common traps when creating change is the all-or-nothing mindset. I even hear people tell me that they’re an all-or-nothing person. Some people believe that you need to be perfect from the start, and when perfection isn’t achieved, their motivation wanes.
I believe, and I have lived experience of, sustained transformation coming not from perfection, but from small, consistent actions repeated over time.
Practical steps to build consistency
Start small: Choose one habit or action that feels manageable. For example, if you want to exercise regularly, start with just five minutes a day rather than committing to an hour-long workout.
Create a habit with an anchor: Anchor your new habit to an existing routine. eg. meditate for two minutes after brushing your teeth or write in your journal while drinking your morning coffee.
Stretch the timescale: Give yourself a little more time for things. Do you want to approach things in a rushed, anxious state or with a little more ease. Now, I really work well with a deadline, but I don’t like the adrenalin rush when I’m doing simple tasks. Personally, I never want to hear this tip of ‘stretch the timescale’, but it’s helped me loads over the years, even with tiny things, such as how long it takes to put the wet laundry on to drying racks (hate this job). I think I can do it in 3 mins, I’ve timed it, it’s more like 8 mins. So I give myself 10 mins and feel good about the ‘saved’ time! We’re funny ol’creatures.
Track the actions taken: After your to do list – create a ta da list- to record the actions taken. Seeing a streak build up can be incredibly motivating. We are usually good at writing lists, but not so good at acknowledging ourselves for what we’ve completed. Seeing what we have accomplished builds motivation and strengthens those positive neural pathways.
Insights on consistency
The Japanese philosophy of Kaizen advocates the value of continuous improvement through small, incremental changes. Over time, these tiny shifts compound into extraordinary results.
Consider the concept of “1% better every day.” If you improve by just 1% daily, you’ll be 37 times better at the end of a year. Consistency transforms the impossible into the inevitable. I love those maths stats.
(Formula: (1.01)^365, where 1.01 represents a 1% increase and 365 represents the number of days in a year = 37.78)
Creating lasting change is an art and a science.
It requires courage to challenge how you see yourself, wisdom to see failure as a teacher, and discipline to stay consistent even when progress feels slow.
Take the first step today. In time, you’ll look back and marvel at how far you’ve come, and how deeply you’ve transformed.
If you love the motivation of a group, you will be made hugely welcome on my next course-
The Clearing – Create Lasting Change.
Six week course – 29th April – 3rd June 2025
Early- bird – £222 til Friday 4th April (£333- standard price)
Deposit just £111
