Why Change Needs Movement

Change is something that is often feared. The thing is, change is the essence of life. Every moment we are changing, even at a cellular level. Our minds are changing and growing with every new experience.

It’s our “perception” of change that causes the feeling of fear. Going from the familiar to the seemingly unfamiliar.

Thinking back over your life so far. I’m guessing there has been a lot of change – some of it good and some of it not so good. Some of it you actively chose, and some of it chose you.

Interestingly, even for the change that chose you, when you look back the way your life changed as a result is generally a good change.

When it comes to finances, making decisions or changes is necessarily. If you stagnate you go backwards. Just look at the interest rates at the moment and the rate of inflation! At the moment the cost of living is rising faster than both wage increases and the amount a bank will give you for your money.

This means other options need to be explored, like investing. If you haven’t done much with investing, it may seem scary. What also impacts your decision to invest or not is also experiences you have had in the past, as well as the results you have witnessed from your parents’ investing and also possibly friends. Whether they were successful or not.

I know my own perceptions about property investing has been tarnished by witnessing my parents’ efforts. Sometimes successfully and sometimes not, but the results were random. A few years ago I also was going to try my hand at property development, but the developer turned out to be a bit shady, so the potential disaster of that has also clouded my perception.

Change will be impacted by all these things.

The thing is, in order to change, you need movement to create momentum.

Think of a car or a sailing boat. If you’re standing still you can’t steer. In a car the tyres squeak on the ground as you turn the steering wheel to change direction, but you don’t go anywhere. In a sailing boat you can turn that rudder as much as you like, but without movement you won’t go the direction you want (often you will float into the opposite direction!).

The first two steps I won’t go into detail here, but there are:

1. Understanding yourself – what you want in life and why (particularly a vision of the lifestyle that you want).

2. Knowledge – gathering the information you need and learning about what and how to achieve the lifestyle you want. This can be going to seminars, reading books, getting a coaching, taking courses. Whatever you need to do. Be careful here though to not spend too much time at this step and use knowledge gathering as an excuse for not progressing to the next step!

3. Plan – once you have some knowledge, it’s important then to have a plan. Keep in mind your overarching Lifestyle Vision (which you started to put together back in Step 1), and then figure out what your FIRST step is. You don’t have to have it all figured out and planned out in minute detail. Your goals may change, or life circumstances may change, or both. Having a view of what lifestyle you want will help you, yet it’s important to build in flexibility or adaptability so you can still take advantage of opportunities as they arise along your journey.

Then the next steps to making change are:

4. Action – creating momentum through movement. Take that FIRST step that you identified in the previous step. You have to DO something with the knowledge you amass, otherwise all that work and planning is wasted. Time passes and things change, so you need to keep this momentum going. Remember the sailing and driving analogies above!

5. Experience – the most valuable classroom there is. Once you understand yourself, have gathered enough of the right knowledge, made a plan and taken action, you will start to see results. These results form the basis of your experience and will help you to learn what is and isn’t right for you, and what does and doesn’t work for you. Everyone is different, so there isn’t a one size fits all approach to anything.

6. Review – experience without review is just knowledge without context. Compare your plan with your experience and see where you may need to change your plans or take different actions. You may need to learn something more. Also, remember that as you experience life and make decisions and changes in other areas of your life, you will be growing. That means that you also need to go back to Step 1 and check in on who you are and what you want and why. Which leads to the final step…

7. Rinse and repeat – this may seem like I’m trying to round off these steps at 7, and to a certain extent you’re right. But, this is important. Life isn’t stagnant, and as seasons come and go and we experience them again and again, there are seasons in our life that impact the knowledge we need, the plans we make, the actions we take, and the experiences we have.

So, while these steps are focused on making financial change, you can also use this process for any area of your life that you want to make changes in.

An important aspect to this is to write it down. Don’t leave these things in your head. Write them down, say them to a trusted friend who could even be your accountability partner. Say them out aloud. Make them real. Breathe life into them.

The MOST IMPORTANT part of this process though, is to start. Movement is needed to make change, even if you think you aren’t entirely sure what to do or how to do it, I have a feeling that you know what your next step should be. Get stuck into it and you will begin to build momentum!