Dealing with the difficulties of life is often hard. Our problems and feelings can overwhelm us. Some of our weaknesses seem hardwired into us from birth or are learned early in childhood and appear unchangeable. Our negative thinking and bad behaviors can become ingrained and feel like they’re part of our identity. On top of that, life keeps moving forward, throwing more at us as we try to make progress and the external world intrudes on our attempts to get ahead.. How can we address all of this?

First, start with basic self-care. Eat good food, exercise and get good sleep. Any challenge you face will be easier to deal with if you’re healthy, strong and rested. That’s a fact. You have an addiction you’re trying to beat? Take care of your body and you’ll start to feel better about yourself. You have ADHD or struggle with executive functioning? Take care of your mind and you’ll perform at your best. You’re down on yourself or you struggle with depression or anxiety? Take care of your health and you will feel better.

Self-care is self-love. Work on it and you will increase the strength, energy and resiliency you can apply to making change.

Second, be practical. Changing your life takes time. We can’t just flip a switch, eliminate all our problems and instantly become perfect. It doesn’t work that way. And you may be poor or have other real world limitations that will take time to beat or work around. So accept that, stop beating on yourself for not having it all figured out right this second, so start taking care of yourself and then give yourself enough time to get to where you want to go.

Third, change isn’t just a matter of will-power. It’s about knowledge, commitment and strategy. People are tougher than they think and they can white-knuckle their way through quite a lot. I’ve seen and done that myself. It can keep you going, but you’ll miss out on opportunities to make your situation better. What we want to do is to commit to change, be honest with ourselves, understand how we think and what our hang ups are, come up with a plan and then put it into action. And we keep moving forward and adjusting the plan until we start to get traction.

I can help you with each of these steps. You have your entire life to work, so let’s get started.

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Chris Wilson