The Best Way to Change Your Life (or How to Lose Weight and Play the Guitar)

There are a lot of different ways to change your life. There are a lot of different motivators for wanting to change your life too. In my experience there are no easy answers but I think I can give you a piece of advice that will help you on your way. The rest will be up to you.

The best way to change your life is baby steps. It's a cliché but I said it. It's an often used term but it is too often taken for granted. Let's face it, you aren't going to have your dream body in a month or be able to wail on a guitar in a week. In both cases you are going to have to find a way to reach your goal. In order to get there you are going to have to set smaller goals.

Now you won't progress very fast but you have to slowly integrate these changes into your life. You don't just play the guitar sometimes; you have to do it every day. You can't just eat healthy sometimes; you have to do it every day.

The baby steps mean that you aren't going to give yourself a week and a half to lose thirty pounds. You are going to commit yourself to work out for 10 minutes every day. As for the guitar you should commit to at least pick it up every day.

The whole point of this method is to get you started. You can slowly start to commit to more time everyday for whatever activity you would like to achieve. As you do each thing regularly it will seem more natural to turn on the workout DVD or pick up the guitar. As the philosopher Lao Tzu once said, "The journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step."

I point out the two examples of playing the guitar and losing weight because many people see these as things that would drastically improve one's life. I believe that they would. Even if they don't directly make you happier you will gain confidence from your new direction. Going through this process will help you feel like you know yourself better.

I have one final note to add. Just because you miss one day you shouldn't give up on yourself. Nobody is perfect and the world that we live in makes it hard to do things every day. Ideally you should shoot for at least 5 or 6 days a week. But if you miss three days without an actual emergency you should punish yourself. I'll leave that for you to figure out. You know what you'll want the most, sweets, TV for a day, or your favorite TV show. You can do it!