9 Science-Backed Tips To Change Your Life

So, if you're looking for:

1. A change in your behavior.
2. A new job, look, or environment.
3. A new sense of purpose.

Here are the practical tips you need in this comprehensive guide to change.

How to know when you need a change?

How do you know if you need a change or something new? That's a piece of cake! There are three main reasons why people feel the need to change. Once you've identified the reason, apply the practical tips below:

1. You feel stuck

If you feel stuck, you may go through a psychological dilemma  when you feel trapped or emotionally attached to where you are in life. In other words, you want to change, but you feel like you can't.

Let's say, for example, that you have an office job from 9 am to 5 pm, you wish you were free but feel obligated to stay for the pay.

2. You underestimate yourself

Another reason to change is that you feel underrated, or that you don't realize your potential, for the following reasons:

• Others undermine your potential.
• You feel like something's holding you back.
• You're afraid to make mistakes.
• You have a great fear of failure.
• You underestimate yourself.
• You feel you have more to offer, earn, and do.

3. Something's not working

You may have tried everything, figured things out, said you'd change, but you're back to square one - still the same you. Have you had the same goals for three or five years in a row?

If it's a 'Yes', then you're not the only one there. People who made New Year's resolutions in 2020, only 35% were able to keep them. So, obviously something isn't working.

9 Tips to help you change

In this section of the article, we review the best practical tips you'll need to change. If you want to:

• Increase your productivity.
• Change your mindset.
• Control your diet.
• Change your lifestyle.
• Feel like you have a purpose.

These tips will be of great help:

1. make a fresh start

Choose a meaningful date to start your change, which can be:

• Your birthday.
• Your wedding anniversary.
• The beginning of summer.
• The beginning of the week.

Set that date, and you're good to go. Research shows that starting over is one of the best ways to start realizing your goals, because we have the greatest motivation when we start something new, called the fresh start effect.

Researchers have found that Google searches for terms like “diet,” visits to the gym, and commitments to goal-tracking are all at their peak at the beginning of the week, month, year, or semester.

This also happens on birthdays, and during holidays. Fresh starts create signs that help people leave their old ways and start over with better behavior. This allows people to leave behind the flaws of the past and motivates them to take a comprehensive view of their lives, which makes this the best way to motivate the behaviors you aspire to.

You should always use the “Fresh Start Effect” with your goals

Set in your agenda a date for your fresh start. Now is the time for change. Every month, check back on your progress and set five fresh starts a month from now if you feel like it to keep up your motivation. Remember your new goals in:

• Your birthday.
• New Year's Eve.
• The beginning of each month.
• The beginning of each season.

2. make your goals accessible

Setting goals that are easy to accomplish is essential. The biggest mistake people make while setting goals is starting big and difficult. If you want to eat healthy, it'll be hard to cut out on bread or eating out, because it makes a major change in your behavior. Starting small with more fruit, for example, will make it much easier.

To make things easier, you can:

• Put fresh fruit bowls around the house, and tuck potato chips away in the cupboard.
• Put your keys and running shoes beside your bed so you're ready to go in the morning.
• Leave your phone charger next to your desk so you don't bring it to your bedroom.

Take advantage of your laziness to do anything you want, make it as easy as possible to achieve your goals in order to increase the likelihood of their application, and learn what obstacles you might trip over and avoid them.

3. join a group that shares your goal

The common ground of these groups is that they include a large number of people who agree on one goal. In his book Stick With It, Dr. Sean Young considers groups great for behavior change, because they meet our following desires:

3.1. Trust

We must trust others, and see that our goals are possible. Joining appropriate groups is the solution.

3.2. Bonding

Being around like-minded people helps you bond and even make friends.

3.3. Self-worth

Being around others helps keep us motivated and feeling accomplished.

3.4. Accountability

Being with others reinforces our sense of accountability.

3.5. Reward

Being around other people who share the same goal is rewarding in itself.

3.6. Control

When you're part of a group, you'll feel more in control than if you were alone.

Your presence in a community may raise your chances of actually meeting your goals. So try meeting people through sites like Meetup.co or Facebook groups, or join a group with interests like racing or veganism to find like-minded people.

4. Realize the life stage you are going through

To learn how change happens, the researchers James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente studied how people change, and then came up with a model of the stages of change, which indicates that change is difficult at first, as there will be struggle and denial and relapse too, but things get easier with the progress you make. You become more committed to change after building good habits.

This model includes five stages. Being aware of the stage you're in is the first step to change:

4.1. Pre-Thinking

You might not see a problem in the first stage, or deny it if there's one. For example, a procrastinator may say: "I'm only an hour late," and then keep procrastinating. You might also feel during this stage that you're not in control of the change process.

4.2. Thinking

In this step, you'll realize that there's an issue - you're always late, and it's starting to mess with your life. You might want to change, but you haven't moved a finger yet. Some people never get past this stage, and they keep thinking for months or years.

4.3. Preparation

During this phase, you start researching, including reading books, seminars, or seeking advice from friends and family. According to Prochaska, 50% of people who skip this stage relapse within 21 days.

4.4. Action

Actions are finally taken at this stage. In order for this step to succeed, sufficient prior preparation must be done to decide the best action to be taken. For example, a procrastinator might set a plan by setting an alarm, and giving themselves a reward every time they arrive on time to an appointment.

4.5. Stability Phase

After acquiring new habits, this stage is important to maintain those good ones, and to avoid returning to bad habits. Rewarding yourself at this stage is the key to overcoming it, otherwise bad habits may come back. This stage may last for months to establish permanent habits.

So define the stage you're at now, allocate time for each stage and don't skip any, otherwise you might relapse quickly.

5. set your goals

Research shows that goal setting works. It helps to:

• Instill teachers in their jobs faster.
• Employees to receive a greater raise in their salaries.
• Students to learn up to 250% faster.

But the question is: How can you start to effectively define and achieve your goals? Try to measure your emotions.  At its core, this technique comes down to the following: Take a piece of paper and rate these areas of your life on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very dissatisfied and 5 being very satisfied.

5.1. Work

How do you feel about your work, profession, or the effectiveness and success of your work?

5.2. Friends

How is your social life going in terms of friendships and support system?

5.3. Family

How is your personal relationship with your partner?

5.4. Personal passion

Do you have personal passion projects, hobbies or leisure activities that satisfy you?

5.5. Health

Are you satisfied with your health or physical well-being?

6. take responsibility

Setting goals is easier than sticking to them. So get help, this is where responsibility takes the spotlight, tell all of this to a friend or your parents to help you stay responsible.

Better yet, put your money on the line if you fail to take the required action. For example, if you set your alarm to wake up at 6 am for a 30-minute run, and then when the alarm goes off decide to stay in bed and go back to sleep, make sure to take responsibility and donate for a charity, or have your partner pull the blankets off you.

It might suck, but it works. Accountability will help you change and build good habits one by one.

Pro tip

Since studies show that people are highly risk averse, if you do not commit, try to donate to a charity that you're not very fond of, which is called resisting charitable work that may be a greater motivation for you not to miss your goal.

7. practice change

If you feel helpless, try changing lots of little things to get you going, For instance:

• Set your alarm to a different time.
• Take a cold shower.
• Drink decaf coffee, instead of concentrated coffee.
• Try to have a meat-free day in your week.
• Delete three random apps that are taking up your time on your phone.
• Digital detox.
• Listen to a new Genre of music.
• Switch furniture in your home.
• Try volunteering.

Change your routine. This change doesn't have to be related to your goals. A little change can open doors for you to other possibilities.

8. Refine your self-talk

How do you mentally talk to yourself?

• Calmly and rationally.
• Negatively and aggressively.
• Warmly and positively.

If 3 is your answer, you're safe. Self-talk is very crucial, and when it comes to change, the way you talk to yourself may be more important than the way you behave.

A fascinating study observed the behavior of anorexic women as they walked through doors, and the scientists noticed that the women turned their shoulders when entering a room to see if they could get through, even when there was plenty of room for them to enter through the door.

The question is how do you see yourself? The way we talk to ourselves is the way we think about ourselves. If you keep telling yourself:

• I'm no good.
• I'm too lazy.
• I'm not good enough.
• I can't change.

Then you're limiting your ability to change. So change your self-talk. If you're having a problem, it might be a great idea to use positive motivational statements about yourself in your daily routine. Write them in a notebook you can carry with you, put them in your purse, hang them as an accessory on your car mirror, or put them on the cover of your phone.

9. reward yourself

You should be rewarded for reaching your goals, but not just any traditional reward. Dr. Young states that "attractive rewards" are the best you can give yourself. These rewards are very powerful and meaningful, and are usually non-monetary.

To give yourself amazing rewards, try the following:

9.1. Have fun in your activities

You'll find the activity intrinsically rewarding, if it's fun. That could mean working remotely in a café, or playing sports with great music on.

9.2. Never use money as a reward

Financial incentives don't usually work, and if they do, it'll only be to a certain extent.

9.3. Gamification

Try one of the many online apps that track your goals, or write your goals in a journal, and see how you're moving up.

Your rewards should be emotionally powerful to you - something to look forward to and make you happy.

5 Obstacles to Change

In this section, we will take a look at five bad ways in which we try to change, called the "change trap," such as:

• Trying to change too quickly.
• Procrastinating.
• Sticking to who we are.

After reading, you may be surprised by the following points that prevent you from progressing:

1. The First Change Trap: Setting Goals That Are Too Big

It's one of the biggest mistakes people make. It is of course unrealistic, change is a natural process that takes time, but this often slips our minds and we want to do big things too quickly.

According to one study, a habit takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form. If you're looking for a quick solution, it may be impossible, and if you're setting big and major goals, perhaps you should scale them down a bit. Chasing after your goals slowly and steadily makes you succeed and achieve what you aspire to.

2. The Second Change Trap: Information Dumping

Some people try to change by consuming too much information, whether by:

• Reading a lot of books.
• Taking many courses.
• Overthinking.

Let's agree that over-consumption of information is a synonym for procrastination, so we consume more because we think it's in our best interest, or because we don't know enough. But real change starts when we move and take action.

So here's what you have to do:

• Stop what you're doing. Realize how much research you've done. If you've been doing research for days, chances are you're already prepared.
• Drop learning, even if you've reached the middle of another self-help book, it's time to give it up.
• Take control of your life, and take the appropriate action you have already learned.

Once you realize that overconsumption of information is less important than action, you'll be almost there.

3. The Third Change Trap: Clinging To The Opinions Of Others

The researcher "Solomon Asch" conducted an experiment as 50 students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in an easy test. They had to look at the line on the left and match it, or connect it with the similar line on the right, and this is exactly where it gets interesting. During the test, each of the participants was placed in a room filled with 7 insiders, each assigned to give the researcher the same incorrect answer, and when it was finally the participant's turn, the participants agreed with the group 1/3 of the time. So if you want to change, you should often stand out from the crowd.

4. The Fourth Change Trap: Using Free Things

Have you ever fallen victim to the free fallacy?

• Free books.
• Free experiences.
• Free webinars.

The word "free" can be misleading when asking for help. For instance, if one day you receive an email with the subject: “Free one-day ticket” to go to the gym, you get excited until you actually get there, only to realize that you have spent this hour Signing documents, or listening to a personal trainer's speech, only to wish you'd spent that time elsewhere.

So be careful when you're offered a quick fix for free. Good things cost money, but the opposite is also true. Expensive education may not be worth it after all.

5. The Fifth Change Trap: Linking Our Actions to Our Characters

If you're trying to kick a bad habit, don't stick to your identity associated with it. If you're trying to quit procrastination, or overeating, you should stop thinking of yourself as a smoker, or an overeater. What could be more harmful than bad habits is associating your personality to it.

We all want to belong, but our affiliations can sometimes prevent us from thriving and becoming who we want to be. Think differently. Instead of saying, "I'm procrastinating," say, "I've been procrastinating." You're not the action, you're just doing the action, and once you know that, you'll feel freer to break the habit.

Bonus point: How to change your productivity?

If you're a procrastinator, or lack mental acuity, this section is for you. Great productivity requires a great methodology, but not any methodology. You need to choose the productivity-enhancing methodology that works for you. With so many ways to choose from, we'll talk about the best three that make you sharp and ready to take on any task:

1. The 30 minutes rule

If you're a fan of daily tasks, then you know how hard it can be to complete them, especially long ones. So here's the easiest way to do it, the 30 minute rule makes tasks more achievable.

In short, try to adjust your tasks to fit into 30 minutes, so instead of finishing recording a video for YouTube, for example, the task is divided into "finishing writing the script", then "recording the video" and so on. This method helps to make tasks more understandable.

2. The way things are done

Created by productivity professional David Allen, this term is for overthinkers and people who work on too many projects. Since we're thinking around the clock, we need to discard the things that cloud our judgment.

So, what do we do? This method involves five steps and takes a bit of time, but getting everything organized is worth it.

3. The Pomodoro technique

Studies show that frequent breaks reset your mental sharpness. So you'll like this technique if you're a fan of dividing time. Using the Pomodoro technique, you'll work non-stop from 25 minutes to an hour, and take 5 to 15 minutes break. You can try an app to start this technique, such as Be Focused, or Pomofocus.

Pick a technique from those mentioned above, and stick to it consistently if you find it works.