Welcome to The Simplify Your Life Podcast, where we talk about how to create a life you won’t need an escape from! I’m Coach Simona, author of the book “111 Ways to Simplify Your Life”, and I’m glad you decided to tune in. In today’s podcast episode, we’re going to talk about 5 small changes you can make for so that you can have the ultimate glow-up this year. Now, let’s dive right into it!
The first small change you can make for a happier year is to Be aware of the “victim” role One of the reasons we play the “victim role” is because we have an external locus of control. What is locus of control and what are the differences between internal and external locus of control? Locus of control is an individual’s belief system when it comes to attributing success or failure to external or internal factors.
If a person has an internal locus of control, they attribute success to their own efforts and abilities. On the other hand, a person with an external locus of control attributes their success to luck or fate and will be less likely to make the effort needed to learn. Having an internal locus of control will influence your decisions directly and one of these decisions is to stop playing the victim. If you decide to ditch the “poor little me” narrative this year, you’re going to see
life for what it really is: neither good nor bad. So, how can you leave the victim role in the past? By taking radical responsibility for anything that happens in your life. What do I mean by this? No matter how bad the circumstances are or what other people say or do, you still have a choice how to react in any given situation. It is your responsibility to dwell on negative experiences or perceive the circumstances as
detrimental to your well-being. You decide how much weight to put on each one of them. Pay attention to moments throughout the day when you’re not taking responsibility for your choices. What thoughts and stories are going through your mind? What are you ruminating about? Are you really that miserable and unfortunate, or is that something that you’ve been conditioned to believe? Question everything. The more questions you ask yourself, the better they’re going to get.
I’ve actually created a free journaling worksheet where you can learn more about yourself by exploring your shadow self. If you want to download it, just click the first link in the description below or head over to: coachsimona.com/shadow The second small change to make for a happier year is to Become aware of the compounding effect when it comes to your choices What do I mean by this? Every choice we make gets us closer to our goals or even further away.
The important thing is not making small individual choices but the compounding effect they have on our life over time. For example, if you eat dessert today that doesn’t necessarily mean it would have a long-term negative effect on your health or weight. But if you eat two or three desserts per day every day for a year, the compounding will lead to negative consequences that will most likely have long-term effects.
One of the things that can help you stop relying on external forces to make healthier choices is to master self-discipline. When you have full control over your daily habits and behaviors, it will be much easier for you to make better decisions. I’ve created an entire episode on this topic, so if you’re interested in learning more, make sure to check out episode 185 after
this one. I will leave a link below. The next small change you can make for a happier year is to Be prepared to fail This probably isn’t something you want to hear especially at the beginning of the year, but it’s the truth. Failing is a natural part of life and I want you to reframe the way you see failure in the first place. Why am I preparing you to fail? Because
making one or two healthy choices is easy, what’s important is the compounding effect. The ability to stick to your healthy choices and not fall back into old behaviors and negative thought patterns. Now, I’m going to give you a very simple exercise that you can try anytime you’re hesitating about making a certain choice. For this example, let’s say you’re trying to cut off junk food, but you’re having trouble sticking to your new habit of eating healthy.
Ask yourself the following three questions: 1. Why do I want to eat junk food right now? 2. What thoughts are going through my head? 3. Am I really going to feel better after I do it? Once you center yourself in the present moment and become aware of the choices you’re about to make... make them. The important thing is to train yourself to make conscious choices. If you’re consciously choosing to do unhealthy things, that’s a whole
other story and it may have something to do with addiction or low self-esteem. If you think that’s the case, you're going to love my video on building self-confidence. You can watch it after this one by visiting youtube.com/coachsimona Now, the moment you become aware of your thought patterns, you’ll slowly start craving all those guilty pleasures less and less. It’s not about limiting yourself and playing the blame-game, it’s about making your own choices and accepting the consequences.
It’s almost impossible to always make healthy choices, that’s why you need to be compassionate with yourself, Which actually brings me to the next small change you can make for a happier year: Stop letting the past determine your future The is already gone. It doesn’t define you. Every day is a new chance to make better choices and create a life you won’t need an escape from. You just have to choose to do it. If you’re having the same thoughts every day, that will lead to the same feelings,
the same behaviors, and the same beliefs. And you can’t expect to change your state if you keep finding yourself in the same negative thinking loops, right? So one small change you can make in that direction is to ask yourself multiple times throughout the day: What do I need right now? Answering this question will lead to two very important outcomes: 1. It will help you tune into your body to identify what your needs are right here, right now
2. It will shift your focus from your inner monologue back to the present moment By identifying your needs and taking the necessary steps to take care of them, you’ll not only start accepting yourself, but you’ll also learn to accept the present moment without resisting it. The #1 reason we’re trying to escape the present moment is because we’re not happy with it. So, think about your needs, because believe it or not, they are the actual reason why you feel
unhappy. It’s not your partner, your job, or anything else from the external world. All you need to do is focus on yourself and learn to listen. The next small change you can make is to Reframe the beliefs you have about yourself For this one, I want you to write down all the negative beliefs you have about yourself in one column, and think of some new ones that are more aligned with your truth and more grounded in reality. Let me give you an example.
Let’s say in the first column you write: “I’m a failure.” You can reframe it by writing down something like: “Every mistake I make helps me grow and evolve as a person.” You can do this for each one of these negative beliefs and start accumulating evidence that it’s true. For example, next time you have a small win, I want you to acknowledge it, reflect on it, celebrate it. Not every win has to be big to be meaningful to you. Every achievement counts.
Sometimes we don’t appreciate the amazing things we do on a daily basis, because we’re too busy beating ourselves up over every little mistake. That’s why I created The Self-Love Toolkit: to help you reframe your negative beliefs and learn to love yourself, unconditionally. If you want to learn more, click the link in the description box below or head over to: www.theselflovetoolkit.com
Thanks so much for tuning in! If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please like it, subscribe, and I will see you in the next one.