Changing your life can seem like a daunting task. Luckily, one of my favorite approaches to doing just about anything, also works great for tackling seemingly big tasks like trying to change your life.

The concept is simple. Take anything you want to accomplish and chunk it down into little bite sized steps that seem a lot more manageable.

If you wanted to apply this approach to making positive changes in your life, you could work on developing one new success habit every three months. Within a year, you will have developed four new positive habits.

Just imagine what your life would be like in one year’s time if you developed four new success habits like these:

• Spending several hours reading success related or educational books every week.
• Taking action toward your goals every day.
• Exercising three to five times a week.
• Eating less processed food and more nutritious food instead.

After just one year:

• You would be regularly filling your mind with useful information to help you improve your life.
• You would be steadily moving toward your goals and dreams.
• Your body will start becoming more healthy and energetic which will in turn give you more energy to devote to other areas of your life.

If you made these kinds of changes year after year, your life will be dramatically different in very short amount of time. All because you developed one new success habit every three months.

Why Three Months?

1. You’ve probably heard before that it takes about thirty days to develop a new habit. By allowing yourself a full three months of working with a new success habit, you can be sure that the habit will become deeply ingrained in your subconscious mind. This way you can be sure that you will continue your new habit even after the three month period is up.
2. Working on just one new habit every three months seems less intimidating than a new habit every month. Four new habits a year feels a lot more achievable than twelve. The more achievable something seems, the more likely you are to do it.

What Changes Do You Want To Create?

Where you want your life to go is ultimately up to you. By implementing one new success habit in your life every three months, you will constantly be growing, improving, and empowering yourself which will allow you to enjoy a life that just keeps getting better and better.

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If you have ever tried to make lifestyle changes using the old school method of willpower, you know how hard it can be. Typically, the long-term success rate is about 5%.

Without getting overly technical, here’s why:

• Your conscious mind is where you make decisions and where your willpower resides. It makes up about 3% of your brain-power.
• Your subconscious mind is where your habits and beliefs reside. It makes up about 97% of your brain power.

Imagine having a tug of war between two people. One side represented by your conscious mind, and the other side represented by your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is going to by 32 times stronger than your conscious mind. When these two minds start pulling against each other, who do you think is going to win?

Your habits (subconscious mind) will almost always win out over your willpower (conscious mind).

Thankfully, it is possible to use the power of your subconscious mind to make changes almost effortlessly.

Create New Habits By Retraining Your Subconscious Mind

The easiest way to make positive lifestyle changes is stop trying to fight against your subconscious mind and start retraining it instead.

The subconscious brain learns through repetition. That’s how you developed your bad habits in the first place. You do something a few times and it starts to feel normal and familiar. You keep doing it for a while and it starts to become second nature. Keep it up for long, and you’ll develop a habit that’s hard to break.

The good news is that you can also create habits with mental repetition. With enough mental repetition, your subconscious brain will begin to absorb and hold on to these new habits that you’ve imagined yourself having. When that happens, your outer life will automatically begin to mirror the changes you’ve been imagining for yourself.

The only willpower you will need for this is the self-discipline to take 20 to 30 minutes a day to apply some mental techniques. The key thing to remember is that you will need to do them for at least 30 days straight before you start noticing any outward changes. If you miss a day, you need to start your count over again.

To begin, you first need to be clear about what new habit you would like to create. Be as detailed as possible. Once you’re clear on what you want to create in your life, start using one or more of the following three methods on a daily basis for the next thirty days.

1. Visualization

Visualization is fancy way of saying “use your imagination”.

To use visualization to effect change in your life, imagine with as much detail as you can, the new reality you would like to create.

So, if you want to change your eating habits. Imagine yourself being healthy and lean. Imagine yourself making healthy food and portion choices.

Always imagine it from the first person perspective. What would all this look like if you were seeing it through your own eyes. What would it feel like to eat and be healthy?

Give it as much detail and emotion as you can.

2. Affirmations

Affirmations are positive statements that you repeat to yourself over and over again.

Affirmations should:

• be specific.
• be written in the present tense.
• be phrased positively.
• include an emotional element.

Example of a bad affirmation:

“I will no longer be overweight by May of next year”

Example of a good affirmation:

“I am so happy and excited that I now weigh 140 pounds”

You probably shouldn’t repeat your affirmation for 20 minutes straight each day. It’s better to split up your time into several five minute sessions.

You can either close your eyes and repeat your affirmation over and over, or even better, use a mirror and look yourself in the eyes and repeat them.

3. Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a technique that can be used to bypass the conscious mind and directly communicate with the subconscious mind. A good hypnotherapist should be able to help you. Or you can use audio self-hypnosis programs. The Hypnosis Network has some excellent hypnosis CD’s that are all developed by highly acclaimed experts in the field of psychology and hypnosis.

Conclusion

Stop trying to use willpower to make changes in your life. Instead, harness the power of your subconscious mind and use it to your advantage. Imagine your new, positive habits into reality.