Creating lasting change in your life can be extremely challenging. You might feel totally stuck, discouraged, or even wonder if it’s just not going to happen for you.

It’s totally understandable to feel this kind of frustration. Most of us have never been taught that there are a few simple and incredibly effective tools we can use to completely transform and simplify the process of making changes.

Change can, in fact, happen easily and effortlessly. And the feeling of achieving those goals and changes is deeply satisfying. You deserve success and happiness in your life so let’s take a look at the key steps you can take to create lasting change.

1. Clarify Your Direction

Often, part of the problem that people encounter when trying to make a change is that they’re not 100% clear about exactly what it is that they want to change.

What is your exact goal? What does it look like? For example: Do you want to create a business that brings in $100,000 annually? It’s tougher, (and a lot less fun!), to track your successes when the goal is vague or unclear.

So, grab a pen and paper right now and clarify your direction…what is it that you really want to change or create in your life? Get specific. You can get even more crystal clear on your goals using the SMART goal process – check out your goal and make sure it’s:

Specific

Measurable

Action-oriented Realistic

Time-oriented 

As you reach some of your specific, clear goals, or continue to get even more clarity and focus, you might end up refining your goals and adding new ones. You’ll be achieving goals with much more ease just by getting clear on exactly what your goal is. As you do this, the process frees up your energy and focus to set and achieve even bigger goals as you go!

2. Strategize Your Actions

Now that you are crystal clear on exactly what you want to achieve, you’ll get there easily when you create a step by step plan. Without a strategy, going for your goal is kind of like trying to get from New York to Los Angeles without a map – murky, confusing and frustrating. With a map, it’s clear, easy and fun – take this turn, then this one, then the next. Makes sense, right?

So again, grab that pen and paper, and sketch out a plan for getting to your goal. What do you need to do first? What are some things you might want to try that will help you? If you get stuck, you can sit back and consider the goal you have.

If you could break your goal into three main stages, what would those three stages be? Strategizing your actions makes it manageable, enjoyable and simple to move forward, step-by-step. As you achieve each step, you build momentum to keep cruising forward effortlessly on any and all of your goals.

3. Upgrade Your Skills

If you’ve had trouble achieving your goals in the past, it might simply be because you need to acquire or brush up on some key skills for your goal.

For example, if you keep getting stuck when trying to start a business, it might just be that you need to build some solid marketing skills and then you’ll be ready to hit it out of the park. Are you stuck in your dating pattern? It might be time to read a book on starting and building solid relationships.

Stop right now and make a list of the skills that are needed to achieve your particular goal. If you don’t have a clue, Google it or ask someone who has already accomplished the goal you want to achieve. As you take a look, you might see that you’re strong in some areas and that you could use support in some others. Pin-pint how you can get started on upgrading your skills.

Once you have the necessary skills in place, feeling frustrated and stuck will melt away. Your skills will give you confidence and propel you forward into success!

4. Optimize Your Environment

Have you ever noticed how great you feel after spending time in your favorite place or with your favorite person? Our environment is a huge factor in our success. I know, for example, that I am enthusiastic, focused and motivated after spending time with other successful people who are as excited about what they do. On the flip side, it’s pretty tough to create powerful changes in your life when you’re in an environment that doesn’t support you.

A few things to consider when optimizing your environment:

Take a look at the people you surround yourself with daily. Do they support, motivate and inspire you, or do they bring you down? What can you do to consistently be in environments where you’re surrounded with people that support you and inspire you toward success? What could you add to your environment to make success easy, fun and inevitable? For example, if you want to meet new people, but you hate going to bars, signing up for a meetup.com group might be the perfect situation to add to your environment.

What could you take out of your environment that is detracting from your ability to achieve success with ease and joy? If you’re trying to start a business, but your workspace is so loaded with clutter that it takes you an hour to find a space to get down to work, well, that’s not so supportive. Get rid of the clutter and see how it affects your environment. Make a list of things you could add to your environment to support you and things you could remove that would make you more successful.

5. Master Your Psychology

Putting any one of the tools to work in your life will make a huge difference, without a doubt. And, with that said, this secret might just be the most powerful one of all.

Sometimes, no matter what you do to create a change, something underneath it all can still hold you back. It’s completely normal to encounter fears, doubts, and limiting beliefs when you’re getting out of your comfort zone.

There are a lot of great ways to work with these psychological factors so they no longer have any power over you and your success. Number one is simply to become aware of them – to really notice how a certain doubt creeps up every time you consider taking the next step, for example.

Knowledge is power. Once you start to bring these processes out of hiding and into the light of your awareness, you can work with them, and release them!

Having someone who will support you through the process of releasing fears, doubts and limiting beliefs makes a huge difference.

In the meantime, you can support yourself by becoming aware of the “inner game” issues that creep up and threaten to hold you back. You absolutely deserve a happy, successful life. Try these tools and watch how they work for you.