If you want to improve or change in some area of your life, one of the most effective and powerful things you can do is alter your structure. What this means is that we need to change the way we organize things, the structure or design, in order for change to happen automatically.
Automatic is the key with positive structure.
Here are some examples of using structure to change:
- Your goal is to lose weight, so you create the structure of keeping a dietary log daily, and it forces you to eat better.
- Your goal is to exercise daily, so you make a commitment to meet a friend in a structured way every morning at 6 to work out together. You improve your fitness automatically.
- You want to pray more, so you commit to saying the Lord’s prayer every morning and evening on the way to and from work. You get in the habit of doing this automatically.
- You want to learn to play an instrument, so you sign up and pay in advance for 6 months of lessons every Wednesday at 6pm. You automatically get better.
- You want to improve your career options, so you sign up for 3 continuing education classes, and gain news skills automatically.
- You want to be less stressed, so you commit to not buying anything for one year, and not drinking during the week, and you automatically spend less money and are less stressed.
- You want to get out and do more things, so you sign up for a dance class that automatically forces you to socialize.
- You want to save more money, so you create a budget, and every time you get a paycheck you automatically pay yourself first.
Put the structure in place for success. One reason the military is a great option for a lot of directionless young people is that It at least forces them to be in a structured environment. Left to our own devices, we are not good at getting things done. We are products of our environment, structure your environment so that it helps you instead of hurting you.
P.S. One structure that I’ve done to write more blog posts is putting a physical piece of paper out in early 2023 with my list of posts for me to see every day. This is positive structure.
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Scott
