How the systems and habits approach to improvement deals with change

Using the systems and habits approach to improve gives us a great path to move forward towards our goals.  It sets out specific areas to leverage in order to build new routines and habits in our lives.  It focuses more on the process than the outcome and more on making progress than striving for instant perfection.

One thing in life that everyone faces on a daily basis is the incredible rate of change in the world.  New technologies emerge or people make decisions that impact us and suddenly we find that the world around us seems to have shifted.

Most people know this.  They go around talking about change and how important it is to be willing to change.

For the systems and habits approach to improvement, the focus is more on consistency and keeping up with positive behaviors to form habits.  This means that we have to utilize the power of keeping with something rather than just jumping around all the time. 

It almost seems that these two are at odds and as soon as change happens, our systems approach stops.  But that isn’t the case.

Many times with change, we don’t have to completely rewrite everything about us.  We simply have to make a slight adjustment.  If we are able to make this small adjustment it gives us a way to account for the change but still keep going. 

When I look over my life I can see examples of a constantly changing world.  But I also see examples of many areas of life that haven’t changed for years.

So if you start a new exercise routine after work and then get another job that ends later, it might be difficult to keep exercising.  So in that example we have to learn to adjust in order to keep going with our new positive routine. 

A couple years ago I moved into a new house.  Suddenly there were changes everywhere.  Instead of looking at this as an end to all of my positive habits that I spent years creating, I simply made sure that during the change I kept going with certain behaviors.  I built a strong foundation and the change didn’t completely change my habits. 

Not every change will directly interfere with the work that you are doing to build up the right habits and some changes will actually help it.  The key is to make necessary adjustments but keep going with the positive systems in your life.  Don’t abandon them due to sudden change. 

Doing this will help you to start taking change as a positive rather than a negative.  Instead of being upset that things are changing, you become excited for how the change can help you.

In The Success Principles, How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, author Jack Canfield says, “When you embrace change wholeheartedly as an inevitable part of life, looking for ways to use new changes to make your life richer, easier, and more fulfilling, your life will work much better.  You will experience change as an opportunity for growth and new experiences.”

Getting to this level of embracing change is possible and using the systems and habits approach to improvement is set up to help you gain from changes rather than lose from them.