The 5 Must-Have Ingredients to Create Lasting Change

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to studying and implementing the art and science of creating, setting and achieving goals.

Indeed, it’s one of the things I get most excited about helping clients with.

Someone who I’ve learned a lot from on this topic is Craig Ballantyne, known unofficially as the world’s most disciplined man.

In his book The Perfect Day Formula, Craig outlines what he calls the 5 pillars of transformation. Let’s take a look.

The 5 Must-Have Ingredients to Create Lasting Change

1. Better planning and preparation than ever before. If you want to create lasting change, you need to be prepared. This means knowing what it is you want to create, what you’ll need in order to make it happen, and what you need to say no to. I’ve always found it amusing how we spend more time planning a holiday than creating our ideal lives.

2. Professional accountability. This includes a mentor, coach, or mastermind group. Simply relying on your own discipline to get things done isn’t going to force you to show up in the same way as if you had someone you had to check in with. It’s why we meet work deadlines but keep missing workouts. Note that I said professional accountability. This is because a friend or family member is less likely to want to make you feel bad. 

3. Positive social support. These are your personal cheerleaders. It’s been shown over and over again how creating lasting change is a lot easier when we have others going on the same journey as we are. This is why most online courses include a private Facebook group as part of the program. As human beings, we were made to thrive as part of a community.

4. A meaningful incentive. If we don’t have a strong enough ‘why’ or purpose for wanting to create lasting change, it becomes too easy to resort to previous bad habits and/or let our goal(s) slip completely. One fun example is to make a financial bet with a friend that if you don’t execute your goals/actions for the week or month, you owe them a certain amount of money (that would be uncomfortable to pay).

5. A big deadline. This 5th ingredient is possibly the most important. It’s why we hit our goals at work like I mentioned earlier but keep falling short of our goals for our own businesses or projects. Setting a non-negotiable completion/launch date sets our goal in stone and rules out any opportunity for procrastination. Used in combination with the incentive above, you have a powerful recipe for success.

So there you have it; the 5 things you must have in place if you truly want to create lasting change. Which one(s) are you missing? What can you do in the next 24 hours to put it/them in place?