Janet and I were recently at a writer’s conference in Franklin, TN, put on by our mentor Jeff Goins. In his final keynote, Jeff talked about how to move forward in your writing. But the 3 steps he gave apply to much more than just writing. They are fundamental to any change we want in our lives. If “change” is too scary, think about it as “making progress.” 

1) Take Ownership

If you’re going to make any progress at all, you’ve got to own the problem. Yes, maybe something was done to you, out of your control. Maybe you lost your job, or a crime was committed against you. Maybe someone died. Maybe you were assaulted, robbed, raped, or molested. None of these things are your fault, and are totally out of your control.

But your response is totally in your control. You own your response. That’s all you.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”

That quote sounds cute, until you know that Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychologist who survived the Holocaust in multiple concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The full quote, including the preceding sentence, reads, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

You can choose your response to the evil done against you. You can hold perpetrators accountable. You can set healthy boundaries. You can forgive. You can be a creator in the situation and not a victim.

This is not “buck up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps” (like that ever works). This doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself (like that ever works). It means being honest about your situation, about what you can do yourself and what you need help with. It means owning responsibility for moving forward, including proactively getting help when needed.

The point is that getting help from someone doesn’t give them the problem. It’s still your responsibility.

(Free aside: This is important to remember when you’re helping someone else. Don’t own their problem. Working harder on someone else’s problem than they do is codependency.)

2) Design Your Environment

For inner healing, you need to design your support system. It’s really hard to make progress out of toxic thought patterns when you’re still living in the toxic environment that fostered them. Some of us can’t change our home life, but we can get additional support from healthy friends, counseling, pastors, or a godly church. A healthy support system doesn’t happen by accident. You have to design it into your life.

Ben Hardy has an excellent book called Willpower Doesn’t Work (not an affiliate link) about how to design your environment so it supports your goals instead of fighting against them. This is an easy read and has helped me move forward in several different areas of my life. 

Let’s dial back a moment to understand this “designing your environment” thing. Here’s an example:

I want to work out in the morning (either run or hit the gym), but it’s really hard when I get up at 5:00. I’m groggy and it’s hard to think about what to do to move forward toward my goal instead of going back to bed. How could I design my environment to help me with my goal of working out? Turns out something as easy as setting my gym clothes out before going to bed does the trick. Then when I get up, I see the gym clothes and don’t have to think to put them on. Then suddenly I’m dressed for working out or running so it’s much easier.

Little, simple, insanely effective life-hacks like this have done wonders for me. They are really easy to do, but they don’t happen by themselves. I had to actually think about what changes I could make to my environment to support my goals. Ben Hardy’s book taught me how to do that. 

Now I don’t mean to make designing your environment sound like all rainbows and unicorns. If you’re going to make progress in anything, at some point you have to tell yourself “no.” That can be hard and unpleasant. But it’s a lot easier when you’re not in the heat of the moment.

Here’s another example. If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t have junk food in the house. You don’t have to fight not eating it if it’s not there in the first place. In order to not have it in the house, go to the grocery store right after eating a big meal, so you’re not hungry while you’re at the store. Yes, you still have to tell yourself, “Don’t buy those Twinkies,” but that’s a lot easier (especially when you’re not hungry at the moment) than not eating them when they’re in the house calling your name. 

Said the skinny guy. Yes, I know I’m over-simplifying weight-loss. Often there’s wounding and inner healing issues that need to be addressed. But when designing your environment works, and you’re forced to face the terror of not having Twinkies at the ready, you can talk to your heart about where that’s coming from and deal with the actual issue, instead of just medicating the pain. 

If you live in a toxic environment, how can you design a healthy support system into your environment? Who can you have on speed dial? What is one simple boundary you can set? I highly recommend both professional and pastoral counseling. Ask your pastor and counselor to call and talk to each other. They will both probably want you to sign a release–sign it. It is to your huge advantage if they are in communication with each other. 

3) Take Action

This sounds too obvious to say, but so often we get paralyzed right here. If you don’t take action, nothing will change, no progress will be made. You need to actually do something. And preferably something different.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about madly running around in circles but not going anywhere. I’m not talking about flooring it when you’re stuck in the mud. It sounds impressive, like hard work and effort, because the engine’s revving so loudly, but really you’re just splattering mud everywhere. 

I’m not talking about activity for activity’s sake. But I am talking about taking action. Measured action. Not necessarily even the right action. You find out afterwards whether it worked or not. But some action. Take your best guess, arrived at through prayer and thoughtfulness and advice from wise counsel.

The thing is, if your action fails, you learn and adjust. But you never learn (i.e., you stay ignorant) if you never take action. Perfectionism is just a culturally acceptable label for procrastination.

Have you ever seen a hockey player move the puck down the ice? He doesn’t send it careening straight toward the goal; the other team would intercept it. And he doesn’t just push it on one side straight toward the goal either; it would get away from him. No, he taps it on the left, taps it on the right, taps it on the left, taps it on the right, avoids obstacles (opposing players), and gets help from his teammates (passing it back and forth).

If you look at the track of the puck down the ice, it’s almost never heading exactly straight at the goal. But it’s moving in that general direction. And the composite total of all those little adjustments is ultimately a score. 

You can score too. Own your situation. Design your environment to help you. Make a plan and then go for it. Take the first baby step in the direction you want to go. If it fails, learn from it, adjust, and try something else. Eventually you’ll score.

So how about it? Tell us your story in the comments and please share if this post would help someone else.