Short answer: You don’t need to fix yourself before you change something. Start with a clear look at where you are now. Write down the facts a camera would record, then the story you’ve been telling about them. Check whether another story fits the same facts. Then pick one change, make the first step small, and begin today.
Most advice about changing your life starts from the idea that something in you is broken. Not enough discipline, not enough willpower, the wrong mindset. Fix that first, the thinking goes, and the rest will follow.
It rarely works that way. People who feel they have to be fixed before they can start tend to spend a long time getting ready, and very little time starting.
GROWTH by DESIGN opens its first working chapter with one line for this reason: you don’t need to be fixed.
The rest of the method asks you to look at your life squarely. That’s a great deal easier when nobody is standing behind you with a clipboard. Including you.
Why doesn’t fixing yourself first work?
Because it turns every change into a verdict. If a missed week proves there’s something wrong with you, the stakes of every attempt go up. High stakes make people cautious, and cautious people wait for a better week that never comes.
There’s research behind the kinder approach, too. In a set of studies by Breines and Chen, some people were encouraged to meet a failure or a weakness with self-compassion.
Those people were more motivated to improve afterwards than people encouraged to feel better about themselves. Kindness about where they stood made them more willing to try again, not less.
So the choice isn’t between being hard on yourself and letting yourself off. It’s between a verdict and a survey.
What does starting where you are look like?
It looks like measuring the room before you draw the plan. A designer doesn’t work from the room in the brochure.
They measure the real one, with the damp patch behind the radiator that nobody mentioned. The pipework will be there whether it’s on the drawing or not.
For a change in your life, that means writing down what’s true now. How much time you have on a normal weekday. How much energy is left by the evening. Who depends on you. What happened the last few times you tried.
Not the life you’d like to be planning for. The one you have.
A plan built for your real life can be smaller than you’d like. It’s also one you can keep.
How do I separate the facts from the story?
GROWTH by DESIGN uses a tool called Facts vs Stories for this. It takes about twenty minutes and a sheet of paper. Use four headings.
- The situation. One line. The thing you’d name if someone asked you at the door.
- The facts. What a camera would have recorded. Numbers, dates, how often, how long. No adjectives.
- The story I’m telling myself. What you’ve concluded from those facts. This fills up fast, and it’ll feel like more facts while you write it.
- Another story that fits the same facts. Go through each line of the story and ask one question: is this the only reading these facts support?
Here’s a short example. The facts: missed the gym three times this month, sleeping about five hours, two late shifts a week. The story: I have no willpower.
Another story that fits the same facts: the plan was built for a week with more sleep and no late shifts. I haven’t had one of those this month.
The second story is more accurate than the first, and it points at something you can change.
Where do I start if everything needs changing?
Pick one thing. Your life in general is too big to work on, and always will be. One change, named plainly, is something you can plan.
A useful test is to ask which change would make the others easier. Sleep often comes first for this reason. So does the one conversation you’ve been putting off.
If you can’t choose, pick the smallest one that matters to you. Finishing something small tells you more about what works than starting something large.
How small should the first step be?
Smaller than feels sensible. The first step should take two minutes or less and fit into the day you already have.
Opening the document. Putting the trainers by the door. Filling the water bottle.
That can feel embarrassing. It’s meant to. A small first step still happens on a bad week, and repetition is what builds a habit.
In the research that Gardner, Lally and Wardle summarized for GPs, habits formed by repeating a behaviour in the same setting. Missing the occasional day didn’t seriously set people back.
The bad-day version. If today isn’t the day for a survey, do one line of it. Write down one fact about where you are, with no story attached. That’s a start, and it counts.
What if where I am feels too low to start from?
Then start with support, not a plan. If you’ve felt low for more than two weeks, the NHS suggests talking to your GP. That’s the first step of changing your life.
If today is a bad day, the Emergency Kit is free and asks for nothing. It has helplines and five steps for the next ten minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to fix myself before I can change my life?
No. Change starts from a clear look at where you are now, not from fixing yourself first. Write down the facts, check the story you tell about them, pick one change and make the first step small enough to do today.
How do I start changing my life when I feel stuck?
Separate the facts from the story. Write what a camera would record, then what you’ve concluded, then another story that fits the same facts. Choose one change and start with a step that takes two minutes or less.
Does being kind to yourself make you less motivated?
Breines and Chen found the opposite. In their studies, people encouraged to respond to a failure with self-compassion were more motivated to improve than people encouraged to boost their self-esteem.
What is the Facts vs Stories tool?
A one-page exercise from GROWTH by DESIGN. You write the situation, the facts a camera would record, the story you tell yourself about them, and another story that fits the same facts. It takes about twenty minutes.
Read next: Why can’t I stick to anything? It’s usually the plan, not you and How to stop starting over every Monday.
Not sure where to start? The free GROWTH Readiness Scorecard takes five minutes and shows you the one thing most likely to be holding your change back. It comes with the free One-Page Change Plan, which puts your change on one printable sheet in nine steps.