How to Change Your Life Dramatically, Today
- Mar 16
- 6 min read
Written by Eric Burdon, Self-Help Guru
Eric S Burdon has been writing about the self-help industry for over 10 years. His weird experiences, refreshing perspective, and curiosity have culminated in the Eric S Burdon YouTube channel and writing on Medium.
Every self-help guru out there has a strategy where they promise that what they’re about to say will change your life forever. It’s a pretty tall ask to get such an outcome, and surely what they’re about to say is going to be revolutionary and mind-blowing.
Right? Well, in my years as a self-help guru, I find a lot of advice that gurus have to share to be pretty lackluster. Their plans for attracting the partner of your dreams involve playing 4-dimensional chess and being highly methodical about how you attract someone into your life.
If you’re going through a midlife crisis, the proposals amount to suggesting finding a new career path and abandoning your current one. And the universal laws that tell the truth about living are either egotistical, not something you truly want to chase in life, or whimsical thinking.
And it’s all gate-kept by those who can afford to spend thousands of dollars for “coaching.” Throughout my self-help journey, I’ve made a number of changes in my own life. Changes to who I am as a person, what I believe in, and my overall branding. I have no doubt that I’ll continue to change and grow as a person over the years as I continue my work in this industry.
As such, I want to share with you my own strategy on how to change your life dramatically. It’s not what you’d expect, but putting in the work right now will result in some major changes in your life moving forward.
Figure out if change needs to happen right now
One of the first things I do with my moments in life is practice pausing. This is one of my most helpful tools for growth because it serves as an anchor against all the hype tactics gurus tend to throw at people. They want to pressure you into making snappy decisions or acting on your impulses.
They leap at the first sign of uncertainty or doubt you have about your life in an attempt to fix it. I can understand this on one end because you want to be making changes quickly. Hesitation means the change might never come to be at all, even if it’s genuinely helpful.
But in my experience, changes that are made genuinely, rather than for the sake of the moment, are better. Take it from someone who made a snappy career choice only to abandon it later.
Before considering what or how, take some time to look at whether it’s necessary or not.
Even though you’re likely to have some inclinations already, pausing to be absolutely certain ensures you don’t waste time chasing after something you don’t want.
Determine what needs changing
Beyond making snappy decisions, gurus also tend to see any form of flaw as something that needs to be fixed. Any sense of mild discomfort means you’re not living your best life or being “the best version of yourself.”
As much as the idea of continuous growth and improvement sounds appealing, the reality is that we’re never going to be completely flawless beings. The inherent pursuit of perfection is itself a flaw and invites more problems than usual. That doesn’t mean we should be nihilistic and never stop changing or growing entirely, but we have to recognize that change and our growth come in spurts, and we have some control over it.
Some control in the form of determining what we want changed in the first place. This can be anything from replacing habits to focusing on different projects. Regardless, determining what changes need to happen and where to go next reinforces your decision to make a change.
It gives you some vague sense of direction, which is a lot better than just “jumping in feet first” with no plan.
Ask yourself how
Better yet, this next step will allow you to come up with a plan. Because you’re pausing deliberately, you’re in the right state of mind to figure out how you want that change to go down.
You won’t have full control over the outcome, but you get to determine the catalyst. You get to decide the actions that you want to take and start making those changes. It’s a big moment, and usually, a lot of gurus will propose you make big changes. After all, any change in your direction in life must be big and monumental, right? Well, not exactly.
While we have no clue what pursuing a particular objective will do for our lives over the next few months or years, the bar that needs to be cleared to build momentum and change in your life is much lower than you realize. So much so that even embracing small habits can make a difference in your life.
If you want to lose weight, don’t immediately go to the gym. Instead, figure out what your health goals are and watch some exercise routines that broadly achieve that. You can do a lot at home if your plan is just to burn belly fat or lose weight.
If you want to find a loving partner, ditch the dating apps and start attending community gatherings and hanging out with other people. Go in with the expectation of having a fun time and meeting new people rather than trying to find a date.
Changes in your life don’t need to be big or dramatic or require extra setup. I find even the smallest changes you make can add up to something significant. All small habits and changes make a ripple effect.
Get into the right mindset
The last thing that you really need to do is get yourself into the right kind of mindset. Gurus tend to hype us up that these crucial moments are massive and that we should go all out to make them happen. But time and time again, I see how these tactics play out.
People coast through life, unable to make changes. People just hoping that the next seminar, video, podcast episode, or book will be the one.
External motivation is helpful for sure, but it has its time and place. And it’s not at all helpful when determining whether you need to change your life or if it's the fuel you need to spring yourself into action.
Having deep and genuine reasons, as well as a plan to get rolling, is important. And it’s especially helpful when you have a mindset that won’t give up on you. What this means in practice is changing your attitude on what your own personal growth should look like as well as your definition of failure.
People, especially as we get older, change in very few and subtle ways. Unless there is a massive global phenomenon happening that’s directly impacting you, overhauling your life is a bad idea. Instead, it’s key to take smaller steps and make the changes more sustainable. What this looks like is:
Make the means of achieving your goal something you can reasonably do right now. (i.e., if you want to lose weight, start taking morning walks or run yourself through a 10-minute workout.)
If you stumble or stop, see that as a reason to get back onto that habit rather than beat yourself up over it.
Get motivated by the small changes you can see in your life. For example, as soon as I started to walk more, I was far less winded when climbing up stairs or walking to places in town.
Make the change
The last thing to do is naturally to follow through with all of these things. But I suspect you already knew that.
Through this four-step process, you effectively have a loop that not only gives you a healthy approach to your goals and what you want in life but also keeps you motivated to make changes in your life.
Keep in mind, you don’t need to practice this all the time. As I said before, big changes happen slowly. But unlike what so many other gurus tell you, you don’t need to make a big showing of it or demand that you radically change who you are to make that happen.
All you need to do is spend an hour or so to really think about where you want to go in your life and start actively working on it.
Read more from Eric Burdon
Eric Burdon, Self-Help Guru
Eric S Burdon is a self-help writer and self-help guru. Having engaged with the self-help industry for over 10 years, Eric has created various strategies that weave through the multiple tropes of self-help to help people grow. Seeing how that has helped him grow, his mission is to spread what he's learned to others. His goal is to change the self-help industry for the better, one person at a time.
