By Leo Babauta

I believe the freshness of this year brings a renewed energy for changing our lives. I believe 2017 can be great for all of us, with a bit of focus and effort.

So I’ve created a revised Sea Change Program that’s geared to creating a great 2017 for all of you, full of positive life changes.

How can Sea Change help you change your life in 2017?

  1. Video Courses: I’ve created a huge library of content: video courses and articles that are aimed at helping you practice mindfulness, exercise, eat healthier, declutter, stop procrastinating, get out of debt, overcome fear, find gratitude and more. I’ve been building up this content library for 5 years! I think it’s pretty awesome.

  2. Challenges: Every month I plan to have a new challenge. This month, it’s a Mindfulness Challenge - try to meditate every day of the month. Report on your challenge once a week. It really helps you to stick to change more to participate in a challenge.

  3. Forums: You can discuss the challenges, report your progress each week, and in general support each other’s changes.

So video and article content on changing your life, a monthly challenge, and a forum to connect with and get support from other people who are making similar changes. I’ve found this to be a simple but effective method for change.

If you’re ready to make changes in 2017, try my Sea Change Program for one week free (and $15/month after that).

Deeper Levels

In addition, if you want to go deeper, I offer Gold and Platinum memberships to help support people who are ready to fully commit to life changes.

How do these levels help you go deeper? A few key ways, in addition to what’s above:

  1. Live Webinars (Gold and Platinum): Gold members have access to monthly live webinars where I give a talk about the current challenge and answer member questions. My members have found these to be a great resource.

  2. Ask Questions (Gold and Platinum): Members can submit questions during the month and I’ll do my best to answer them. I highly recommend asking questions, as it deepens the learning process and helps me to see where you need help. People who ask questions are much more likely to see change.

  3. Accountability Teams (Platinum): I’ve created a Sea Change team on Slack for Platinum members to discuss their life changes, and more importantly to provide accountability teams of about 5-10 members to support each other’s changes.

  4. Twice-monthly Calls with Leo (Platinum): I’ve just added this feature for the new Platinum membership level … I’m going to have twice-monthly calls where people can ask questions and I’ll answer them, and other members can share their progress, I can even do some one-on-one coaching on the call with other members benefitting from listening. I think this will be a great help for people who are ready to go deeper into their learning and habit changes.

So four tools for more personal support, which I’ve found to be a key ingredient to lasting change.

Key Ingredients to Lasting Change

Through changing my own life in a hundred different ways, to helping others change theirs, I’ve found some things to be incredibly helpful if you want to make a change that sticks:

  1. Motivation: Do you really want to change? If you care about the change, and are willing to focus your life on it for a little while, you can make it happen. If it’s just “it would be nice,” then it probably won’t last until you are ready to get serious about it.

  2. Small changes, gradually: Most people hear this and ignore it, but they are missing one of the most important ingredients. If you want to meditate, start with just a couple minutes. If you want to exercise, just do five minutes. Start small, increase only gradually. Do less than you’re capable of, and the change will last.

  3. Reminders and focus: If you forget to do your habit, you won’t change. If you can set reminders, put up physical, visual reminders around you, and keep your focus on the habit, you’re much more likely to stick to it.

  4. Social support: Doing the change with other people is remarkably powerful. I haven’t found another tool more effective than this, if you are willing to put it to use.

  5. Gratitude & mindfulness: OK, you can have lasting change without these final ingredients, but I’ve found them to be essential in my personal changes. Why? If you aren’t mindful, you’ll give in to urges to procrastinate or quit your change, because you won’t even notice the urge, you’ll just follow it. And if you find gratitude as you do the habit, you’ll enjoy every step of the way, which means it won’t be a sacrifice but a joy. These are two amazing ingredients, use them!

So those are the key ingredients. You can change your entire life over the course of a year or two if you make small, gradual changes with mindfulness, gratitude, motivation and social support. I’ve seen it over and over.

It’s possible. Take the step today and join me and thousands of other members in Sea Change:

Join Sea Change