How to make 2024 an actual year of change by turning knowledge to wisdom thru action
The year 2023 was a huge one for me that was full of transformation, and so much death and rebirth over and over again.
But, that’s the way of the multiverse and that’s the beauty of duality. You must have the wanted with unwanted, the dark with light, the sun with the rain, the death with the rebirth.
I spent the last year building a life truly worth living for and to do that I had to experience it all, and turn knowledge into wisdom and action.
Prior to this year I spent a lot of time focusing on gathering every tip, tool, trick and tidbit of information I could get my hands on to tell me what to do with my life. how to become more emotionally stable. How to get healthier. Really just how to build my life in general. I devoured every blog, self help book, podcast, youtube video, and created countless pinterest boards.
And every year nothing changed long term.
I would have spans of pockets of time where things would click into place and become a new lifestyle but, after a few months at most. Poof!
Gone again!
So, what was so different this year?
First I really sat down and looked at everything I had collected and learned throughout the years and began to realize how many tools I really had learned about and how much information I already knew and that I had available to me.
Second, I got really brutally honest with myself and let myself realize I had all this knowledge and all these tools at my fingertips and I hadn’t been using a single one of them consistently.
I had never taken the knowledge I had learned, put action behind it and turned it into wisdom.
I had all these bullet journals full of quotations.
Full of spreads, habit trackers, goals that were completely empty.
I had notebooks full of notes from self help books, podcasts, and more.
But, I never actually had taken all that knowledge and used it! I had never actually taken what I learned and applied it to my life actively and intentionally.
So, no wonder all those years I had felt stuck, how I felt like I kept going in this cycle of success, failure, shame spiral, depression, spark of motivation and then mania.
No wonder all those years I had been so exhausted and drained.
No wonder all those years most of all I was confused and doubting my worth and capabilities. I had all the information I needed but I never put that information to use to improve my life.
Once you realize this, what in the world do you do?
To be honest, it might hit you hard. You might cry like I did, start to blame yourself, and spiral a little bit. And that is 10000000% okay to feel, just don’t let it consume you.
Give yourself GRACE!
Do you realize how big of a deal it is to first be willing to even look at and try and figure out what’s been causing a pattern or cycle for you?
Let alone being willing to realize that there is a missing piece you need to work on and then being willing to work on it?!
So many humans wouldn’t even take it this far.
So, celebrate yourself!
Give yourself a high five!
Do whatever you need to do to let your mind and body know this is a huge deal and a pivotal moment of change for you.
YAY!!!!!!
Next, try to pinpoint what’s causing you not add action behind your knowledge
There are a few ways to do this.
First, do a behavior chain analysis. This is a skill I learned in DBT
step 1-describe the problem behavior
step 2-describe the prompting event
step 3-describe the vulnerability factors prior to the event
step 4-Descibe the main events leading to the behavior
step 5-desribe the consequences of that behavior
Once you can identify what the actual problem is, then you determine what skills to use, and what type of plan you need to make to help you succeed going forward and to have the skills ready when you need them.
Another way you can do this is the why method
I like the why method a lot because it’s simple and you start to understand why toddlers like to do it so much as well.
What you do is simply keep asking yourself the base question of why until you can not anymore.
Until you can not find any other alternative answer or explanation for a certain event, your emotions, or why you reacted in a certain way.
Here’s an example;
My son came to ask me for help to push him in his swing.
I right away felt my jaw tighten and my eyes roll and heard myself saying no to him. Even though he hadn’t asked for it all day and I could tell from my bodily sensations this was going to be a big explosion of anger if I didn’t figure out why I was so upset and wanting to not just say no but, yell no immediately.
So, I used some tips skills which I will talk about in another blog post and I began to ask myself why?
Why am I so upset?
Why does my son asking for the swing trigger me?
Why is it triggering me specifically right now?
Why is my body shaking? Am I hungry, tired, anxious, overstimulated?
Why am I really saying no?
And I kept asking until I realized what was the reason behind my behavior this time. Which was simply I had been so busy that day, I had no idea what time it was, had not eaten and was really just overstimulated.
Knowing this, made me able to solve these issues and realign myself to be able to go and help my swing in his swing so he could use his tools to regulate.
Now that was a specific example to help you understand how it works. And I am sure you are sitting there thinking “ how in the world does that help me turn knowledge to wisdom through action?”
Well, when you take this method or the behavior chain analysis and apply that to your overall life, and previous year you give yourself the space to reflect and break down to the very core Why you haven’t been able to commit to change and create the life you want.
Why you haven’t taken things you have learned and know you should be doing and actually applying them.
If you don’t know the why behind avoidance, or the why behind a failure, or the why behind the lack of motivation or inspiration then how will you ever move through it to your destination?
For me, it really came down too, I needed to believe I was worth it.
I simply did not think I deserved the life I wanted, the goals I had been dreaming about, or even my basic human needs met.
This was really hard for me to sit with and ride the emotions of. To acknowledge and understand how deeply I felt this. And how it was influencing every decision I made or did not make and every action I took or did not take.
But, once I was able to fully realize there is no other why after this one.
I was able to start the work needed to move through it by figuring out what had caused this, why for me in the past and what was solidifying it now.
Moving through that got me to the place where I could finally make a plan to allow me the space, time and tools needed to take all knowledge I had learned and turn it into action to completely change myself and my life.
If you want to know how I made that plan and what that plan was, keep an eye out for the next blog post in this section about personal development plans! What they are, how to make one, and what was in mine last year that changed my life so dramatically!
