I didn’t recognize the person starring back at me.
She’d failed in every way the childhood version of myself envisioned success.
I drove a beat-up old car with a broken trunk that wobbled up and down as I drove to my receptionist job.
I made $15 an hour at that job, not enough to cover my rent and credit card bills so I had to work as a waitress on the weekends and as a freelancer at night.
Sleep felt unproductive with my level of debt and depression crept in no matter where I was or who I was with.
My life had hit rock bottom and I didn’t know what to do about it.
At first…
Only a few years later, I make nearly six-figures with my full-time job where I work from home and have unlimited vacation.
This blog helps over 150K women each year find clarity in their purpose and spreads a positive mindset message.
In this article, I’m going to walk you through the five stages of growth - and the five simple steps to shift your self from one stage to the next. So if you’re anything like I started out (sitting in rock bottom barely getting by), then by the end of this you’ll have all the strategies you need to start improving your life right now.
The Five Stages of Lifestyle Growth
Before we dive into creating abundance in your life, we must discuss all the stages of lifestyle growth. Many people believe that you can catapult yourself into abundance by one act of luck or some big break.
You get the winning lottery ticket.
You land a rich husband. (In our minds we know a man is not a plan, but that doesn’t stop up from hoping for prince charming.)
You buy every course, tool, and attend every conference that you believe will help you build a million-dollar business.
Here’s the deal: While it’s not impossible for any of these outcomes, very few people experience a quick catapult from rock bottom to abundance. And when they do, it sometimes takes years of rejection, poverty, and hard freakin’ work to find success.
Others will put in the same work, get the same rejects, and still not find the success.
Put simply, for every J.K. Rowling there are millions of aspiring authors that have not achieved Harry Potter level success.
Much simpler (and with a higher chance of success) is the five-step strategy I will layout for your today. With only five steps you will work through each level until you reach abundance.
So let’s dive into the 5 Stages of lifestyle growth.
Stage 1: Rock Bottom
This is a low point in your life. At this stage, you are underpaid for your level of education. You don’t make enough money to comfortably handle all of your expenses without using credit.
You feel like you’re on a hamster wheel. You’re working all the time, just to pay bills. You’d like to spend more time with your family or explore hobbies, but you feel trapped.
Maybe you feel depressed because you never imagined your life would be like this. You expected to be farther along by now. You’re unhappy with the way your life looks today and know for sure that it’s time for a change.
Stage 2: Stability
You’ve done some work on yourself and you’re comfortable with your life right now. You have enough to pay bills, keep food on the table (the food you want to eat) and you can go out sometimes with friends and family without worrying about your next bill.
Compared to rock bottom, you can breathe a bit easier now. You can carve out time for yourself. You feel good about where your life is.
Now that you’ve seen some success, you know that more is possible for you. You’ve built up some momentum. You’re ready to move faster towards success.
Stage 3: Acceleration
In this stage, you’ve put your head down and began working a little bit harder towards your goals. Maybe you want to get a promotion at work, save more money or pay off a big debt. Maybe you want to do something for yourself like buy your first home or do a big renovation on your home.
Stage 4: Thriving
By now you’ve solidified your ability to reach any goal you set. You’ve achieved the promotions you desired and created the lifestyle you want.
Seriously, at this point, you can’t believe you get to live this life! Here is where things start to slow down a bit. Because you are thriving, you may no longer see places in your life where you can optimize or improve.
Stage 5: Abundance
In abundance, you have complete control over your money, time, and location. You are no longer chained to a job or lifestyle simply because that’s what’s expected of you.
It’s not easy to reach abundance because many people make life choices that do not align with their definition of abundance. So while they may thrive, they’re never able to experience abundance because they’ve aligned their lifestyle with someone else’s definition of success.
How To Improve Your Life
Would you believe me if I told you that you would use the exact same tools to elevate from rock bottom as you would to reach abundance?
Well, it’s true.
No matter what stage you’re at today, you can use these five steps to progress to the next life stage.
The benefit of choosing to move from one stage to the next using these steps is that these steps were created to ensure that you never work hard to climb a ladder that does not lead to your definition of success.
Step #1: Assess where you are.
Take a good look at your life right now and make two lists:
What do you love about your life?
What would you like to remove from your life?
Understanding what you want to remove from your life helps you narrow your focus on the changes you need to make.
Step #2: Determine where you have the most pain.
Now that you have a list of things you’d like to remove, let’s narrow down even further to one thing by answering the following question:
What can you fix first that would change everything?
Many people make the mistake of trying to fix several problems at once. This leads to overwhelm and splitting your time in so many different directions that nothing gets done. Choose one thing to fix in your life and move on.
Step 3: Decide on how you want to fix that specific problem.
Once you’ve selected the problem to fix, choose to fix that problem in a way that aligns with your strengths.
Doing this will make sure that you have a simpler time in solving your problems because you will solve them in a way that’s already familiar to you.
Step #4: Visualize what your life will look like when you have completely fixed that problem.
When you’re working on a goal that takes a long time, you likely will run into challenges that cause you to veer off course. In these times you will need a clear vision for why you’re doing this.
Create a visualization of your “why” before you even get started will give you a future to look towards are get excited about.
Step 5: START… and follow through.
The final step is always to actually do the work that it takes to reach your goal. Many people fall short right here. They do not stick to the goals they set.
If you want to reach your goals, then you must start working towards them and follow through on your goals.
Why This Works
Here’s the truth:
You cannot use the same type of thinking to get your first job as you do to get a leadership position.
You cannot use the same type of thinking to write your first book as you do to promote and sell your first book.
You cannot use the same type of thinking to love yourself as you do to love others.
As you progress through each of life’s stages, you’ll have to take a step back and understand the landscape of this new journey. Once you understand where you are, you can decide on the best way to reach the next stage of your life.
This is how you guarantee that you find happiness and fulfillment in your life. You consistently re-evaluate your current life stage and choose the next one before pursuing it.
If nothing else, you get to decide how to improve your life (or whether you’ll work to improve your life at all). Those choices are within your control. We become stagnant, complacent, unclear on our next steps when we give up our right to choose. If you continue re-evaluating, choosing with purpose, and taking action with clarity at every stage of your life, abundance will be yours.
What life stage are you most excited about and what’s one action you can take right now to get there?
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About the author
Cyrene is a fun and accomplished workshop facilitator, learning and development guru and Human Resources professional. Being at the helm of Thrive Lounge has been a long-time dream. Through vision board workshops she plans to accomplish two-way learning. Sharing her vast years of knowledge to motivate and encourage others; while simultaneously getting the reward of great energy, ideas and questions to ponder back from each group. A super win-win. Please join our Thrive Lounge community so you too can benefit!
