Most people will find it much easier to enumerate potential improvements than to implement them. Instead of seeing your list of character changes as something you need to do all at once, prioritize them according to their impact on your purpose, and begin by focusing on the first one. If you keep thinking about and working on the highest priority quality, you will soon find that you have improved enough in that area that another quality has become the highest priority.
Every time you make a change to your qualities, you will read the change once per day and try to think about it throughout the day until you find yourself living it without thinking.1 If you slip up on one, make a point to add it back to the daily review list until you firm it up.
Footnotes
- 1. When you make something into a routine, you no longer have to actively think about it. The power of this principle is immense. When you have to actively think about something, you could always forget it in the moment. Even when you don’t, thinking about it will expose the thought to the emotions of the moment. Like bringing up an idea to a committee, your emotions might help you, but often times they will fight what you thought was a good idea when you added it to your life plan in a calm, objective, and rational state. ↩