First Episode

The first episode of the podcast "Letters to You" discusses the topic of change. The host, TJ, talks about the importance of recognizing when something needs to change in your life and why you need that change. He emphasizes the need to consider how the change will affect others and suggests finding a mentor or using resources to guide you. Setting small goals and practicing consistently are key to achieving change. TJ also emphasizes the significance of every victory and the importance of acknowledging when change has occurred. He encourages listeners to appreciate the progress they have made and to continue on the path of change. Hey, hey, here we go. This is the first episode of the Letters to You podcast featuring me, TJ, your host. And I think the premise of this is going to be like more of over time it'll be like letters to specific people. But I think for now it's going to be like just like a whatever I'm kind of feeling kind of thing. So today we're going to be talking about beginning change and what change looks like, how to start to change, how to know when you need to change something in your life, and what that process kind of entails as far as the steps you need to take to realize and manifest that change into your own life. So the first step is always like you've got to recognize what's wrong. Like something's off in your life, something doesn't seem to fit or doesn't seem to match up with your day-to-day. Or like say you know that you're running out of space in your house or something like that and you know you're going to have to move into something different. Or you know something's off in your relationship and you have to make some sort of change to make sure that things are either going smoothly or things need to end altogether. You have to recognize what that is, you know. And after you recognize that you have to kind of identify why do you need the change? Like why do you need something to be different than what's going on currently in your life, right? And then you have to kind of identify after that how does it affect other people, you know? So like you're looking at what is going on in your life that you are maybe unsatisfied with or feel like could be enhanced or taken away altogether. You have to figure out you know why that has to be and try and figure out who that affects going forward besides yourself. If anybody else is affected, you know. So after you identify those kind of things, come up with a plan of action, you know. Come up with a step-by-step process of how to get from where you're at to where you desire to be. So I think the best way to do that is to find an example of someone who's kind of gone through what you're trying to accomplish, you know. I have a cousin. He's big on mentorship. Like find somebody who can mentor you whether directly or indirectly but follow somebody else's example to kind of give you a blueprint and give you confidence as to how things are going to turn out when you have an expected end or to where you're trying to get to. So I think another great thing to do is to look up like supporting resources, you know, that kind of inspire you. You know, I've gone on many, many fitness journeys in my life. I'm 39 years old and I'll be 40 pretty soon and like I've gone on dozens of fitness journeys where trying to gain weight, trying to lose weight and somebody has done this before me. You know, you aren't the first person to go through anything at this point in life, you know. So you have an example that you can follow and you have resources that can help you to keep you on the right track at all times. So once you kind of have that goal, set up little goals like along the way to kind of get you to where you're trying to go, right? So if you're like I'm going to be looking for a new place pretty soon, right? So I'm going to have to, you know, do small things to get me to that place like I'm going to have to pay off credit cards to get my credit score raised up. I'm going to have to save money to get a down payment for this place and I'm going to have to do a bunch of little small goals that are going to lead up to my ultimate goal. So set those small goals and accomplish them to keep you kind of inspired, keep you motivated, to keep you just going and pushing like kind of towards what you're trying to do in life. And again, this is a very, very generic and very, very vague and open topic right now. Change is just change. People change so many things for whatever reason. We change hairstyles, we change partners, we change jobs, we change so many things about our lives every day and these are just like kind of baseline things for you to establish whether your change is small or your change is big. And so the next step is just to practice, practice, practice. Every victory is significant. Once you put it out there in the universe that you want something, you're going to be tested often. If you want to practice patience, people are going to test your patience every day. If you want to set financial goals, you're going to be tested to spend money frivolously. Your goals are going to be tested often and so you're going to be able to put these things into practice on a consistent basis and so you need to take every victory as it comes very significantly because no little victory is small. They all add up and they all go towards your habits, like your new habits that you're building and stuff like that. You're going to be able to practice this consistently so what's going to happen is you're going to be tested so often like you're going to fail some of these tests. There's no getting around it and there's no avoiding it. You're going to fail some, you're going to win some and then once you win more than you fail, you're on the right track but once you do fail or if you do fail, don't get down about it. Your next test is coming so you're not going to have too much time to get down about it anyway so you're going to have to take that opportunity to build a strong habit that doesn't fail you over time. You learn these things and then they become second nature over time so you'll have plenty, plenty of chances to keep putting these things into practice and then once you realize where you've gone, recognize when that change has occurred. Sometimes you don't realize it happens until somebody else points it out to you. You're like, oh man, dang. Man, I really did, I've been living in this house for three years and I didn't even realize it was a goal of mine so long ago and I've realized it. I've been here in this space for a minute and now I'm blessed to be here. So recognize when your change has happened, when you've done the thing that you set out to do and you've accomplished it. Be in that moment. Realize that it's happened and appreciate that moment. Acknowledge that it's there. You put in a lot of work to do these things. I remember I had this friend, they would change their hair color. When they started changing it, it would just come out so bad. It would come out terribly. Now whatever hair color they want to change it to, it's easy. It's an easy process for them. But it wasn't always that way. Again, it goes back to step three. Practice, practice, practice. You don't get a chance to stop if you want something bad enough and if you want something at all, to be honest. I think those are the four steps that I have when it comes to beginning a changing process, beginning the process of changing something about your life or about anything that you believe in and that you want to see through. Just recognize what's wrong. Come up with a plan of action. Practice, practice, practice for sure. It's probably the most important thing is just to keep doing it and to keep following that path. Once you've gotten to that point, recognize and acknowledge the fact that you've gotten there. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with saying, man, I made it. I really did this and just appreciating what God and the universe has given you. I think if spirit is telling you that something's wrong and you need to change something, then the best thing you can do is acknowledge that and start that changing process as soon as possible. That's the first episode. I'm not sure what I'm going to call this, but it's episode one is in the books.