The Bible says that our lives are transformed by the renewing of our minds. Today I want to talk to you about up-leveling your life by changing small things about the way you’re thinking. We’re going to learn about how micro upgrades can really change your life!

Resources Mentioned

Confidence Affirmations: https://ashleyvarner.com/affirmations
The Mindset Reset: https://ashleyvarner.com/mindset
Truth Journaling Workbook: https://ashleyvarner.com/free

Highlights From the Episode

The Bible says that our lives are transformed by the renewing of our minds. And so today I wanna talk to you about upleveling and making some micro changes to the way that you’re thinking so that you can completely transform your life. We are going to learn about how micro upgrades can really make a difference in your transformation. Let’s go ahead and get started.

All of this month I’m going to be talking about personal development and personal growth. And so last week we talked all about vision boards and if Christians should even create vision boards and today I wanna talk to you about micro upgrades.

If you are feeling like you’ve been stuck in a rut, maybe it’s just kind of the same schedule, day after day, then this series is gonna be for you. And I want you to know just upfront that it doesn’t take huge, big change in order to see some transformation in your life. You can make small changes and really see that ripple effect of those changes in your life and in your transformation. If you are wanting to take your life to the next level maybe you wanna take your spiritual walk to the next level. Then it is time to incorporate what I like to call micro upgrades.

Before we jump into talking about micro upgrades, I first wanna talk about the reasons why we avoid change in the first place.

The first reason is because we think that it’s going to require huge action on our part in order to have a big life transformation. And sometimes we avoid changing because we think that in order to change our entire lives that we have to change every area of our lives. And both of those things are not true.

You can make a huge transformation in your life by making one of these small micro upgrades and letting it ripple out to the other areas of your life. And what I have found, and what I’ve worked with clients is if you start making small changes in a certain area of your life, pretty soon it really starts to impact every other area of your life.

So if you start to choose to make these micro upgrades, then you are going to see this ripple effect happen where it’s not just in the one area that you’re dealing with or you’re thinking about, but it actually changes everything else.

Micro upgrades are small, seemingly insignificant changes that you make in your day-to-day life. So something that you do every day is going to have a bigger impact than maybe making one small or one big change one time. If you are making small, seemingly insignificant changes to your day-to-day routine, over time, those changes compound and you start to see the results that you wanna see.

I want you to think of an area in your life that you want to change. Maybe an area that you wanna uplevel, an area that you, maybe it’s just a hot mess and you need to change it immediately.

I want you to think of that area. It could be financial, it could be your health. It could be your home environment. It could be your work.

Then I want you to make a list of habits that are happening right now in your life in that area that are contributing to where you’re at right now. So pretty much it’s having an audit of your current life.

So if your home is a mess and that is the area that you want to uplevel then you’re looking at your calendar. Maybe you’re looking at the tasks that you’ve been doing. And you’re seeing that there’s nothing in your daily routine that is contributing to the next level in your home.

If you wanna have a cleaner house and you’re looking at the things that you do every day, and there’s no set cleaning routine, there are no set daily routines that you take. Maybe there’s not an established laundry plan. Then you have to realize that all of those, the lack of those things is what’s contributing to the home that you have right now.

So if you wanna uplevel your home experience, then I want you to start making a list of habits that you know would lead to that change. So in the instance with a home, think about the things that need to happen every day, every week for you to have a home that is easy to maintain, that is tidy, maybe that is clean and start to look at those habits.

Now, before you even get going on picking habits or anything, I just want you to get curious about why you are not completing those tasks right now. Because if this is a goal that you have in your life but you find that you’re just sitting on the couch every night and you’re not really investing into your home. I want you to get curious about that. Don’t judge yourself or where you’re at right now.

It’s all about the journey towards bettering ourselves. In Christian circles, it’s called sanctification where you’re constantly growing to be more like Christ. It’s not something that happens immediately. It’s just those small changes that you start to make.

I want you to see, let’s give the example still of our home situation. Sometimes we think that in order to have a clean home, to have this huge transformation, that what we need to do is hire a cleaning staff to come in three times a week. And we look at that goal or we see that huge transformation. And we think, “Well, that’s not something I can afford. That’s not something that I wanna invest in.” And so we don’t do anything.

What I want to suggest to you is that if you make those small micro upgrades what ends up happening is you get to that result. Sure, it might take a little bit more time but you get to the result that you wanna get to by making these small insignificant changes. And the reason that micro upgrades work so well is because they tend to compound over time, and you see this ripple effect in your life.

Now, after you have made this list of all of these habits that could lead to this new goal that you have, I don’t want you to just jump in and try to complete every single one, from the first day. I want you to pick one habit and start to incorporate that into your life.

So that might be doing one load of laundry every day. Now, if you have mountains of laundry, it can feel like in order to see any kind of results in your life, as far as laundry goes, that you need to just have an entire day, and you’re just doing laundry all day long. But if you are willing to make micro upgrades to your life, say you do one load of laundry every day, and you are consistent with that for one week, after that week’s time, what you’re going to have is all the clothes in your house are gonna be clean.

And in addition to that, you have a habit that now is getting more consistent with every day that comes in. So if you are creating this habit of having one load of laundry every day and you stay with that, after you complete that one load, which really doesn’t take very much time, once you do that, every piece of clothing in your house is clean. And you have created this result with micro changes, with very insignificant steps.

After you get laundry figured out, then you get the next habit off of your list. Maybe that is making sure that you run the dishwasher every night before you go to bed. Maybe that is making your bed every morning. So as you add these habits on, you’re building confidence in yourself, because you’re saying, “Hey, I can accomplish what I set out to do” or “I can trust myself to do these small things on a consistent basis.”

After you have these micro upgrades in your life, what you’re going to see, maybe after a week or two or three, you’re going to see a difference in a lot of different areas in your life.

So let’s just stick with that home example. After you have made your bed daily, and you have stuck with all of those goals, maybe whenever you get to work, you start tidying your desk every day before you go home or you clean out your car every time you fill it up with gas.

Those changes start to change the way you are thinking. So it’s your mindset that starts to shift. And you start to realize, “Hey, if I just take this small amount of time, I’m going to be better off at the end.” And what you’re doing is you’re technically investing in your future self by making these small changes.

So whenever you make your bed at the beginning of the day, what you’re doing is you are practicing a form of self-care for your future self. So think about that version of you at maybe seven o’clock in the morning, whenever you’re not wanting to make your bed. And you’re saying “I’m gonna put in the effort now to invest in my wellbeing later in the day.” Microupgrades can be anything.

If financially you are wanting to uplevel yourself, what you can do is make a decision that every day at a certain time, you are going to be consistent to log into your online banking, to check it out, and just look at your accounts.

That might seem like a really small task. It might seem like I have this huge amount of debt. And if I just, what’s gonna be beneficial for me just to keep looking at my accounts every day? But what it does is it gets your mind focused on the debt that you have, maybe the money that you have, you’re more diligent about keeping the money in your account, right? Instead of just going out and spending.

So you’re making these small changes that are gonna ripple out and make a lasting impact on the transformation that you actually want to experience. So if micro upgrades are so great, then why don’t we do them, right? Why isn’t this something that we all do on a daily basis to uplevel our lives?

Well, committing is the hardest part of this. So being consistent with all of these goals is what is the hardest. So it doesn’t take much time to make your bed. I think I timed it the other day, and it was like 30 seconds, it took for me to make my bed. But it’s the consistent day after day commitment that’s the hard part.

I want you to start changing your thinking, instead of imagining that it’s all about how you, like these big dreams and these big goals that you have to meet, maybe these huge tasks or these big decisions that you have to make in order to see change in your life.

I want you to shift your thinking and say “I am going to invest in the small stuff first because the person who’s faithful with little is gonna be faithful with much.” So whenever you look at this tiny task that you have to make, it can be easy to say “That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I make my bed today, no one else is gonna see it. I’m just gonna get in the bed at the end of the day.” But it requires you to change the way you think to say “You know what, I matter.”

The feeling that I get whenever I walk into my bedroom and see my bed made, and my room picked up, matters. If you can change the way that you think, it starts to change the way that you live your life. So you start seeing this up-leveling and this transformation happen and it almost feels effortless because it’s all these small changes that you’ve made that you think are insignificant, but really the difference between people who have personal growth and who grow and change, and people who don’t is that people who grow and change are willing to do the things that other people don’t wanna do.

And so, as you begin to make these changes, as you begin to kind of commit to all of these micro upgrades, what you’re doing is you’re becoming the person that you wanna be, ahead of time. If the person that you wanna be is someone who makes their bed every day, someone who has a beautiful home, that is tidy and picked up, you start to become that person ahead of time. You start to make the effort to have these small changes that lead to you becoming and thinking and acting like that person first, and then you start to see the results after that.

All right, that is all that I have for you on micro upgrades. Let me know in the comments, what kind of micro upgrades that you are taking. I would love to hear what area of your life that you want to upgrade, that you want to see this personal growth in. Let’s set a time. So this month let’s really focus on using a specific area of our lives, looking at that, making that list of habits that we can start to implement. Taking one habit and really focusing on it so that we can see some change in our lives. Ultimately, your transformation comes from renewing your mind, from changing the way that you think.

If you are needing help with that, then I really want to recommend some group coaching that I offer. It is all in a mastermind that is a six-month program called “180 Confidence.” And what I do is I take you step by step, there is some self-paced work in there for you to really change your mindset. Then I also throw in some coaching calls so that you can jump on live with me and get coached on specific areas of your life.

So if you are feeling like, “Hey, I want to uplevel my life. I wanna do it from a Christian perspective. And I just don’t, I can’t break through some of these issues that I’m having,” then make sure to check it out. You can go to ashleyvarner.com/180 to check it out. I hope to see you in there. There’s some great community of ladies in there that are really working day after day to change their lives by renewing their minds. It’s all about changing our thoughts into God’s thoughts and those are the best thoughts to have.

All right, I will see you guys next time. Have a great week.