Unlocking Your Potential: A Proven Technique to Level Up
“Level up” is a term that has been thrown around a lot in the past couple of years. Level up your health, dating game, career etc. While it all sounds glitzy and impressive when talking about leveling up, actually doing this in real life is quite difficult. Growth is messy and uncomfortable. If it weren’t this way then you would not accomplish anything. Expanding beyond your comfort zone is the only way to build confidence and grow into a person who has a strong sense of self and resilience. So, how do you push beyond discomfort to successfully level up?
Recognizing when it is time
“Leveling up” takes a lot of effort and time on your part. Knowing when to do so and in what area of your life to do that is essential. It is not realistic to to level up all areas of your life at one time. Let me explain. If your New Year resolutions were to work out 5 times per week, date better, change careers, make more money, and travel let me seriously ask—have you been able to accomplish all of them? Most likely not. That is because changing multiple areas of life is nearly impossible. Choose one of the following areas to level up in your life and hone your focus on that. The way to identify which area to focus on is by asking yourself the following question:
In 1 year from now, what kind of woman do I want to be? What kind of relationships do I have? How do I dress? How do I feel? How do I eat? How do I move my body? How do I enjoy my career? How are my relationships? How is my love life? As you work through these questions notice that your writing will generally start to sway toward one area. When I did this exercise at the beginning of 2024 the answers to my questions were very money and career-focused. At the time, I was working a job that did not have a clear role or growth trajectory for me and I desired something different—more challenges, more money, more growth opportunities. So, this was the area I intensely focused on for the next few months
How to approach leveling up
Decide which area of your life you want to focus on then create incremental timeline goals. Break down this by 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months. At the 6 month mark, reevaluate the areas of your life again, review the goal you were trying to pursue, and then pivot for the future. Either you dig in further to your current level-up category or maybe you recognize it is time to pivot. It is also beneficial to have some type of journaling or record keeping of your progress. For example, if you moved to a new city and your goal was to make friends then at 1 , 3, and 6 months evaluate your progress and what you could improve and also recognize what went well.
Grace
Any time you are leveling up an area of your life it is essential to give yourself a little grace in the process. Growth takes courage. If it were easy then everyone would challenge themselves to be a better person or improve certain areas of their life. There are going to be days when you feel that you have made immense progress toward said goal and others that feel like two steps back. It is important to keep perspective during this growth process. Again, this is why the focus should be one area of your life at a time. Then, at that 6 month mark you can reevaluate and perhaps shift your focus to another area of life that you want to improve upon.