How to Change Your Life (Even When Results Take Time)

One of the hardest parts of changing your life is that you don’t immediately get to live in the results of those changes.

You make the decision. You rearrange your priorities. You might even give up things you genuinely love. And then you still have to wake up tomorrow and keep choosing that new direction, even when it doesn’t feel easier yet.

Changes in life and business take time. We want to take action and see immediate results, but usually the outcome lags behind the consistent choices we’re making.

This has been a big struggle for me in this season of life. There are so many moving pieces, and the pressure can feel high. In my mind, I’m thinking, “There should be results by now,” when it’s only been a week since I started implementing a new strategy or system.

Becoming a mother has meant becoming a different version of myself and learning what I can realistically handle while raising a child and running two businesses.

Both businesses have to take less of my time than they used to. I simply don’t have the same amount of time to give them anymore, which means I have to choose the few tasks that matter most and let other things go.

And sometimes what we have to set aside isn’t bad at all. We genuinely love those things, and we’re going to miss being able to do them.

But that doesn’t mean the decision was wrong or that the door is closed forever. Those things might fit into our lives again in a later season.

The challenge is learning to hold on to the changes we believed were right, even when they haven’t produced visible results yet.

So let’s chat a little about: how do you know what needs to change, when to give something more time, and when it’s better to let it go?

How Do You Know What Needs to Change in Your Life?

When something in your life isn’t working, but you don’t know exactly what needs to change, start by asking yourself what you wish was different. What are your friction points in your day?

What is frustrating you, making your days harder, or leaving you wishing things could be better?

Then start looking at why you feel that way. Here’s a really simple example from my own life.

I was feeling frumpy, even when I was just at home. I didn’t like how I was presenting myself, and I wanted to feel a little more put together during the day, even if I was just by myself. But I also knew that running out and buying a whole new wardrobe wasn’t necessarily the answer. More stuff doesn’t always fix the problem.

So I started looking at why I was feeling that way.

• Part of it was that my outfits didn’t feel cohesive.
• Another part was that I was wearing jeans with holes because I didn’t want to mess up my good clothes.

We have barn chores every day, and if you know anything about taking care of animals. You know that can ruin clothes so fast it would make your head spin. I didn’t want to ruin my nicer clothes, so I was wearing my barn clothes throughout the day.

I had given myself plenty of reasons why I couldn’t dress differently, but eventually I had to ask whether those reasons were actually problems I could solve.

For example, I could keep a couple of pairs of jeans specifically for barn chores and take a minute to change before going outside. We dress appropriately for different jobs, so why couldn’t I do the same thing at home?

I also went through my closet and removed the clothes that made me feel frumpy or that I simply had more of than I needed.

I don’t need ten T-shirts for dirty jobs when two or three will do. I don’t need three stained tank tops for coloring my hair when I only need one.

Sure, I could have eventually used those things, but keeping them wasn’t helping me. It was distracting me from wearing the clothes that made me feel put together. Don’t make exceptions to making life better out of fear or lack. Holding on to things for “what ifs” detracts from you acknowledging that you have the skills to find resources.

Removing the extras made it easier to see and wear the clothes that made me feel empowered throughout the day.

None of these changes were particularly big, and they didn’t require me to completely reinvent my wardrobe. I just had to identify what was bothering me, look at the reasons behind it, and decide what I was willing to change.

And that same process can apply to much bigger things than your closet.

Before making a change, ask yourself what you actually want to be different, what’s keeping that from happening, and what you’re willing to do about it.

Then give yourself enough time to see whether those changes are making a difference.

How Do You Know When to Quit or Give Something More Time?

One of the hardest decisions when you’re trying to change your life is knowing whether you need to keep going or whether it’s time to let something go.

The first thing I would ask is whether you clearly defined the result you wanted when you started.

If the answer is no, start there. Decide what you actually want to accomplish and how much time you’re willing to give yourself to work toward it.

For example, saying you want to make more money from your job or side hustle is pretty vague. What does more money actually mean to you? Is it a certain percentage raise at work or an extra $500 a month from your business?

When you have a specific result you’re working toward, it’s easier to decide what actions you need to take and evaluate whether they’re actually working.

But having a clear goal doesn’t necessarily mean you should keep pursuing it forever. There are a few other things I would think about before deciding whether to quit.

Is the Result Worth What It’s Costing You?

Sometimes you can achieve exactly what you wanted and realize that getting there, or maintaining it, comes at a cost you didn’t anticipate.

For example, I’ve spent years building my rabbitry, and there are ways I could potentially grow it into a much larger business. But many of those opportunities would require me to sell more physical products, meet with more customers, or spend my days researching and teaching rabbit care.

Those aren’t things I want to spend my life doing. And in some cases, the profit margins on physical products would be thinner than what I’m already selling.

I love my rabbitry and what it has made possible for our family, but I also know what growing it further would ask of me.

Sometimes the question isn’t whether you can achieve something. It’s whether you actually want what comes with achieving it. The cost may not be worth it to you.

Is Your Goal Realistic With the Resources You Have?

This is another question I think we need to be willing to ask ourselves. Even if we don’t like the answer.

Would I love to build a multimillion-dollar business in the next five years? Of course.

But I’m also a stay-at-home mom, the default parent, and I’m planning to homeschool our son. Right now, I can realistically squeeze about 12–15 hours a week out of my schedule to work on two businesses.

Could I build something with that time? I think so. But expecting to build a multimillion-dollar business within five years under those circumstances would be extremely unrealistic unless I hit some stroke of crazy luck. And no one should build their life on anything that is out of their control.

That doesn’t mean you have to give up on the bigger dream. But you may need to adjust the timeline, change your approach, or accept that this season of life isn’t the one where everything happens.

Will You Regret Not Giving It a Little More Time?

If you’ve been working toward something and the results still aren’t happening, ask yourself whether you’ve REALLY given it your best effort. If the answer is yes. Then do this next key thing.

Then imagine walking away from it.

Would you feel at peace knowing you tried, or would you always wonder what might have happened if you’d given it another six months or two years?

I think that’s worth thinking about, especially if continuing isn’t coming at the expense of other important parts of your life.

If pursuing that goal isn’t harming your marriage, making life at home miserable, or causing you to miss out on your children’s lives, maybe there’s room to keep trying.

You don’t necessarily have to commit to another year, either. Sometimes you can decide to give it one more day.

Wake up tomorrow, take the next step, and ask yourself whether continuing is still worth it.

And if the answer is yes, keep going.

The second part of this is asking yourself what you would do with that time if you did stop doing it?

I had to ask myself this when I was seriously doubting my businesses and if they were worth the stress they were adding to my life. The honest truth is I am a builder. I like seeing what comes of my work. I don’t know what I would do with myself otherwise. I have tried to build my own business since I was 10 years old. It’s a part of who I am.

If you are going to set something down, you have to be reach a point where you can set something down, walk away, and have peace about that decision.

What if You Miss the Things You’ve Had to Give Up?

Sometimes making the right changes means setting aside things you genuinely love or dreams you still wish you could pursue.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is to simply allow myself to miss them.

I think sometimes we make those feelings worse by trying to push them away, or telling ourselves we shouldn’t feel that way. But you can’t convince yourself you don’t feel something when you actually do.

I’ve found that when I stop putting pressure on myself to get over it, those feelings become a little easier to carry over time. Missing something or being sad about something are feelings that don’t necessarily disappear, but they don’t have to be something I’m constantly fighting against, either.

Another thing I ask myself is what I was hoping to get out of what I’m missing. Is there a smaller or simpler way I could experience some of that right now?

For example, I’ve had a strong desire to build a business making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Part of that desire comes from wanting to be outrageously generous with other people, invest for our family’s future, and have the resources to do things that matter to me.

But I don’t have to wait until I’m making that kind of money to do those things.

I can still be generous with what I have. I can still put money away for our future. Maybe it’s not at the pace or on the scale I originally imagined, but I can still work toward the things that matter to me.

Sometimes, when you look at why you want something, you realize there’s another way to create part of the result without pursuing the entire dream right now.

And sometimes you’ll realize that the thing you once wanted isn’t actually what you want anymore. We grow and change, and our goals can change with us.

For the things you genuinely still want to pursue, consider whether they might fit into a later season of life. Maybe you can see more time becoming available in the future, or circumstances changing in a way that would make them possible again.

Keep those ideas somewhere you can return to them. They don’t have to disappear simply because you can’t pursue them today.

You can make peace with what your life needs from you right now without deciding that every dream you’ve set aside is gone forever.

Give the Changes You’re Making Time to Work

When you’re trying to change your life, it’s easy to become so focused on the results you want that you forget how much time it can take to get there.

You might be making the right decisions, choosing better priorities, and putting systems in place that will make your life easier. But that doesn’t mean you’ll immediately feel the difference.

Sometimes you’ll still feel overwhelmed. You’ll miss the things you used to have time for, and you’ll wonder whether the changes you’re making are actually worth it.

That doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong.

Keep evaluating what you’re doing and whether it’s moving you toward the life you want. Be willing to make adjustments when something isn’t working, and give yourself permission to let go of things that no longer make sense.

We will never see the full path out in front of us to reach the destination. When we walk across stones in a creek, we focus on a few rocks right in front of us. Then lift our head, find the next few rocks, take those steps, and plot the path as we continue across. Some rocks look firm and safe to step on but when we get there, they move under us, then we have to find a different path.

But don’t abandon a change you believed was right simply because you haven’t seen the results yet.

And give yourself permission to grieve the good things you can’t prioritize right now. Lay them down for a while, and pick them back up when you have the capacity or are willing to make room for them.

The exact results you want aren’t guaranteed, and they may not happen as quickly as you’d hoped. Sometimes you have to try something, give it time, and see what happens.

You don’t have to see the results of every change today for the decisions you’re making to be worth it.