You can change your screen brightness or turn on Do Not Disturb without doing complex finger gymnastics.
SUCCESS
10 Research-Backed Steps to Create Real Change This New Year
Every New Year, we make plans and set goals, but often repeat old patterns.
Knowledge is not the problem. Most of us already know what we need to do. It’s not motivation or even discipline.
The biggest challenge is closing the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. If you want this year to be different, here are the 10 things you must do to create real, lasting change.
1. Work With Your Subconscious, Not Just Your Willpower
You live most of your life on autopilot. Only 5 per cent of your daily thoughts are conscious. The other 95 per cent comes from your subconscious, where your beliefs, habits, fears, and identity live.
If your subconscious is still programmed with old patterns, you will keep repeating them, no matter how motivated you feel on January 1st. Real change starts by reprogramming the part of you that actually runs your life.
2. Update Your Identity, Not Just Your Goals
The identity you hold within sets your limits; you cannot outperform it.
The classic story of the “$5,000-a-year salesman” in Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics, is a perfect example: no matter which territory he worked in, poor or excellent, the salesman always earned the same amount. His behaviour matched his belief.
Your identity sets the upper limit for what you can achieve, like a ceiling you cannot rise above unless you change how you see yourself. To achieve new results, first make a decision: Who are you becoming?
3. Regulate Your Nervous System Before You Try to Change Your Life
Every time you attempt something new, your body asks: “Is this safe?” If your nervous system is still wired for last year’s stress, you will unconsciously: procrastinate, overthink, lose motivation, exhaust yourself, fall back into old habits, seek comfort instead of growth.
These actions do not reflect flaws. Instead, they represent protection responses. Change feels simpler when your body senses safety.
4. Stop Confusing Talking About Change With Actual Change
Psychologists Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton found that many individuals and organisations mistake talk for progress. Books, workshops, goal discussions, and plans may feel productive.
Yet they create no change unless you consistently translate them into action. Consistent action, not intention or discussion, drives real change.
5. Write Your Goals Down (It Increases Success by 33 Per cent)
Dr Gail Matthews’ research identified three actions that increase success:
- Write down your goals.
- Share them with someone.
- Send weekly updates.
People who perform these three steps are 33 per cent more successful than those who keep goals in their head. Writing your goals down clarifies your vision. Accountability arises when you share those ambitions with someone you trust.
Tracking your progress diligently leads to momentum. Writing goals bridges the Knowing–Doing Gap.
6. Build a Vision That Pulls You Forward
You think in pictures. Whatever image you repeatedly hold, your brain moves toward that direction.
Whether you’re improving your finances, career, relationships, or personal growth, you need a picture of the future that inspires you more than your excuses. A compelling vision makes discipline easier.
7. Replace Old Mental Programming Through Repetition
Your subconscious believes whatever it hears repeatedly. Maybe you’ve spent years repeating phrases like:
- “It’s too hard.”
- “I can’t do it.”
- “It never works for me.”
- “This is just who I am.”
Your subconscious has been faithfully performing its function. To change your inner script, you must feed it new inputs, through affirmations and declaring the truth about who you really are.
Develop a practice of journaling and reflection to identify beliefs that no longer serve you. To renew your mind, persistently repeat new thoughts.
8. Surround Yourself With Expanders, Not Limiters
You are shaped by the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you surround yourself with people who complain, limit themselves, or settle, their mindset becomes your norm. Instead, surround yourself with people who:
- Take bold action
- Challenge themselves
- Break generational patterns
- Think abundantly
- Pursue growth
You will begin to rise to their level. Your environment actively moulds your behaviour. Where you end up in life is often shaped by what surrounds you. Surround yourself with uplifting voices.
9. Take Action Immediately (The Brain Forgets 80 Per cent Within a Day)
Research from the University of Texas shows that if you don’t apply new knowledge immediately, you lose most of it within 24 hours. Through taking action, true learning happens. Confidence is built through action.
By acting, you also recondition your nervous system. Only through action can you bridge the Knowing–Doing Gap. You might never feel ready; don’t let that stop you from starting today. Take action now; make adjustments as you proceed.
10. Align Your Spirit Before You Align Your Strategy
You are not just mind and body. You are a spirit. And meaningful change requires inner alignment. Develop spiritual disciplines such as meditation, prayer, gratitude and reflection on Scripture and wisdom.
In a world filled with distraction it’s more important than ever to set aside time to be still. Silence quiets the mind and allows you to hear the guidance the Spirit is constantly whispering to you.
When your soul feels centred and your nervous system calm, change shifts from pressure to a natural process of growth. True transformation happens from the inside out.
The New Year Will Not Change You But You Can Change This Year
Change doesn’t happen because the calendar resets. Change happens when you reset your thoughts, beliefs and identity, and shift your environment and your actions to match your true spiritual centre.
You are not behind. You are not stuck. You are being invited to update the underlying systems and patterns, your mental, emotional, and behavioural routines, that shape your life every day.
This can be the year you turn knowing into action and become who you aspire to be. Your future is waiting for your agreement.
The post 10 Research-Backed Steps to Create Real Change This New Year appeared first on Addicted 2 Success.
I Missed Out on Hours of Apple Watch Battery Life Before I Learned These Tricks
Seven Apple Watch settings you can change right now that will drastically improve battery life.
Learning to Be Seen After a Childhood Spent Disappearing
“The habits you created to survive will no longer serve you when it’s time to thrive.” ~Eboni Davis
I learned early how to measure the danger in a room. With a narcissistic mother, the air could shift in an instant—her tone slicing through me, reminding me that my feelings had no place.
With an alcoholic stepfather, the threat was louder, heavier, and more unpredictable. I still remember the slam of bottles on the counter, the crack of his voice turning to fists, the way I would hold my breath in the dark, hoping the storm would pass without landing on me.
In that house, love wasn’t safe. Love was survival. And survival meant disappearing—making myself small, silent, and invisible so I wouldn’t take up too much space in a world already drowning in chaos.
In a home like that, there was no space to simply be a child. My mother’s moods came first—her pain, her need for control. With her, I learned to hide the parts of myself that were “too much” because nothing I did was ever enough. With my stepfather, I learned to walk carefully, always scanning for danger, always bracing for the next eruption.
So I became the quiet one. The peacekeeper. The invisible daughter who tried to keep the house from falling apart, even when it already was. I carried a weight far too heavy for my small shoulders, believing it was my job to make things okay, even though deep down, I knew I couldn’t.
Those patterns didn’t stay in the walls of my childhood home; they followed me into adulthood. I carried silence like a second skin, disappearing in relationships whenever love began to feel unsafe. I learned to give until I was empty, to lose myself in caring for others, to believe that if I stayed quiet enough, small enough, I might finally be loved.
But love that required me to vanish was never love at all. It was survival all over again. I found myself repeating the same patterns, choosing partners who mirrored the chaos I had grown up with, shutting down whenever I felt too much. I confused pain for love, silence for safety, and in doing so, I abandoned myself again and again.
The cost was heavy: years of feeling invisible, unworthy, and unseen. Years of believing my voice didn’t matter, my needs were too much, and my story was something to hide.
For a long time, I believed this was just who I was—invisible, unworthy, built to carry pain. But there came a night when even survival felt too heavy. I was sitting in the cold, in a tent I was calling home, with nothing but silence pressing in around me. The air was damp, my body shivering beneath thin blankets, every sound outside reminding me how unsafe and alone I felt.
And for the first time, instead of disappearing into that silence, I whispered, “I can’t keep living like this.” The words were shaky, but they felt like a lifeline—the first honest thing I had said to myself in years.
It wasn’t a dramatic transformation. Nothing changed overnight. But something inside me cracked open, a small ember of truth I hadn’t let myself feel before: I deserved more than this. I was worthy of more than surviving.
That whisper became a seed. I started writing again, pouring the words I could never say onto paper. Slowly, those words became a lifeline—a way of reclaiming the voice I had silenced for so long. Every page reminded me that my story mattered, even if no one else had ever said it. And piece by piece, I began to believe it.
Survival patterns protect us, but they don’t have to define us. For years, disappearing kept me safe. Staying quiet shielded me from conflict I couldn’t control. But surviving isn’t the same as living, and the patterns that once protected me no longer have to shape who I am becoming.
Writing can be a way of reclaiming your voice. When I couldn’t speak, I wrote. Every sentence became proof that I existed, that my story was real, that I had something worth saying. Sometimes healing begins with a pen and a page—the simple act of letting your truth take shape outside of you.
It is not selfish to take up space. Growing up, I believed my needs were too much, my presence a burden. But the truth is that we all deserve to be seen, to be heard, to take up space in the world without apology.
We don’t have to heal alone. So much of my pain came from carrying everything in silence. Healing has taught me that there is strength in being witnessed, in letting others hold us when the weight is too much to carry by ourselves.
I still carry the echoes of that house—the silence, the chaos, the parts of me that once believed I wasn’t worthy of love. But today, I hold them differently. They no longer define me; they remind me of how far I’ve come.
I cannot change the family I was born into or the pain that shaped me. But I can choose how I grow from it. And that choice—to soften instead of harden, to speak instead of disappear, to heal instead of carry it all in silence—has changed everything.
I am still learning, still growing, still coming home to myself. But I no longer disappear. I know now that my story matters—and so does yours.
So I invite you to pause and ask yourself: Where have you mistaken survival for love? What parts of you have learned to stay silent, and what might happen if you gave them a voice?
Even the smallest whisper of truth can be the beginning of a new life. Your story matters too. May you find the courage to stop surviving and begin truly living.
May we all learn to take up space without apology, to speak our truths without fear, and to find safety not in silence, but in love.
About Tracy Lynn
Tracy Lynn is the founder of From Darkness We Grow, a healing space for those who carry emotional pain in silence. Through journals, courses, and her online community, The Healing Circle, she helps others reclaim their voice and remember their worth. Connect with Tracy at fromdarknesswegrow.com. You can also find support in The Healing Circle.
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Don’t Overthink It: 7 Pasta-Making Myths and Mistakes You Need to Leave Behind
I asked an Italian chef about the biggest pasta blunders he sees home cooks make.
REVERB 28: How Vision and Focus Multiply a Leaders Impact
Activity doesn’t equal impact. In this REVERB episode, Andy Stanley and co-host Suzy Gray revisit last week’s conversion with Jason Jaggard to reveal why focus fuels growth and distraction kills it. They discuss the hidden cost of trying to do everything, how to align a team around a shared vision, and why scaling influence requires letting go of certain responsibilities, not adding more. Whether you lead a team of two or two hundred, this conversation will help you lead with purpose, confidence, and sustainable impact.
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Wi-Fi Jammers and Home Security: Here’s What’s Behind This Burglar Tech
Wi-Fi jammers sound like a scary way to bypass home security, but it’s more complicated than that. Here’s how to avoid worrying.
Modern Intimacy: How Couples are Redefining Connection and Confidence
Intimacy today no longer follows a single script. Across generations and relationships, people are embracing a more open, confident and positive approach to pleasure. It’s no longer about performance or stereotypes, but about communication, comfort and shared exploration. Couples are learning that closeness is something that grows through understanding and mutual trust.
A healthier view of intimacy
For many years, sexuality was a subject people avoided or only discussed in private. Thankfully, that has begun to change. More individuals now see intimacy as an essential part of overall well-being, closely linked to mental health, body confidence and emotional connection.
This shift has been helped by new, more inclusive spaces and conversations. Visiting a sex shop today often feels more like stepping into a wellness boutique than something secretive. Shelves are thoughtfully curated, with products designed to support comfort, curiosity and education. Still, not everyone feels ready to walk into a store in person, and that is perfectly fine.
For those who prefer privacy, online sex shops offer a discreet and informative way to explore. Detailed product descriptions, guides and reviews help people make confident choices at their own pace, turning curiosity into a positive and relaxed experience.
Tools for connection and discovery
At the heart of fulfilling intimacy lies communication. Talking about desires, boundaries and curiosity strengthens trust and brings partners closer. When the dialogue is open and free of judgment, it becomes easier to experiment together.
Some couples choose to explore through accessories or products designed to enhance pleasure. Something as simple as a cock ring, for example, can help partners focus on shared sensations, prolong intimacy and increase connection. It is not about replacing closeness with objects, but about creating opportunities for new kinds of experiences together.
Building confidence through comfort and trust
Confidence in intimacy grows from feeling safe and understood. When partners take the time to listen to each other’s needs, it reduces anxiety and increases pleasure. Products that encourage relaxation, such as massage oils, lubricants or gentle stimulators, can turn a simple moment into one of mindfulness and connection.
A new era of openness
Modern intimacy celebrates diversity in every sense. It recognises that there is no single definition of what relationships or pleasure should look like. Everyone has the freedom to define what feels good, in their own time and in their own way.
This new openness also promotes equality: couples who share their desires, emotions and limits learn to know each other better. Intimacy becomes a language built on respect, care and playfulness.
In the end, the essence of modern intimacy lies in communication and trust. When these elements are present, connection flourishes naturally — proof that confidence and tenderness can go hand in hand.
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Downsizing Done Right: Save Money and Simplify Life
Downsizing your home doesn’t have to be a sacrifice. Instead, look at it as a way to lower your costs while adjusting to a new lifestyle in retirement.
And downsizing may actually make more sense for your current lifestyle, like if you have a large house from raising a family, but now you’re empty nesters. Read on for the five steps you should take when downsizing, and enjoy the benefits of more budget flexibility, less maintenance and reduced clutter.
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1. Outline your goals
Consider why you want to downsize and what benefits you want to get from the move. Reducing your costs, for example, makes it easier to retire without working part-time, and may mean you can spend more time with your friends and family. Freeing up your budget can also give you the flexibility to travel more often.
As you get older, routine tasks like maintaining the home and mowing the lawn may be less feasible. Another goal could be to decrease the number of rooms to clean and other chores you have to do if you live in a smaller home. Or perhaps you want to move somewhere where you can build up a community of people your age.
2. Sort strategically
Getting rid of possessions during the downsize is often the hardest part, but implementing a sorting strategy can make it easier. For example, you can group items based on which ones you love, need or can leave.
The “love” category consists of non-essential items that offer nostalgia or family value. The “need” category contains items that you must have, such as a computer or kitchenware. Finally, the “leave” category is made up of items that no longer hold value for you, such as things that have been in storage so long you didn’t notice they were gone.
3. Do a financial analysis
Downsizing and getting rid of clutter can offer immediate financial benefits, such as extra cash from selling your home and items, lower property taxes, lower utility bills and reduced insurance. Doing a financial windfall analysis can help you understand the benefit of making the move, which can push you to stay committed even when the process is challenging.
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4. Carefully consider location
While downsizing can save you a lot of money, doing it too quickly can lead to regret. It’s important to test locations out before you commit, like by living in a one-month rental. You will be able to determine if the location you chose is suitable for your retirement or if you should stay put and wait until you find an area that better aligns with your goals.
Living in one place for a month can also allow you to gauge whether the activities you want to participate in during retirement are available, and if the social circles you’re looking for are present.
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5. Find smart storage solutions
Having small, dedicated storage for sentimental items like photos and letters makes it easy to find them whenever you want to go down memory lane. Storing items in specific boxes based on categories can also help you find various items when you want to use them.
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Blancpain Recognises Excellence at the Ocean Photographer of the Year Awards
Blancpain has announced the winners of this year’s edition of Ocean Photographer of the Year, the award that the watch brand presents in collaboration with Oceanographic Magazine. A macro photographer based in Indonesia, Yury Ivanov won over the judging panel for his photo shot in the waters of Bali depicting a pair of ladybug amphipods feeding atop coral.
Not only did the image demonstrate its photographer’s expertise – the crustaceans, which scavenge algae and seaweed, and frequently live among corals and sponges, are a challenge to document due to their 3mm length and their skittish movements – but it also impressed with the simplicity of its message: that the ocean is a place of wonder, colour and life of all sizes.
The winning photo was among more than 15,000 images submitted from around the world, with subject matter spanning coastal and underwater environments, the marvel and fragility of oceans, and humans’ connection with the sea: diving penguins, stingrays drifting above clouds of sand, minute details of the fur coat of a Weddell seal, whale hunting in the Faroe Islands, conservationists and marine mammal rescuers trying to save a beached whale.
As for the Blancpain Female Fifty Fathoms Award, which Blancpain created in 2021 to honour dauntless, pioneering women in ocean photography, that went to Chinese marine biologist, science communicator, and blackwater photographer Jialing Cai this year.
Among the most challenging modes of underwater macro photography, blackwater photography takes place in the open ocean typically deeper than 200m (where the epipelagic or sunlight zone ends), and involves tracking the vertical migration of plankton and other organisms, many smaller than a fingernail, that drift or dart as they travel upwards to feed at night.
The winner of the Blancpain Female Fifty Fathoms Award is nominated by peers and judged by a jury panel comprising the diver and ocean photographer Laurent Ballesta; a delegation from Blancpain led by the watch brand’s president and CEO Marc A. Hayek; and editorial staff at Oceanographic Magazine. Ballesta partnered with Blancpain on projects such as the Gombessa I in 2013 to study and document the critically endangered West Indian Ocean coelacanth, as well as contributed to the development of the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Gombessa Tech)
This story was first seen as part of the WOW #81 Autumn 2025 Issue
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