Six Months Can Change Your Life. So Where Do You Start?
Updated: Aug 19
Six months can absolutely change your life. Amanda and I are living proof. Here’s how you can begin creating your own change.
Six months ago, Amanda and I knew of each other, but we had never met.
We had no idea that even though our lives were completely different, we were both standing in the same place.
We were both saying to ourselves, “It is time for something to change. I cannot continue with things the way they are right now. I cannot continue feeling the way that I am feeling.”
We both felt overwhelmed for very different reasons. We both knew something had to change. And we both made the decision to take back control over our lives.
We started in the exact same place.
Completely different stories. Completely different lives. Completely different answers waiting for us.
But the process was the same.
And the very first step was the same for both of us:
Reclaiming the power we still had over our lives in a moment when so many things felt completely out of our control.
But taking back control wasn't the end of the process.
It was the beginning.
We made the decision to make a change. We decided to take accountability for the parts of our lives that were ours to influence. And then we made another decision that mattered just as much:
We chose to show up for ourselves. Every day.
We kept asking the questions. We kept reflecting. We kept paying attention. We kept making choices. And we kept coming back to the process—especially on the days when we didn't feel like it, when the answers weren't clear, and when nothing seemed to be changing yet.
Because real change doesn't usually happen because of one giant decision.
It happens because you make the decision—and then you keep choosing it.
Six months later, both of us can look back and see just how much can change when you make that decision and keep showing up for yourself.
Hell yes. Six months can change your life.
No matter where you're standing right now. No matter where you're starting.
What could your life look like in six months?
The podcast asks a question:
Can six months change your life?
After sitting down with Amanda this week, I already know my answer.
Hell yes.
Six months ago, Amanda decided it was time to make some changes. We started walking through the same process I had been developing and living myself—the same questions, the same format, and the same weekly rhythm. Our lives couldn't be more different, and our answers were completely different, too.
That's important, because this isn't a program where everyone follows the same steps and ends up in the same place. The process is the same, but the transformation is personal.
And this birthday picture tells a little part of that story.
When Amanda and I talked about this birthday picture, she said:
“A year ago at my birthday party, I would not have been the person who said, ‘Let’s take pictures,’ because I would have refused that. To me, I’m looking at a completely different person than I was before. It’s not the same person that I was six months ago.”
I love that because the change she is talking about isn't really about taking pictures. It's about how she sees herself. It's about confidence, about being willing to be seen, and about recognizing herself as someone different than the person who walked into this process six months earlier.
And you can see some of that change in this photograph.
She was there. She was participating. She was willing to be in the pictures. She was enjoying her birthday.
What looks like a simple birthday photograph became, for her, evidence of something she hadn't even fully recognized until she looked back.
When Everything Feels Like Too Much
Sometimes you know something needs to change, but you have absolutely no idea where to begin. And sometimes it isn't just one thing. It's everything. Your health, your relationships, your work, your finances, your confidence, your stress, the way you talk to yourself, the dreams you've put aside. When you look at all of it at once, it can feel completely overwhelming.
Where do I even start?
I've heard that question many times, and I've asked it myself.
When life feels out of control, our instinct is often to try to fix everything at once. We make lists. We set goals. We promise ourselves that tomorrow will be different. But when you're already overwhelmed, looking at everything you think needs to change can make you feel even more stuck.
What if you don't have to start with everything?
What if you don't even have to know exactly what needs to change yet?
What if you just start by taking your power back?
That's where we begin.
Where Do You Start?
Just last week, I had a new client beginning to work with me who asked me exactly that.
Where do I start?
And my answer was simple.
You start by taking your power back.
Before you try to change anything else, you have to acknowledge that you are an active participant in your own life. That doesn't mean you caused everything that has happened to you. It doesn't mean you could have controlled every circumstance, and it certainly doesn't mean that difficult things were your fault.
There are countless things in life that we simply cannot control. But there is something we always have some influence over:
How we respond.
And that is where your power begins.
That's exactly where we start with Foundations Four.
The first week is about Choice, Power, and Intentional Creation. We begin by recognizing that while we cannot control everything, we can choose how we respond. We begin reclaiming our agency and considering what it might look like to intentionally create the life we want.
Here is a glimpse of what that first week looks like.
Now stop for a moment.
Don't just read that. Think about your own life. What would your answer be?
You don't have to come up with a perfect answer. You don't even have to like the answer. Just be honest.
And then the next question comes.
Again, there is no prescribed answer. And that's important. I don't know what your answer should be, because your life isn't my life. Amanda's life isn't mine either, and her answers aren't supposed to be the same as mine.
The question simply gives you somewhere to look. It creates a place to slow down, pay attention, and notice what is true for you.
And that's where the process begins to become personal.
Imagine two people sitting down with these exact same questions.
They both ask:
Where in my life do I tend to believe that things “just happened” to me?
One person might realize they've spent years blaming their circumstances and waiting for someone else or something outside of themselves to change. Their answer might be, I need to stop waiting for someone else to change and start looking at what I can change.
Someone else might have a completely different realization. Maybe they've been taking responsibility for things that were never theirs to carry, and their answer is, I need to stop blaming myself for things I couldn't control.
Same question. Completely different answers.
And that's what I mean when I say the transformation is personal.
One person might discover that they need to take more responsibility for their life. Someone else might realize they need to let go of responsibility they've been carrying that was never theirs. One person might need to speak up. Another might need to let something go. Someone might realize they need to make a major change, while someone else might realize they've been trying to change everything when what they really need is to stop and be where they are.
The question doesn't tell you what to do.
It gives you somewhere to look.
It gives you an opportunity to slow down, pay attention, and notice what is actually true for you.
And that's why I don't believe this work is about telling people who they should become. How could I possibly know that? I don't live your life.
What I can do is create the space for you to listen to yourself, discover what your answers are telling you, and begin deciding what you want to do with the life you have.
That's where the process becomes yours.
And Then I Looked at My Own Six Months
Once I started thinking about how differently the same questions can be answered by different people, I found myself thinking about my own experience with the process.
After we recorded the podcast, I listened to it again. But this time, I wasn't listening as the person who had recorded and edited it. I was listening as a listener.
And I realized something.
I had been so focused on making sure I captured Amanda's story accurately—making sure I heard her, understood her, and told it the way she meant it—that I hadn't really stopped to recognize what the last six months had changed in my life, too.
Hearing Amanda talk about her experience made me look back at my own.
And when I did, I realized that I couldn't have imagined where my own six months would take me.
Because around the same time Amanda began this work, I was doing it myself.
I had released Foundations. I was beginning to lead Foundations groups. I was also going through the reset myself because I knew there were things in my own life that needed to change.
I had grown tremendously over the previous year and a half, but I was also caught in some negative thinking patterns. I was trying to figure out how to incorporate all the ways I had grown over that time into the life I was actually living.
I knew I needed to make some changes, but what I couldn't have known was what those changes would become. I couldn't have dreamed that six months later I would have written Becoming, or that there would be books, a podcast, the Becoming Circle, weekly questions and reflections, and a business beginning to grow around all of it. I certainly couldn't have imagined sitting across from Amanda six months later and hearing her tell me that she sees a completely different person when she looks at herself.
And here's the thing that keeps coming back to me: we did the same work. The questions were the same, the format was the same, and the process was the same. But our lives were different. Our stories were different. What we needed was different. And so our answers were different, which meant that what changed for each of us was different.
That might be one of the things I love most about this work. I'm not trying to tell you who you should become, and honestly, I'm not sure I could even if I wanted to. The process gives you questions. You bring your life to them. Then you pay attention to what your answers reveal.
Maybe you discover that something needs to change. Maybe you realize that something you thought needed to change actually doesn't. Maybe you become more confident, or start seeing yourself differently, or finally make a decision you've been avoiding. Maybe you understand something about yourself that you've been carrying for years. Maybe you realize you've been giving your power away, or that you've been carrying responsibility that was never yours to carry in the first place.
Or maybe you start something that eventually becomes something you couldn't have imagined when you began.
That's what happened to me.
And that's what happened to Amanda.
Neither of us knew.
We just started.
And I think that's the point.
You Don't Have to Know Where This Is Going
Maybe we're not supposed to know exactly where the process will take us. Maybe we just need to be willing to take the first step, and then the next one, and pay attention along the way. We can stay open to what we discover, let go of the need to control the outcome, and trust that something will reveal itself when we're ready to see it.
And maybe there's another part of transformation that we don't talk about enough: sometimes you don't recognize that you're changing while you're in the middle of it.
You're just living your life. You're making choices, asking questions, showing up, and doing the next thing. Because you're experiencing every day one day at a time, you don't necessarily see the distance you've traveled. Sometimes it takes stopping for a minute and looking back. Sometimes it takes hearing someone else's story and realizing that it gives you a mirror for your own.
That's what happened to me when I listened to Amanda's podcast.
And then this weekend, I realized something else.
I didn't spend any time in my office. I didn't pick up my computer once. I didn't write. I didn't record a podcast. I had sent everything my clients needed before the weekend, so I closed the computer and left.
My boyfriend and I packed up the car and went to Buffalo to see a concert with one of my best friends. We saw Bryan Adams and Pat Benatar, which was amazing, and then spent the rest of the weekend with my aunt and uncle who live nearby. We swam, went to the Erie County Fair, laughed, caught up, and just relaxed.
And when Sunday morning came, we honestly didn't want it to end.
It was one of the most incredible weekends I've had in quite some time.
What struck me afterward was how completely present I had been for all of it. I wasn't thinking about what had happened yesterday. I wasn't worried about what tomorrow might bring. I wasn't thinking about the work waiting for me back home. I was just there, enjoying the people I was with and the moments we were having together.
And I realized that I was living something I talk about all the time: when you have a good relationship with yourself, it changes every other relationship in your life.
I wasn't trying to make the weekend meaningful. I wasn't trying to practice being present. I wasn't reminding myself to enjoy it.
I was just enjoying it.
That, too, is transformation.
It isn't always a new job or a new body or some giant accomplishment that everyone else can see. Sometimes transformation looks like sitting around a table laughing with people you love and realizing you don't want the moment to end. Sometimes it looks like being able to put the computer away without feeling guilty. Sometimes it looks like actually enjoying the life you've been working so hard to create.
And when I think about Amanda's birthday pictures, I see something very similar.
She wasn't standing there trying to prove that she had changed. She was simply enjoying her birthday. She was present. She was willing to take the pictures. She was willing to be seen. And when she looked back at those pictures, she could see something that she hadn't fully recognized while she was living it.
She was living her life differently.
Maybe neither of us recognized exactly what was happening while we were in the middle of it.
We were just showing up, making choices, and living our lives.
But six months later, we can look back and see it.
That's one of the gifts of doing this work. Sometimes you have to look back to realize how far you've come.
What Could Your Six Months Become?
Six months ago, Amanda couldn't have known that she would look at a birthday picture and see a completely different person. I couldn't have dreamed that the work I was doing would become Becoming. Neither of us knew what we were going to find when we started. We just knew that something had to change.
So we took our power back. We made the decision to do something differently, and then we showed up for ourselves again and again—especially on the days when we didn't feel like it, when the answers weren't clear, and when nothing seemed to be changing yet.
And eventually, something did change.
Actually, a lot changed.
Not because we followed someone else's life or because someone gave us all the answers. We didn't know where we were going. We simply kept asking the questions and then doing our best to answer them honestly.
That's really what this process is about.
Your life isn't supposed to look like mine, and your answers aren't supposed to look like Amanda's. Your Becoming is yours.
So if you're standing in that overwhelmed place right now, wondering, Where do I even start?—start there.
Take your power back. Look at what is within your influence. Think about what matters to you and what you want your choices to reflect. Choose one thing, and then show up for yourself tomorrow. And the day after that.
You don't have to know where it will lead. You don't have to know what your life is going to look like six months from now. You just have to be willing to begin and then keep showing up long enough to see what happens.
Because six months from now, you may look back and realize that far more changed than you ever imagined. You may see yourself differently. You may live differently. You may love differently. You may find that you're finally present enough to notice how good your life actually is.
You don't know yet.
Neither did Amanda.
Neither did I.
But we both know this now:
Six months can absolutely change your life.
We are living proof.
A Question to Carry With You
Before you move on with your day, take a few minutes and sit with this:
What is one thing in my life that I have the power to change?
Then let yourself explore it a little. What have you been telling yourself is outside of your control? What part of it is actually within your influence? What would it look like to take that power back?
And then ask yourself one more question:
What is one small choice I can make today that moves me in the direction I want to go?
But don't stop there. The real work is what happens after the decision. Are you willing to keep showing up for yourself tomorrow, and the day after that—even when you don't feel like it, when the answers aren't clear, and when nothing seems to be changing yet?
You don't have to change everything today. You don't have to know what your six months will become.
You just have to be willing to begin.
And then show up again tomorrow.
That's where the process begins.
Becoming, always returning,
Carrie
Founder, Total Transformation
NBC-HWC Health Coach
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