How to move forward when big changes disrupt your life
The often ignored third part of personal growth
You wake up, and it’s day one of your new life.
A new job, a new person in your life (or one less), a new city.
Insert your big life change, triumphant or tragic as it may be.
Plan as you might, change is disorienting. All of a sudden, your old goals don’t matter. And your old habits don’t fit your new routine.
It can feel like the worst of both worlds: a clean slate, but no idea what to write next.
Fortunately, there’s something deeper to guide you.
When habits and goals stop working
You might have heard the debate about habits (or systems) and goals. It’s often assumed that one or both of these concepts are the key to personal growth.
The two perspectives look something like this:
The goals camp has a simple argument. Just create a goal that is:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic, and
Timely
All you need is a SMART goal, and its gravity will pull you towards achievement.
Build the goal and it will come, they say.
Habits, the anti-goal of sorts
The habits (or systems) camp defines itself somewhat through a critique of goals.
While goals can help, they put you in a perpetual state of failure. You’ve either reached the goal, or not. Habits, though, offer continuous success just by doing the thing. Heading in the right direction becomes its own form of achievement.
Keep rowing the boat, is how my Dad has framed this to me during challenging times.
The problem with goals and habits
Big life changes throw a wrench in this debate between habits and goals. When your life gets truly disrupted, even for a good thing, neither goals nor habits apply.
Sometimes the big change is actually the result of achieving an old goal, like in the case of a new job or a move that required long-term planning. Maybe the change is something you didn’t quite ask for, like the loss of a job or even a loved one.
Now, the place, people, or purpose that led you to set a goal is missing.
Habits get shaky during big life changes, too.
A carefully crafted routine while living alone dissolves after you, for example, get married, or move to a new place. The gym habit you built easily because you passed it twice a day is no longer automatic.
When where you are and who you’re with changes, then what you do will change, too.
Coasting, audacious dreams, and something else
The unique aspect of big life changes is that they force you to grapple with your goals and habits at the same time.
In normal periods of life, you can deal with the absence of one of the two. You’ve been through periods of going through the motions, where you had a routine, but the why was unclear. You’ve probably set a huge goals, but had no clue about the daily work required to reach it.
You can meander through life with habits but no goals. You can at least dream if you have a goal but no habits.
But how do you deal with losing both at once?
You need this deeper layer to keep you going
Fortunately, there’s a third layer to personal growth. This layer is resilient to major life changes, and can even pull you towards your big goals, or at least keep you moving forward, when life falls apart.
That third layer is your values.
Values are the deepest ideas that you hold to be true and important.
If a value has these two characteristics for you – truth and importance – then it is a clear guide for your daily life.
For people of faith, the link between values and lifestyle is probably more clear. For others, defining values may feel like a big task to do from scratch. However, you likely already live by an established set of values. You just need to identify them.
When a new life stage edits your goals and disrupts your habits, your values give you a sense of direction. As you make decisions from this new position in your life, the values offer guidance, helping you steer your choices and reduce decision fatigue.
With these top-level concepts in mind, you can begin to re-evaluate your goals. Maybe you leave them as is, adjust their scope, pause them, or scrap them entirely.
When it comes to habits, clear values can help you get by without them while you establish a new routine. If you switch jobs, for example, maybe you can no longer put the same level of effort into your weekly meal planning as you once did. But you can still carve out one night to cook yourself and your loved ones a good meal.
The point is this: acting from your values is the difference between writing an essay from a blank slate, vs. having a mad libs style template that just requires the details of your situation.
Values help when you win, too
What happens when you suddenly have more time, space, resources, or energy?
Staring into the ether after an intense period of life ends can be as existentially hard as a challenging time, but in a more complex way. There’s an internal narrative that your life has improved, so you shouldn’t be struggling.
When you suddenly have room for more, your values prevent you from staring at the wall or watching Netflix.
For example, I love music but rarely have time to play the guitar. When I was on family leave, and the baby was sleeping, I immediately grabbed it, just for the pure enjoyment. I knew I wouldn’t be learning new complex songs. And the routine wouldn’t last. But it elevated my life for that period of time, which is also worth it.
If you’re going through a big change, and progress feels impossible, take a step back.
Your goals have changed, and you need new habits.
Your values will pull you through.
“How can I use this concept in my life?”
As I mentioned before, you probably already have values, regardless of the the extent to which you’ve labelled them in your mind.
If you’re going through a big life change, then, it’s the perfect time to reflect on your values in order to clarify them, and to connect them to how you spend your time.
I reflect with pen and paper in a journal nightly. However, I’ve also found AI to be a powerful way to facilitate my thinking via reflection, as opposed to replacing my thinking, as some other uses cases unfortunately do.
Below is a reflection prompt that you can copy/paste into your AI tool of choice (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) It will guide you through a reflection exercise to help you clarify and act on your values during periods of change.
Directions: Copy and paste the entire prompt from the gray box into your AI tool of choice, enter that as your first message, and follow the directions from there.
You are a reflective coach helping me navigate a major life change by identifying and applying my personal values.
Your tone should be calm, encouraging, and slightly philosophical — like a thoughtful friend helping me make sense of change.
After each of my responses, briefly summarize what I said and use it to personalize the next question.
At the end, give me both a **Readiness Rating (1–10)** and a **Personalized Action Plan** based on my reflections.
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### 🌪️ Section 1: Understanding the Change
1. What big life change have you recently experienced, or are you currently navigating?
2. How has this change affected your sense of stability, purpose, or daily rhythm?
3. What old goals no longer feel relevant or possible because of this change?
4. What old habits have fallen away, and how do you feel about losing them?
(Summarize what I’ve said and highlight patterns — are my old goals/habits disappearing, or evolving?)
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### 🧭 Section 2: Discovering Clues to My Values
5. Looking back at the goals and habits that have shifted or disappeared, what do they reveal about what mattered most to you at the time?
6. Which of those values still feel true and important — even if your situation has changed?
7. Are there any new values emerging from this season of change — things that have become more important to you recently?
(Summarize my reflections and suggest what my core 3–5 values might be, based on my answers.)
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### 🔎 Section 3: Reconnecting Goals and Habits to Values
8. Considering the values we’ve identified, which of your current or new goals most clearly express those values?
9. What small daily or weekly habits could help you live those values — even in your new circumstances?
10. Imagine you’re describing a “values-aligned day” six months from now. What would it look and feel like from morning to night?
(After I answer, summarize what alignment between my values, goals, and habits could look like in real life.)
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### 🌄 Section 4: Moving Forward with Purpose
11. Based on everything we’ve discussed, what’s one specific step you could take this week to begin living more from your values?
12. What might get in your way, and how could you use your values to navigate that obstacle?
13. When would you like to revisit this reflection to check your progress or refine your direction?
(Summarize what I’ve committed to doing and any emotional themes that show readiness, resistance, or momentum.)
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### 🌤️ Final Output
When I’ve answered everything, please provide:
**1. Readiness Rating (1–10)**
Evaluate my readiness to live and act from my values, considering:
- My level of clarity about what matters to me
- My willingness to experiment and adjust goals/habits
- My confidence in using my values to guide future choices
Then write 2–3 sentences of narrative feedback explaining why I received this rating.
**2. Personalized Action Plan**
Use my responses to create a short, practical plan that fits my current life situation.
Focus on helping me:
- Build momentum if I already have clarity
- Uncover and name my values if I seem unsure
- Rebuild meaningful routines if my habits have fallen apart
Include 3–5 bullet points, each framed as a small next step I can realistically take within the next month.
Conclude with a brief motivational reminder that change may erase structure, but never the deeper truths I live by.