S4 Ep6: How Difficult is it To Change Your Life?
Action to change your life is only as difficult as you make it
When it comes to finding the best ways to complicate my life, I’m an expert.
This tends to come from overthinking things, overanalyzing, self-doubt, uncertainty, fear, and similar factors. However, no matter what the factor is – it all comes down to me.
Nobody but me is in my head, heart, or soul. Thus, nobody but me can determine what works or doesn’t work for me. When it comes to my life and any changes I desire to make to it – I alone can choose those.
More complexity doesn’t mean better. Sometimes simple really is the answer. I’ve learned this through 30+ years of fencing.
Working to change your life is never one-and-done
The truth is that there is no one-time-only change that you can make for your life. Or rather, you can’t sustain your life on a single change.
That’s because change is constant. The only constant in the Universe. Change can, will, and does occur all the time. And most of it is not yours to control.
But there is change you can control – that’s your approach to life, the universe, and everything. Your life, your reality, can be altered by choice by you. And that’s through conscious awareness. In other words, mindfulness.
Mindfulness is easy
Being actively consciously aware is easy. All you need to do is focus on being present, here and now.
Then, to gain mindfulness of your life, ask questions answerable only here and now, like,
· What am I thinking?
· What am I feeling?
· How am I feeling?
· What am I doing?
· What are my intentions?
These questions can only be answered in the now. Thus, they make you actively consciously aware/mindful.
Changing your life – depending on where you’re starting from – can look incredibly difficult. But does it need to be? No. It’s only as difficult as you choose to make it.
Change your life step by step
Changing your life will take time. Recognizing and accepting this is super important.
Chunking it down – when it comes to changing your life – is a matter of not just focusing on the end goal, but stepping stones along the way. You must take steps to get from where you are to where you desire to be.
But it really is that easy. You don’t need to overanalyze every idea, just start taking steps. As Lao Tzu said,
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
If you’re working on changing your life, take at least one small step every day. It might simply be altering how you approach things, your self-talk, or general thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Keep it simple. That’s all you need.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Change something today.
Change your bedtime, when you wake up, your toothpaste, your morning routine, a route you regularly drive, how you prepare your tea or coffee, how you part your hair – anything small and relatively easy to change.
Then, change one thing tomorrow.
Note – nothing that you change must be changed permanently. This exercise is designed to make change more familiar and something that you can control.
This also helps show how big changes can start small.
Blogs: titaniumdon.com and mjblehart.medium.com
Original cover art artist Fe Mahoney: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaliasInspirations