I’ve yet to meet anyone who is completely happy with their lives to the extent that they wouldn’t change a single thing. And, as you probably know, large numbers of people say they’re dissatisfied in their job, their financial situation, their eating habits, their fitness or the quality of their personal lives – or every single one of the above!! In short, normal people are normally not happy. Small wonder that most visitors discover my self help website by Googling Change Your Life.
However, surely it isn’t that simple to change your life – otherwise all those unhappy people would be doing it! Because most of us, whilst being disillusioned are also afraid of change. So, if this sounds like you, you’re pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place! The problem is, first of all, that everyone’s scared of the unknown – even if it is the great unknown that they hope to achieve! And, through past experience, they also know that, when they’ve attempted major changes in the past, they haven’t been able to stick to their guns.
I’m sitting writing this piece on February 15th – and by now, statistics show, over 90% of people’s New Year Resolutions will have fallen by the wayside! And there’s just so many studies that prove just how difficult we normal people find it to change. Did you know, for example, that the average membership of a gym is twelve weeks – and in those twelve weeks the average new recruit manages just two visits! Not going to get fit that way!
Now, I haven’t set out to further disillusion you or to confirm to you that you cannot change your life. I put my bread on the table by helping people change their lives. They all ask me how I took such a courageous risk when I moved from my native Ireland – with my wife and three teenage children – to the French Alps. My answer is always the same – it was the obvious move to make because so many small things had changed in the lead up to what other people perceive as a major change. It wasn’t, it was simply the logical next step.
You see, you change your life by changing really small things. That way, your normal mind – and the normal mind simply loves things to stay the way they were when you were a child – becomes accustomed to change. Little by little you completely deconstruct all the things that you want to change in your life and you become so comfortable with change that the things that you want to happen simply happen as that logical next step.
So, where to kick off? Start really small – like eat something unusual for breakfast this morning – or actually have breakfast! Take a different bus or train. Strike up a conversation with a stranger. Switch the knife and fork in your hands at lunchtime. Mix it up – because your mind’s mixed up right now – and out of that mix up will arrive the clarity of mind you’ve been searching for.
