10 Ways To Change Your Life

Here’s 10 Ways You Can Change Your Life

Some of us like our lives a lot, some of us don’t like very much of our lives.   Sometimes life seems great, sometimes life seems horrible.  Life changes constantly and sometimes it’s good change and sometimes it’s not so good.  Sometimes there’s a whole lot of change at one time and other times it feels like an entire year can go by broken into the predictable seasons.  Sometimes we feel like we are stuck in Groundhog Day doing exactly the same thing day after day after day.  It can get easy to.get stuck in a rut.  There are so many possibilities outside of what we typically are looking at in our narrow vision of our life, it just takes raising your head up a bit and looking around.  Here are 10 ways you can change your life.  Some of them are big ones that would take a lot of work but can make a big difference in a variety of areas of your life, others are smaller ones that can happen quicker and can provide a faster jump start.  Here we go!

1. Accept Yourself

This is so huge I am going to write a post all about this and believe you me, it’s going to be really really long.  Why is that you ask?  Because it’s so important in my opinion it’s a top 3 thing you need to do to live a complete and satisfying life.  This is one of those BIG ONES that you can’t simply flip a switch and start doing tomorrow.  This takes serious work.  Like the willingness to look deep under your own hood and root around in all the good and all the not so good stuff that is part of you.  For many years I found myself hiding parts of who I was from other people because I was ashamed for one reason or another.  Slowly but surely I started putting more and more of these hidden parts of myself out there and not hiding them anymore.  I hid them mostly because I thought other people might not like me as much.  Now granted moving into middle age gives you a certain mind set that allows you to use your middle finger a lot more to people in general and not care what they think but I also think self acceptance is critical.  Once you can get yourself to a point of accepting all that is YOU, you move. through your life more confidently and you simply see things differently – in a more positive you can take on the world type of way.

2. Let Go of Those Regrets

Look man, everyone makes mistakes.  EVERYONE.  We all make mistakes all the time.  If we are smart, we use these opportunities to learn.  It is the fool that makes the same mistake time and time again.  When you hold on to your regrets and allow them the power to make you feel like a screw up or someone that doesn’t know what they are doing or whatever then you are allowing it to drag you down.  You allow your regrets the ability to make you feel worse about yourself than you need to.  When I screw up I apologize to anyone I need to, make it right, and move on.  I don’t allow it any more negative mental energy.  Life is to short and too awesome to allow yourself to be slowed down by regrets.  It happened, do what you need to do and move on.

3. Do Some Stuff That Kind Of Scares You

Nearly every day most of us are in our comfort zones.  From what we eat for breakfast to how we drive to work to how we workout to how we have sex.  When you find yourself thinking about doing something a little out of the ordinary then that little voice in your head goes “nah, let’s just eat cereal again or make love missionary style again” FORCE yourself to try something different.  Do all of your workout backwards.  Open your mouth and tell your partner you want to try something new in bed.  Start a website even if you have no idea how (see what I did there – this is what I’m doing!).  Tell your boss you want to tackle a new project and if it’s successful you’d like to get rewarded financially.  When we are leaning just past the edge of our comfort zone, this is where life gets exciting and some fun things can really happen.  Push yourself out of your normal comfort zone and be a little scared.

4. Remember To Live In The Moment

It’s all to easy to daydream about what we don’t have or about what we want.  At least a few times a day let yourself look around and appreciate what you do have.  For instance, right now as I am typing this it’s the first NFL Sunday of the season.  As such I have a massive pot of chili on the stove and one of the games is playing on the tv in the background.  Here shortly I will shred the cheese for the chili and get some cheese dip going.  The weather is about 78 degrees and the sun is shining.  I am simply enjoying my day.  It’s very easy to start thinking about all the things I have do do at work this week or the hectic volleyball game schedule my youngest daughter has over the next month or the asshole that put a scrape down my truck the other day when I was in the grocery store.  But I’m allowing the textures, smells, and sunshine of the day to sweep over me and simply exist and enjoy this day right now.

5. Never Stop Learning

Life is meant to be experienced.  It’s hard to experience anything new when you don’t ever find out or learn about anything outside of your nice little boxed in world.  I’m not saying you have to learn a new language every year or start drag racing.  What I am saying is you should look for opportunities to learn about new things on an ongoing basis.  Whether it’s reading one self-improvement book every 6 months or asking your investment guy to tell you about a new fund, just look for chances to find out something you didn’t know before.  Simply talking to the folks in your life and asking them questions and then really listening you will learn new things.  Just stop talking for a change.  And for goodness sake, read a book.

6.  De-Clutter

Get rid of some of your shit.  Look man, I know you’ve got a lot of crap laying around that you never use and are never going to use again.  It’s easy to do.  I’ve lived in my current house for 13 years now, it’s the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere.  I have been systematically going through rooms and taking one huge truck load of stuff to Goodwill and another one to the dump.  And I’m going to keep on doing this on a rotational basis.  I get rid of so much crap that either enhances someone else’s life or goes to it’s final resting place after being in mine for a while.  Start small and clean out that drawer by your bathroom sink.  You know, the one that has expired cold pills and smashed up crap you can just toss in the trash can.  Start small and let it grow from there.

7. Be Grateful and Positive

Sort of goes along with being in the moment.  Every day remember a few things you are grateful for.  Be a positive person to be around.  When you develop and maintain a positive attitude towards life magical things can happen.  You tend to impact the people around you like your family and friends.   You also tend to attract similar positive people and influences into your life.  Now what happens sometimes is you lose some of the negative aspects of your life (like people or jobs or relationships) and while this may be tough initially in the long run it is something that will continue to add to your positive mindset.  I try my hardest to limit the negative people in my life.  And while you are being positive remember to share it with other people.  Compliment the grocery store check out person, buy your friend a Starbuck’s, send someone a “been a while, how’s it going” card or email or message.  Share your positivity.

8.  Take Action – Any Action

We all get caught up in thinking about what we want or changes we’d like to see in our life.  That’s sort of the weird and frustrating thing about our minds, they never seem to shut up.  If you are anything like me I have. never ending “to do” list scrolling through my mind.  So much sometimes I actually can get counter-productive because I try to do too much at one time.  But here’s the thing.  Sometimes instead of thinking about things over and over, just go do it.  Stop thinking and just do it.  Like so many other things we talk about if you just take a LITTLE bit of action it goes a long way.  First and foremost it gives you a little shot of self-confidence because you took a little action.  And then from there good things happen because you set a ball in motion.  So take some action and get a ball rolling.

9.  Exercise

I preach mental and PHYSICAL health.  You have got to exercise.  I don’t care what you do but move your body.  Personally I am a fan of lifting weights first and foremost with some stationary biking for cardio tossed in as well.  If you make exercise an ongoing part of your life the positive effects are so far reaching I can’t fully describe it here.  It honesty flabbergasts me that so many people piss and moan about their back or how tired they are or how this hurts or that hurts yet they take no action whatsoever to get physical.  If you build a strong body the positive results that come out of it affect every aspect of your life.  Get.  Some.  Exercise.

10.  Spend More Time Outdoors

Way too easy to stay inside.  We spend so much of our time inside.  Most of us work inside, we do all the regular parts of life inside such as eating, sleeping, cleaning, etc.  Find ways to get outside more often.  Put your phone down and get outside.  Go for a walk, a bike ride, shoot some hoops, water the lawn, drink a beer on your porch, grill some meat, play catch with your dog, whatever.   Just get your butt outside more.  Today is one week after Labor Day weekend this year.  That means the pool in my neighborhood closed last weekend.  And it makes me a little bit sad because I typically spend a few hours each weekend at our pool.  I go late mornings and jump in the water.  I think put in my earbuds and float away on my music with the warm sun hitting my body.  It is very calming and mellow and honestly to me it’s almost as good as meditation.  I get to let my mind drift while being outside with the sun and breeze on my skin.  Feels great.  Try it.

 

As always thank you for taking the time to read my rambling thoughts. Hopefully there’s one or two things on the list that stood out and you might want to give a try.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on 10 ways you can change your life so feel free to share them with me.  Even if it’s just one.

All my best,

Mat A.