We are surrounded by change, and it is the one thing that has the most dramatic impact on our lives. There is no avoiding it because it will find you, challenge you, and force you to reconsider how you live your life. Change can come into our lives as a result of a crisis, choice, or chance. In any situation, we are all faced with having to make a choice – do we make the change or not? We cannot avoid unexpected events in our lives. What we can control is how we choose to respond to them. It is our power of choice that enables us to activate positive change in our lives. Acting on our power of choice provides us with more opportunities to change our lives for the better. The more opportunities we create to change our lives, the more fulfilled and happier our lives become. There are specific things that you can do to change your life
16 Ways to Change Your Life This Year
If you’re wondering how to change your life, here are the best tips to change your life.
1. Find Meaning
“How do i change my life?” Spend some time trying to sort out what is important in your life to make a life change. What is it that you want to achieve in your life? What are your dreams? What makes you happy? Your meaning in life gives you purpose and sets the direction of how you want to live your life. Without meaning, you will spend the rest of your life wandering aimlessly with no direction, focus, or purpose.
2. Create a Dream Board
When we were children, we would daydream all the time and think of how to change our lives. We were skilled at dreaming and visualizing what we would be when we grew up. We believed that anything was possible. As we grew into adults, we lost our ability to dream. Our dreams became hidden once we started to feel like achieving our dreams was impossible. A dream board is a great way for you to start believing in your own dreams again. Seeing your dreams every day on a dream board brings them life. It will also act as a daily reminder to refocus your energy and direct it toward what you really want to achieve.
3. Set Goals
Once you know what is important in your life and what your dream life looks like in the long run, you need to take action and set your long-term, medium, and short-term goals. Acting on these goals will enable you to achieve your dreams and change your life. Remember that your goals may change. Always be flexible with setting and achieving your goals as things in life change, and your goals need to reflect these changes. It’s the small steps that you take that create the momentum when you’re learning how to change your life.
4. Let Go of Regrets
Regrets will only hold you back in life. If you spend all your time thinking about the past, you will miss the present and the future. You cannot change what you did or did not do in the past, so let it go. The only thing you have control over now is how you choose to live your present and future life. Each time you experience a negative thought about your past, challenge it. If you want to have some fun and visualize letting go of your regrets, try writing down each regret on a piece of paper and then burying it in your backyard or burning it in a bonfire with friends.
5. Do Something That Scares You
This is all about you choosing to step out of your comfort zone and see limitations from a different perspective. Public speaking is one of the most frightening things anyone can do. I was petrified of public speaking; however, I knew that I wanted to be a motivational speaker. So I joined Toast Masters to overcome my fear of public speaking. My first speech was terrible. My knees were knocking, I broke out in a sweat, and I couldn’t stop shaking. But I did it, and the feeling of completing the speech was better than I ever expected. I chose to keep going, and now I earn a living as a motivational speaker. Make a list of scary things that you would like to do but are too afraid to. Start small, put a plan in place, and then go do them. Never stop doing scary things if you genuinely want to avoid complacency and comfort and change your life.
6. Start Living a Well-Balanced Life
Our health does not remain the same. Our physical, emotional, and spiritual state changes as we get older. What we can control, however, is how we feed our minds and our bodies. Living a balanced and healthy life builds our resilience to the physical changes of our body. Exercise is the best way in which we can attain a positive and optimistic attitude toward life. Living a healthy, well-balanced life with lots of exercises is a lifestyle choice that will give you a happier and more fulfilled life. Exercise is an incredibly powerful tool that will improve your life and help you feel good. What kind of exercise is best? One recent study found that patients with mild to moderate depression experienced similar decreases in symptoms regardless of whether they participated in light, moderate, or vigorous exercise groups[1]. The bottom line: just get moving. If you’re wondering how to ensure a well-balanced life, take a look at this guide: The Ultimate Guide to Prioritizing Your Work And Life
7. Face Your Fears
It’s easy to ignore our fears and hope that they will go away. Unfortunately, it does not work like that. If you want to change your life, learn to master your fears so they can’t control you any longer. Whether it’s a fear of failure, loneliness, or the unknown, it can stop you from living your life to the fullest. We know when our fears are controlling our lives because we feel discontent and unfulfilled. Once we face our fears we take back our power to choose how we want to live our lives and when we do this we change our lives forever. Learn how to face your fears with this guide: How to Overcome Fear and Realize Your Potential (The Ultimate Guide)
8. Accept Yourself
The only person who is going to change your life is you! To create that change, you have to like yourself. There will be times in your life where you will face rejection, and there will be people who will not like you or your choices. Accepting who you are and loving yourself despite adversity helps you to move forward in your life. Find your courage, love yourself, and step out and do something crazy. Don’t worry about what anyone thinks or whether it is the right thing to do. If it feels right, act on it and go create the life you love.
9. Live in the Moment
Many of us tend to think that the grass is greener on the other side. Often, we get to the other side of the fence and find that this is not so. The motivation to change our lives comes from our desire to be happy. We are often so busy focusing on our pursuit of happiness that we miss the joy of actually living in the moment. Our desire to have happiness in our lives is a desire of a future state, not of the present. We become so consumed with all our problems in the present that we miss the precious beauty of the moment. Sitting on the beach eating ice cream with your best friend is a moment of happiness. Appreciating and showing gratitude on a daily basis is experiencing happiness at the moment. Helping those in need brings us joy and happiness. This is what living your life in the moment is all about – don’t miss these moments because you are too busy focusing on your pursuit of happiness. If you want more tips for this, take a look at this article: How to Live in the Moment and Stop Worrying
10. Experience the Joy of Learning
Each time you learn something new, you gain more knowledge, and with more knowledge comes more confidence. Learning new skills helps us to be more adaptable in new situations. It also encourages us to be more creative and innovative in our thinking, and we are, therefore, more comfortable with the unknown. Reading is a great way for us to learn. To fully embrace the joy of learning, pick up that novel you’ve heard so many people talking about. Once you find the genre that interests you most, devour as many pages as you can.
11. Change Your Beliefs
Your habits create your identity. No one is born with a set of beliefs. All beliefs are learned over time through experience. The more you repeat a particular behavior such as writing things down or making your bed every day, the more you reinforce your identity. The actions that you decide to take tell you the kind of person you are. Only you can change your life. If you have beliefs that are holding you back, you don’t have to make radical changes. Small meaningful changes are the keys to improving in life.
12. Erase Negativity
First of all, let’s admit that it’s finally time for that voice in your head to shut up. Sure, it’s been through a lot of stuff. And of course, it remembers every single disappointment and failure. But it can’t see the future, so you can’t let it play a part in how you perceive what’s to come. When the voice says, “No, I can’t,” unleash your inner actor and find a way to tell that voice “Yes, you can”. After all those years of thinking you’re not good enough, it’s time to stop. Build your confidence slowly. Set small goals and take on tiny challenges that allow you to build the confidence it takes to tackle the monster ones. Negativity harms you and keeps you from really living life. It doesn’t matter whether someone dealt with you unfairly or not. Harping on injustice (outside a brief period of venting) destroys your life and erodes precious time you could use to really start living. It’s best to decide or plan how to remedy the problem at the root of your negativity — and then take action to remedy it. Whatever you do, don’t stay in a negative or gloomy funk for long.
13. Take Stock of the Good Things and Be Grateful
You might not have the most challenging job, but in a troubled economy you do have a job — so that’s a blessing worth counting. And even though your romantic life might be as exciting as a trip to the dentist without Novocaine, remember that the good friends and great family you do have are special gifts, and their love will help see you through hard times. One of the best ways to take stock of what you do have is to start a gratitude journal. Every morning write exactly what you are thankful for on a daily basis. Then at night, write about what went well in the day. Focus on the positive and you will attract more of it. Recognize where you are lucky and you will create a sense of optimism that will spread into all other areas of your life. Most people have heard the expression “taken for granted”. Too often we take so many blessings in our lives for granted. We fail to take stock of the many good things. Instead we focus on the handful of items that are unpleasant or despicable. If you take a few minutes to make a list of the positives in your life, you’ll soon see that:
the negatives are greatly outweighed by the positives and; you have so much to work with and live for.
Take stock, be grateful, and start living.
14. Find Your Zen
To live a peaceful, happy life – and I mean truly live it – sometimes you have to do things that are totally against your nature. That means if you’re carrying around grudges that are filling you with anger, it’s time to let go and forgive those who have wronged you. The negativity harms no one but yourself, and letting go will be sweet freedom from pain that’s simply unnecessary. So how, than, do we forgive someone who damaged us and our lives?
Get away from the problem. While it might seem like running away, if you can move somewhere where troubled memories don’t follow you wherever you go, you open the door to a new mindset, and that, coupled with a new environment, can lead to better things that can turn a negative into a positive. Get spiritual. While some are best served by attending church to find their introspective side, others can head out into the woods and find a sense of peace that is a good move toward thinking that isn’t done in anger, regret, or despair. Practice meditation. Personally, it has done wonders for me. Use your bad experiences to help others. Share your story to prevent other people from making the same mistakes.
15. Surprise Yourself
One of the best ways to jolt yourself out of a disappointing life is to do something completely different. Even if you think you might be terrible at it, give something new a try. Whether it’s signing up for a ballroom dancing class or trying kick boxing, horseback riding, singing lessons or gymnastics, doing new things challenges us mentally and physically, and sparks a new interest in living by giving us a new reason to get up in the morning to a day that’s fresh and full of possibilities. Many people are afraid of trying anything new. Others feel as if there’s nothing new worth trying. And then there’s a whole different group of folks who say they “hate surprises.” What they’re all saying is they hate change and prefer structure. Structure is good; however, most people would be pleasantly amazed at how trying something new will add a real spark to their lives. Try something new, surprise yourself, and start living.
16. Revisit that Bucket List…or Rather, That LIVING List
If you have a list of things you want to do before you die, don’t sit around waiting for a reason to do them. Try to find one thing on that list that you can accomplish if not today, then tomorrow. If your list includes an exotic adventure, but you’ve been waiting around to become part of a couple before you take that tropical vacay because you don’t want to travel alone, rethink the plan. Maybe you have a good friend who’s been feeling the same way. And who knows? The love of your life could be planning the same vacation right now, and will be sitting on the same beach when you arrive. The thing is, you’ll never know unless you go.
The Bottom Line
You have a choice to make as to how you want to change your life. Choosing to act on these 10 things will help you get started on how you can change your life as you seek to improve various areas of your life. Do the things that will change your life. Go at it with a positive attitude and remember that change takes time. Life starts when you decide to change your life forever! Now that you know the things to do to change your life, what will you start doing today? Featured photo credit: Priscilla Du Preez via unsplash.com
