If you want to change your life

I don’t know a single person that doesn’t want to change their life. At the very least, we all want to improve. Why not? I want to grow as a person as time goes on, and so does everyone.

The unfortunate truth is that a lot of the time, the changes we want to make on ourselves never become a reality. Changes always occur, whether we like them to or not, but those changes aren’t necessarily what we wish them to be. It’s not that it’s not possible for one to change their life, rather it’s usually because one hasn’t figured out how to. Or they aren’t driven enough…. I haven’t rid myself of my ego nearly as much as I would like to… yet. I haven’t made it happen, but I haven’t given up.

Change happens whether we like it or not. Changing your life doesn’t always entail changing yourself (although that is a big part). It could be spending time with new people, people that care more about you, or that you feel like you can trust. It could be living in a new environment, which is partly people, but also location, atmosphere. Most of all, it could be how you spend your time. Do you follow your passion? Do you do what feeds your soul? Start doing that, and you’ll see a major change in your life.

There is a lot to manifesting change in your life. You need the right attitude, the right drive to make it happen. You’ve got to be determined, sometimes downright perseverant. But it all comes down to one little element that makes all the difference:

[“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.”]
–Thomas Jefferson

This quote sums it up for me. It’s more than just true. I think what Thomas Jefferson said should be a mantra for any that wish to change their lives. You have to be willing to do something you’ve never done. If you aren’t willing and you keep trying the same things, it’s ridiculous to expect to see things transform before your eyes.

This is true not only in discovering parts of ourselves, but also in incurring all kinds of things into our lives. If you continuously fail at something, you’ve got to revise your plan, right? As the old saying goes: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try something new.

In the eye-opening book The Alchemist, there is the perfect example of what I’m talking. The young protagonist takes up work at a merchants crystal shop. The merchant is a middle-aged man losing hope in life, and inspiration and enthusiasm are hard for him to come by. As a result, business weakens with every passing day, and all the customers start shopping in different parts of town.

The young protagonist is an enthusiastic young man and soon after getting hired, asks for permission to try new things. With reluctance, that merchant grants him that access. So the protagonist sets up a stand outside to showcase the crystals, and serves tea to all travelers that can climb up the hill where the shop stands. Within a few weeks, business traffic changes, improves. They improved because new things were attempted. Things that the merchant was unwilling to do on his own, and thus, wasn’t seeing the change, or improvement, that he wanted.

This is the way it is for everything in our lives. If you want to change your life, if you want something you don’t have, never had, you have to, have to be willing to explore and experiment with what you haven’t yet explored and experimented with. You have to be willing to do things you’ve never done.

PS: Please drop in a few comments if you ever had thoughts like these or would just like to say something...I love comments on my posts..:)