When a difficult period happens in life, a bad streak begins and everything does not work out as we would like - a person begins to look for something, often without knowing what. He has difficulty formulating his thoughts, but gradually gains confidence that he is not living his life, not the way he wanted in childhood, and that his aspirations are alien, instilled by those around him, his profession is a boring stay at the workplace from morning until the painfully anticipated evening.
Everything around is gray, gloomy, and he himself is out of place, out of time. When these sensations become especially strong, almost painful, a thought ripens in your head: something needs to be changed. Profession, place of residence, appearance - this, in essence, does not matter; what is important is a deep awareness of the need for change, thanks to which a person becomes ready to bring the idea to life. But few of us know exactly how to change our lives, and what kind of changes will lead to harmony in the soul, but it is disharmony that prevents us from enjoying life.
Comfort zone
The comfort zone is that area of space around a person that gives him a feeling of comfort and stability.
The human psyche is designed in such a way that we:
- We feel best in a familiar environment, where all the stimuli are familiar, and we have long developed options for reacting to them;
- We are afraid of any new stimuli precisely because of the lack of familiar response scenarios.
Wherever we find ourselves, we involuntarily try to transform the space around us, physical and psychological, into a comfort zone in which everything is clear, familiar, and there is nothing atypical or frighteningly new.
Leaving your comfort zone, accidental or intentional, is in any case perceived by the subconscious as stress, and even a conscious desire to change your life will not be easy to implement simply because any change is a violation of the integrity of the comfort zone.
Comfort zone as a battlefield
You should not assume that the comfort zone is an exclusively safe haven for those who like a passive existence within the framework of work and home.
Some people get so used to living in conditions of constant change of place, a kaleidoscope of events and a heap of incredible adventures that it is precisely this state of bedlam, confusion and endless bustle that turns into a comfort zone for them.
Force them to radically change their lives, settle down, start a family and go to work in the office every day - and such adrenaline junkies will quickly become patients of psychologists or give up everything and return to their usual, comfortable existence - into noise, to change.
The same problem is typical for workaholics who literally live for work. Something always falls apart at work, and they feel like the saviors of the world, burning out without noticing.
In order for such people to understand how to change their lives for the better, those around them sometimes have to literally give them ultimatums, knock them out of their comfort zone formed by endless sheets of reports, charts, plans and eternal lack of sleep.
Impact of external changes on internal ones
Your inner attitude largely shapes your appearance and behavior. You can also provoke internal changes through external ones. For example, if a person hunches over, lowers the corners of his lips and spends several minutes in this position, sad thoughts will come to his mind. On the contrary, if you straighten your back and smile, the brain will remember the state of inspiration and joy that the person experienced, and the negative will be replaced by pleasant dreams or memories.
The perfect suit gives you confidence
Many people wonder how to change their character. The simplest answer to this is that you need to start changing externally:
- putting your appearance and wardrobe in order means raising your self-esteem a little and becoming more confident;
- those who switch to proper nutrition and regular exercise will receive a healthy body, good health and optimism;
- if you learn to get up early, stop playing and wasting time on social networks, then you will have time for self-development: reading, journaling or meditation, so your inner world will become richer;
- putting things in order in your home or workplace will help you begin to understand your own thoughts;
- the people around you can inspire heroism or drag you into the swamp of alcoholism;
- Creative activities will help you find peace and satisfaction.
Important! The famous brain research specialist Tatyana Chernigovskaya claims that every little thing influences a person, be it a accidentally viewed advertisement or an insignificant conversation with a friend. All information enters the brain and contributes to the development or degradation of personality.
How to effectively change your character? It is very difficult, but worthy of the high title of a person.
Habitual lifestyle or changes
Having made a decision to change our life, we begin to analyze the amount of work ahead, and it may happen that the task, which is growing in complexity before our eyes, seems insurmountable. “It’s too hard”, “too late”, “what if it doesn’t work out” - such doubts and fears are whispered by the subconscious, which protects the psyche from shocks and changes that can throw us out of balance. But we must remember that it is impossible to change life for the better without going beyond your comfort zone.
The beauty of a habitual lifestyle is its predictability. You seem to have already arranged your life, started a family, got a well-paid job, and although your soul strives to get out of a locked cage, you persuade yourself: they say, what don’t I like, how can I change my life for the better, if everything is fine in it?
But happiness is not always measured by the envy of neighbors, success at work or expensive repairs. The soul doesn’t care how much the tapestry-upholstered sofas cost, or how long it took you to achieve your position - if it wants to paint pictures, strives for art and beauty, then you won’t convince it that drawing up contracts in a stuffy office is better and more productive.
Comfort zone: how to get out of the box
How can you radically change your life if leaving your comfort zone is perceived by the subconscious as escaping from prison at gunpoint by security guards, and every step can be followed by a burst of death?
Get out of it more often. We go beyond our cozy little world every time we do something unusual, some small new work: we go to advanced training courses, go to our first yoga class, call a stranger. And the more often we take ourselves out of our usual framework, the easier each small feat is tolerated, and such exits from the comfort zone gradually turn into an element of this zone.
The younger we are, the easier it is for us to perceive the process of entering the risk zone - the unknown part of life, entering which we do not have ready-made answers. But it’s not just about age, motivation and attitude are also important.
Why It’s a Mistake to Consider Personality Type as Unchangeable
We are used to asking: “Are you an extrovert or an introvert?”, “Are you choleric or sanguine?”, “Do you prefer white or red?” - as if these labels forever define a person. But a recent study on Personality Stability From Age 14 to Age 77 Years refutes this.
In 1947, educators rated 1,200 14-year-olds on six characteristics: self-confidence, perseverance, mood stability, conscientiousness, originality, and willingness to learn. After 63 years, half of the participants were tested again. The scientists asked everyone to evaluate themselves using the same criteria and get an assessment from someone close to them. As a result, there were almost no matches with the original characteristics.
According to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, after 10 years a person becomes different. During his research, Gilbert asked The End of History Illusion people how much their interests, aspirations and values had changed over the previous decade. Participants noted significant differences. He then asked how much they thought their interests, aspirations, and values would change in the next 10 years. Most assumed it was unimportant.
It seems to us that we will remain as we are now. But the same Gilbert said: “Every person is an unfinished project who mistakenly considers himself completed.” Therein lies the problem.
Motivation and attitude
If leaving your comfort zone is perceived by you as an extremely painful step that causes a storm of negative emotions, you have two ways to cope with it:
- increase motivation;
- learn how to properly adjust to change.
In order to increase your motivation to change your life, you should remember exactly what reasons prompted you to think about how to change your life for the better, what prospects await you after leaving your comfort zone, what results can be achieved with this step and how good you will feel after how the first stress will pass.
You can also adjust to change in different ways. You can think about future decisive steps in terms of “scary”, “dangerous” and “risky”, or you can use the words “interesting”, “educational” and “promising”.
In order to get additional advice, you can use specialized literature. For example, the book “Change your brain, change your life” can help you.
A bad character can be corrected if desired.
With the right amount of diligence, you can certainly change certain aspects of your bad character, but it is worth realizing that this cannot be done in a day or two - it will take a lot of practice. It is also important to understand what kind of character you want to have in the end - if you don’t think about it, then it will be stupid to wait for significant changes. Spend a couple of hours imagining (on paper, perhaps) what kind of character you need, and only then will it be possible to outline a further plan of action.
Of course, if you want to make changes in your character, but do not start doing anything for this, then the whole plan is doomed to failure. Devote some time to self-development. At first, you will probably feel uncertainty and fear, but overcome yourself and continue with your plans - this is the only way you can achieve success.
Types of change
Changes can be different: positive and negative, expected and unexpected, big and small, but all of them will help you realize how to radically change your life.
Our brain's attitude towards them also varies accordingly: positive expected changes will be greeted with joy and enthusiasm, while negative surprises can throw us off balance.
In order not to experience unnecessary stress when leaving your comfort zone, it is worth using the “there are positive aspects in everything” technique.
No matter what happens to you, try to find the positive side of events. Turn it into a game, an exciting competition with yourself, a test of your imagination, and gradually you will be able to change your life, guided by the habit of perceiving any change as a positive factor.
NOOTROPICS
Let's now move away from the tin to the legal wheels to renew the psyche - Nootropics.
The world of nootropics is multifaceted. Perhaps the most powerful nootropic, Modafinil, is banned in the Russian Federation. Therefore, let's focus on only 2, which are allowed everywhere and have good prerequisites for long-term changes in the brain.
Let's start with Bacopa!
Personally, I am glad that bacopa, which has been talked about on the channel for about 4 years now, is beginning to form an evidence base! This rarely happens with nootropics. By the way, we are now preparing a complex supplement, well, it contains the most effective substances among dietary supplements, in the right proportions, and seasoned with some vitamins, we expect it within six months! It’s not just about writing books) So one of the components there will be Bacopa and here’s why.
2017, in an animal study, bacopa stimulated synaptic plasticity of hippocampal neurons, this part of the brain is conventionally considered the center of working memory and the spatial orientation system (41). This effect will help you remember more and reduces topographic cretinism!) Moreover, back in 2002, when studying the effect of Bacopa on memory among people, it was published: “Bacopa reduces the rate of forgetting new information” (42).
2020, Bacopa may be beneficial for Parkinson's disease by reducing markers of inflammation in the brain (43). And there were similar data in 2021 (44).
There have also been positive reports for Alzheimer's disease (45, 46). Overall, there is definitely potential!
Mushroom
Blackberry comb, there was an issue about it about a year ago and yes, it also changes the brain, not psilocybin, of course, but without hallucinations and legal.
It easily bypasses the brain’s protection – the Blood-brain barrier, causes neurogenesis of the hippocampus, this is the formation of new neurons, in short, increases the amount of RAM (47).
Like psilocybin, it can have antidepressant effects and improve mood (48). For example, cell survival when administered corticosterone, a stress hormone, and Hericium erinaceus extract (49). It can be seen that this fungus protects cells.
Nervous people take note! Well, the classic nootropic effect, in a placebo-controlled experiment, people taking crested blackberry had an improvement in cognitive function in tests (50).
Judging by the research, this mushroom is a worthy alternative to the forbidden ones, this is basically what the main mushroom propagandist of our time, Paul Stamets, says about this (Write “Paul Stamets, Joe Rogan” on YouTube).
Principle of reasonableness
Having made a final decision on how to change your lifestyle, you should not forget about the principle of reasonableness: by abruptly cutting off all the threads, quitting your job and leaving your family, you can be left without a livelihood and without moral support, and such changes can hardly be called positive .
Leaving home to go to war is also a way out of your comfort zone, but is such a step wise? Will it bring happiness?
Going to a casino is an entry into the risk zone, but is the game worth the candle? Is the risk too high relative to investments and hopes?
Not every risk zone is useful, and not every exit from the comfort zone can be called reasonable.
Limit of change
The limit of change is the amount of change that your psyche can endure without harm to itself per unit of time.
Having realized how to change their lives, many joyfully rush to break and destroy the established order. Inspired by their own courage, intoxicated with determination, they risk one day sobering up, looking back and finding themselves literally in the ashes of their lives, and at the same time they will have nowhere to return to lick their wounds - without noticing it, they have destroyed all the attributes of their comfort zone, in the worst case - life.
When trying to change your life, sometimes it’s worth stopping, taking a time out and going back to your comfort zone to soak up positive energy, return to a state of mental balance, look at the area of work on yourself and decide whether you are sufficiently prepared to change your life .
When deciding how to change your life, you need to remember the limits of change and that changes do not have to be sudden and drastic.
Change is like a drug
Having changed their lives once, some are so imbued with the consciousness of their own courage, receive such a charge of positive energy that they go to the other extreme - they become hostages of the risk zone, literally turning into adrenaline junkies.
Whenever they are no longer happy with something in life, instead of making an easy, calm correction, they use a proven remedy: they destroy everything to the point of ruins and try to rebuild something completely new.
Such “addicts” turn, for example, into renovation fans, endlessly wanting to bring their apartments to an ideal state that will never come, and as a result, constantly living in ruins.
This is a dangerous trend: the idea of changing life is good, but like medicine, it is good in moderation. Total changes are not a panacea; instead of happiness, a person can get a series of failures associated with constant moving, changing lifestyles and unsuccessful searches for oneself, while in order to become happy, one only needs to stop breaking everything around at the slightest sign of discomfort and look at oneself from the inside.
Circumstances are not always to blame for dissatisfaction with life
It often happens that a person, solving the problem “how to change his life,” makes a lot of physical movements, changes jobs, leaves his family, quarrels with friends, and every step is very difficult for him, but it seems to him that just a little more just a little, just remove one more obstacle from your life that prevents you from living and developing normally - and happiness will come.
But we often forget about the following important point: the environment and circumstances are not always to blame for our troubles, sometimes the problem lies within the person himself, and it will not be possible to escape from it with the help of such drastic changes and changes in one’s life.
Simply because it is not the environment that needs to be changed, but the one who lives in this environment - the person himself, his essence, character, outlook on life and behavior. It is useless to cover a rotten fence with new paint - this will not make it stronger, and it is very important, when deciding that it is time to change your life, to carefully think about why you should change it, what exactly to change and whether exactly what you are preventing you from living happily were going to change, not something inside you.
WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO (INTENSIVE)?
- Experience
Schedule yourself every evening of the week with some events that really attract you. Various lectures, sports or entertainment events, sign up for training courses, start running, meet someone or go to interviews for another job.
A very important condition is active integration into the process! That is, going to the cinema or reading books will be an experience, but you sit there and do nothing, you cannot influence the development of the event. And what is more effective is immersion and understanding that you can influence something! Although good movies and books are still better than the absence of novelty.
Excerpt from the '18 study:
“The more challenges students successfully overcome, the more their personality traits changed over the course of the study.” Or, in layman's terms: the more action you take, the more you change (8).
- Music
Love the music. Go to open lessons on musical instruments. Look on YouTube how to play something. As a last resort, download a music creation program and try to make your own beat there. If nothing really works, then listen to different music, get interested in different genres and artists, and do it all the time!
The old people of this channel already know that playing a musical instrument physically changes the structure of the brain, increasing an area such as the Corpus Callosum, which connects the hemispheres of the brain (9, 10, 11, 12). What helps you think more holistically, which makes a person more creative and smarter.
And here is the latest data on music and the brain over the past year:
- Meta-analysis that talks about listening to music as an additional way to treat mental disorders (13, 14). You won't be so nervous!)
- Music therapy accelerates recovery from traumatic brain injury (15), also a meta-analysis. If you hit your head, play your favorite tracks more often, in addition to taking nootropics.
- When people diagnosed with dementia or intellectual disabilities started listening to music regularly, their cognitive abilities increased compared to those who did not listen (16, 17). There are elderly relatives who know nothing but TV - let them find out about the Internet and music selections!
In short, music will really rewire your psyche and physically change your brain.
— Evaluate changes
Make periodic notes about what is going well, what is bad, what to work on, how you eat, what supplements you use, how your mood and productivity change. In principle, this method has already been discussed in other issues.
This way you can better understand your character. It’s like in mathematics, you know yourself, your initial data, which means you understand how and what to change in order to become a different person. For example: you used to consider yourself an introvert, well, there are books, loneliness, arthouse movies and all that, but from the records you will notice that you are very much energized by society, meetings, and the more people and communication, the better. Motivation, productivity and high mood remain for many days after. Take the introversion-extroversion test (for example, the Cattell Test is very good, take 30-40 minutes to complete it, it will tell you a lot about you) and suddenly it turns out that you are an extrovert. The opposite situation may also be true: constantly in society, but temporary solitude adds strength! The point is that you will understand what specifically improves you and you will begin to rewire your psyche even faster.
— Meditation
There was a detailed release. A great proven way to become more stress-resistant. It seems like a common practice that doesn’t take much time, but physically reduces cortisol, our stress hormone (18). Or here’s an excerpt from a recent meta-analysis: “average effect sizes of -0.41 for stress, -0.37 for anxiety, and -0.30 for depression” (19). Actually, if you think that you have any of this, meditation is more likely to work. In terms of the level of evidence for health benefits, it seems to me that meditation is already overshadowing the famous 7-8 hours of sleep and sports activities. Therefore, if you worry a lot and get tired, this will also help you renew your brain faster.
Ways to expand your comfort zone
If any exit from your comfort zone is a powerful stress factor for you, in addition to motivation and mental adjustment, a number of exercises will help you, designed to turn entering the risk zone into a less uncomfortable activity:
- if you have to solve a large task, and the need to do it is scary, divide it into several small ones and complete it gradually; It’s more convenient to take small steps;
- remind yourself more often that the more often you leave your comfort zone, the calmer you will be about it, and the more new things you will learn and see; the frog is warm under the leaf, but the huge world around is not visible;
- return from the risk zone in time to gain strength; Designate for yourself some small actions that will symbolize for you a fleeting departure to your usual state and give you strength - eat your favorite mint candy, twirl your bracelet, put on a lucky tie.
Remember that outside the cozy warm comfort zone, which saves you from stress but prevents you from changing your life for the better, hide not only horrors, but also prospects, success, independence, new positive impressions, pleasant acquaintances and a boundless world.
It is not easy to radically change your life, but the game is worth the trouble - by tuning in to happiness and striding towards it, overcoming your fears and indecision, you can get the result you expected.
Learn foreign languages
Learning foreign languages is not only a useful skill that every person who considers themselves cosmopolitan and multicultural needs, but also an excellent brain booster.
Here, memory is trained, multitasking is improved and the conversational skills necessary to communicate with smart people from other countries are improved.
Speaking multiple languages is a huge advantage in the modern world, so you shouldn’t ignore it.
