Changes in life are the engine of human development. Even if these are unpleasant and unexpected changes, they still contribute to the development of personality and provide invaluable experience and knowledge. And if these are targeted and positive changes that are organized by the person himself, then there is no doubt about their benefits. Development is impossible without leaving your comfort zone. And change just helps to get out of it. Now let’s look in more detail at what changes in a person’s life are, what they are like and why they are needed.
Rules of human life
5. Always be yourself, proudly and sincerely
When a person tries to be someone else, he gradually loses himself. Stop doing this, you shouldn't be ashamed to be yourself.
You are a unique person with your strength, your ideas and your beauty. Stay who you feel you are, become the best version of yourself.
6. Live in the present moment, learn to see it
A miracle is happening right now. You can only be sure of something now, in the moment. Life is now.
So stop dreaming about the great things you will one day accomplish. Stop worrying about something you didn't do or did in your past.
It is very important to learn to be here and now. Experience your life as it flows, don’t get ahead of yourself and don’t mentally go back. The world is beautiful, appreciate it here and now.
7. Learn to learn from your mistakes and appreciate them
Everyone makes mistakes. This is normal, because progress is only possible with them. When a person doesn’t make mistakes, it only says one thing: he doesn’t really want to achieve something and doesn’t learn.
Make mistakes, take risks, fall, lose, but after that be sure to get up from your knees and start again. Appreciate that you are moving forward, growing, learning and understanding how to correct your mistakes.
The path to high peaks is almost always quite winding, on which you will encounter a lot of falls and failures. Therefore, the next mistake that you are so afraid of may be nothing more than the most incredible achievement of your life.
“They carry water for the offended”
Here you are unlikely to guess what the saying has to do with life changes, but the all-knowing Google will tell us everything. In the 19th century in St. Petersburg, the price of imported water was fixed, and those water suppliers who were offended by low prices and tried to speculate illegally had their horses confiscated and forced to carry carts with barrels on themselves.
In other words, for people who are always offended by everything, consider this life to be unfair, and consider themselves undervalued, changes for the worse happen much more often. Therefore, it is better to leave all your grievances against parents, children, friends, bosses, colleagues, neighbors in the past. Well, or set a limit: complain about one situation that offended you no more than once.
If it doesn’t help, then time management will help. Calculate how much time a day you think about your dissatisfaction with someone, something, something that once or recently happened. You will see that there are a lot. During this time, you would have time to make yourself a coffee, a sandwich, watch a comedy movie, and even tell someone all the jokes from this comedy movie. Maybe not the most intellectually rich pastime, but certainly more useful than accumulating negativity in yourself.
About changes in life
11. Give your dreams and ideas a chance
In our life, chance is a rather rare occurrence; in most cases, we have to find it on our own. You will never be completely confident that your idea will work one hundred percent. However, rest assured that it will definitely not work if you don’t do anything about it.
For the most part, our ideas are worthy and require attempts to implement them. It doesn’t matter at all how the implementation of the idea ends: another life experience or success. In any case, you win.
12. You must believe that you are ready to move forward.
Think about what you are already ready for. You already carry within you absolutely everything you need for the next small step. So embrace the opportunities that come your way and be open to change. This is a real gift that will contribute to your growth.
Give yourself time to rest
Get some rest. As you cope with life's changes, it's important to take breaks. Stop thinking so much. Turn down the volume of your internal dialogue, especially the negative thoughts that may be running endlessly through your head.
What's your favorite way to laze around?
Watch your favorite TV show that takes your mind off what you're going through. Play a mindless game on your smartphone until you realize an hour has passed without thinking about the situation that weighs heavily on your heart. Play with your pets.
Take an amazing walk in nature and focus on how magnificent it is. Sit by the ocean or a babbling stream and listen to nothing but the sounds you hear. Put on headphones and listen to meditative music.
When done regularly, these mini-breaks do your mind, heart, and soul a lot of good.
How to start changes in life
14. Always give people who cross your path a chance.
You may think this is quite harsh, but the truth is that you will not be able to maintain a friendly relationship with everyone. We all change, and our priorities change along with us. Some relationships only grow stronger over time, while others simply fade into the past.
Appreciate the opportunity to build new relationships, but abandon old ones that have already served their purpose. When a person starts a new relationship, he must understand that he is entering unfamiliar territory.
Be prepared for challenges, be prepared to learn, and always be prepared for the possibility that someone may come along who can change your life once and for all.
15. You should only compete with the old version of yourself.
Learn from other people, appreciate them, be inspired by their example, but never compete with them. You will only waste your time. You must always compete with only one person - yourself.
Compete to become better, to beat yourself. Make it your goal to consistently beat your personal bests and only then will you be able to benefit from this type of competition.
16. Learn to enjoy other people's victories
Notice what pleases you in other people, start telling them about it. If you recognize that there are great people around you, you will see how much good will open up for you.
Rejoice for the one who managed to achieve success. Wish him victory with all your heart, root for him. Sooner or later, such a person will definitely start rooting for you.
Find out how to manage your stress
No matter what happens, the very experience of experiencing change can change you deeply. For example, divorce, whether you wanted it or not, makes you wonder who you are now that the status of “I am someone's wife” or “I am so-and-so's husband” has changed.
Your friends and family may start to pick sides. Children may rebel. You may have to sell your home and move to another place. Your financial situation may become more difficult or you may have to change jobs.
With so many changes happening at once, you cannot avoid internal changes. It's like a rollercoaster of ups and downs until you stop - your personal journey of inner transformation that brings up many emotions.
It's no surprise that major life changes cause stress. Reducing this stress in any way possible will help cope with change much easier.
Breathing practices, running or kickboxing, meditation or a massage course help activate hormones that reduce stress levels. Find the practice that's right for you.
A little stress is good. He can motivate. But too much stress can hold you back and limit you.
Human life
17. Encourage yourself in difficult situations
Difficult times come in each of our lives. It is important to support yourself during this time. A few deep breaths and a reminder that challenges will only make you stronger.
Remember all the good and right things that exist in your life, remember all your achievements and victories. Focus your attention on what you currently have, rather than on what you lack.
18. Forgive others and yourself
Each of us has been hurt at some point because of the actions of another person or because of our own wrong decision. It is normal to be sensitive to such an experience, but sometimes it happens that the suffering drags on for too long a period of time.
A person experiences his pain again and again, thereby only prolonging what is not the most pleasant period in his life. The most effective and, perhaps, the only medicine is forgiveness.
This does not mean that you erase your past and forget what happened. This means that you allow the resentment to go away, the pain to dull. This event remains in memory solely as an important life experience, but nothing more.
19. Show concern for others
Take care of the people around you, help them find the right path, if you know it. Remember that the more you help the people around you, the more they will help you. Kindness and love always return.
Accept your feelings
Does it sound strange? How can you accept what is unpleasant, such as fear, uncertainty, grief or anxiety? Acceptance allows you to deal with these feelings instead of letting your emotions control you. Look at your feelings a little differently.
Let's take fear, for example. You may experience a variety of sensations, including emptiness in your stomach, trembling, sweating, or an inability to think clearly. What if we consciously renamed fear? Call this state excitement. When you're anxious, you may also experience a feeling of emptiness in your stomach, shaky knees, and sweaty palms. Accept these sensations and call them what empowers you. This is a change in thinking.
You can do this with different emotions. I often think of grief as love that has no way out - so I just channel the love in a different direction. This makes me feel better.
Changes in life
23. Embrace imperfections
Always remember that perfect is not synonymous with good. One of the greatest challenges for those who want to make themselves and the world a better place is to accept things as they really are.
Sometimes it is even useful to accept people and the world around them as they are. Making them fit your crazy ideals is a thankless task. But that doesn't mean you have to settle for a mediocre life and give up on change. Sometimes you just have to accept what doesn't seem ideal to you.
24. Walk towards your goal every day.
Whatever your dream is, you should not miss a single day to move towards it. Any action, even the smallest, brings you closer to it. Tiny steps make a big difference if they are taken regularly.
Most of us at least once in our lives think about the need to follow our calling, but only a few begin to do something in this direction. Constant work in this case is a steady, albeit gradual, movement towards your goal.
Take care of yourself
Taking care of yourself is very beneficial. Especially when life turns you upside down, the best way to turn yourself back around again is to take care of yourself.
It's easier to feel strong and capable by getting enough rest, eating well, and being physically active. Relax in the most pleasant way for you - take a massage, swim or engage in your favorite hobby.
Imagine a beautiful tea cup on a saucer. Fill it with self-care to the very brim. When it is full, you can begin to share your concern with others. If your cup is full, you manage your stress better, you're less likely to get overwhelmed, and you're better able to make decisions.
Life rules
25. Open up your feelings
If you feel bad, then give yourself time to get over it. Don’t close yourself off and don’t push your suffering into the farthest corner of your soul.
Talk to your loved ones, tell them the truth about how you are feeling, let them listen to you. This easy way of releasing your worries and worries will be the first step to getting over the situation and feeling great again.
26. Responsibility for your life should lie solely with you.
Make your choices and make your mistakes. Be prepared to fix them yourself. When a person does not take responsibility for his life, someone else does it instead. Only in this case do we become a slave to other people’s dreams and ideas, abandoning our own path on which only you can become a pioneer.
The only person who has the right to control the consequences of your actions is you. Nobody says that it will be easy, because each of us always faces a sufficient number of obstacles. But you simply must be responsible for everything that happens in your life and overcome these difficulties.
27. The most important relationships in life must always be maintained.
Telling the people you love how much they mean to you brings true joy and honesty to your relationship. Tell them this regularly. You don't mean much to many people, but to some of them you mean the world.
Understand for yourself who these people are, value them and take care of them as your greatest treasure. Remember that you don't need a specific number of friends, you need people in whom you are confident.
Recognize that change is inevitable and uncontrollable
There are many completely different changes happening in our lives. Some of them you can expect and even plan for, for example, final exams, the birth of a child, separation of older children or retirement. More often than not, these are happy events that you don’t want to miss.
And some changes come without warning—sudden illness, an accident, or the loss of someone important. It would be possible to do without them.
Most people experience many significant events during their lives. We all find it easier to accept something that can be planned, whereas something that happens suddenly can literally knock us off our feet and require a lot of recovery time.
Dealing with difficult life changes becomes easier when you accept that much of what happens is out of your control.
Take on what you can control and let go of the rest. I often turn to the serenity prayer when I feel like I'm losing control of my life: “Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, give me the courage to change the things I can change. And give me wisdom to distinguish one from another."
Inner feeling of anxiety
Often people in the usual bustle begin to experience an inexplicable feeling of anxiety. Many people have a premonition of inevitable troubles or misfortunes. Someone is feeling the burden of problems that have appeared or are looming on the horizon. The most sensitive natures can generally fall into long-term depression.
It is important to understand the reasons for this mood. If it is impossible to do this on your own, it is better to turn to specialists: psychologists will be able to determine the level of anxiety and give the necessary recommendations. You just need to try to understand yourself and find the true reasons for your depressed state. And this can only mean one thing: you need to change!
After all, it is still more common for a person to approach life with joy, to take for granted all defeats and victories. This is how humans differ from animals in that they are endowed with self-reflection, that is, the ability to analyze the reasons for all their successes and failures. And when the cause is found, it can always be eliminated - if only there is a desire.
Of course, it’s more difficult when there are no more desires left. Then a good emotional shake-up comes to the rescue - a new film, meeting new interesting people. Or maybe adrenaline will help? Then a parachute jump or a descent from a mountain peak will truly revive your sense of life.
We are waiting for changes…?
A person, starting from birth, is open to everything new, and it is thanks to this that his knowledge of the world, learning and development occur. The child is open to new experiences every day. He wakes up in the morning, charged with searching for adventures, joyfully joining in the game with the world around him; he is not afraid of knocked-out knees and bumps. The child grows, and his information baggage received from the outside world becomes larger. Now he is already a teenager with the philosophy “everything in life needs to be tried,” and he tries, tries, gets impressions, gains some “bumps” and tries again. Thus, as we grow up, we no longer carry within us only the joy of new discoveries and impressions, but also a lot of other sensations absorbed with them, not always positive - such as fears or uncertainty.
The need for knowledge and new experiences gradually becomes less significant and is overshadowed by others, no less important - positioning oneself in society, creating a family, professional fulfillment. A certain way of life develops, it is warm, comfortable and cozy. Everything is clear and simple, you don’t need to strain yourself, you can just calmly go with the flow. And as a result, over the years, we have a kind of “cocoon” of a perhaps boring but stable job, family, usual leisure time and a lot of established customs. Stability seems to be a symbol of success; any attack on it causes, at a minimum, panic and resistance. Getting over these feelings is not always easy; not everyone is ready for a new turn in life. Many would rather give up tempting new prospects or experiences than allow themselves to lose that very sense of peace and comfort, while avoiding both potential failures and possible successes.
Fresh wind of stress
According to psychologists, any change is stress to one degree or another. That is why it is so difficult to decide on it. “If the thought of change has occurred to you, it cannot be ignored. When a person is comfortable, the desire to change something, as a rule, does not arise, says psychologist Maxim Ilyin, because it is based on dissatisfaction with the current state of things. Another thing is that by acting spontaneously, on the crest of an emotional wave, we put ourselves in danger. After all, when we make a sharp turn, we not only gain, but also lose.”
“Any change is a loss of the old way of life,” agrees family psychologist Inna Khamitova, “albeit rather boring, but familiar, customary and predictable. Therefore, time must pass from the moment when a shadow of doubt arises as to whether everything is so good in the current situation until the decision is made to “finally break the vicious circle.” Leaving overnight, even from an unloved man, is akin to an abortion. That is, an action that leads to an unviable result. After all, when we break with the past on a wave of emotions, there is a high risk of relapse: attempts to make peace with the person with whom we “broke up so decisively,” or to return to a job that “didn’t suit us at all.” The soul just needs to mature for change.”
Experts have calculated that when overcoming steep turns, our psyche goes through several stages of adaptation:
1. depression, or “pre-grief,” when it becomes clear that the happiness that we once experienced being close to this or that person or coming every day to our favorite job is forever lost. Memories of how good it once was make you sad with the realization that you are no longer allowed into this paradise;
2. aggression and frustration. We try to shift the blame for what happened to external circumstances: “He ruined everything,” “It’s all because of an envious colleague!”;
3. humility. At this moment, the understanding comes that although everything is “wrong” now, life goes on;
4. making and verbalizing the decision. We understand that this is “not our life” anymore, and... we feel ready to accept change.
“Moral relief is impossible without flashbacks, a mental return to a disturbing situation or to a person,” continues Inna Khamitova, “sorrow due to parting with the past, some kind of “mourning reaction” is inevitable, this is a stage of healing of the soul that can and should be passed through.”
According to the expert, the only thing to be wary of is getting stuck, which is very likely at each stage. For example, many fail to overcome the stage of aggression. Remembering what a scoundrel your husband was twenty years after the divorce is the same option.
How quickly we can get used to changes depends on our mental make-up and temperament. When the psyche is rigid (from the Latin rigidus - hard, hard) - the inability and unpreparedness of the individual to rebuild the planned pattern of activity in circumstances when the previously planned program requires significant changes.), adaptation can take years. In this case, it is better to weigh the pros and cons especially thoughtfully.
“It’s much easier to decide to make changes in the area where you feel freer,” says Maxim Ilyin. — A tough professional easily changes jobs; he does not have that social timidity that stops a “mediocre” specialist who does not feel particularly in demand in the market. It’s even easier to decide when you’ve already had a similar experience: starting a family for the first time at forty is much more difficult than leaving your third wife.”
When to change:
1. When life in familiar and in its own comfortable circumstances becomes a betrayal of oneself. You have to endure humiliation and nagging, agree to a role that is unacceptable to you, or do something that contradicts your principles in order to maintain your status, income, or job.
2. When you understand that in a given situation (profession, environment, family) you have no prospects for development and growth. Whether we like it or not, this is a direct path to degradation.
3. When your union has exhausted all its resources and you compromise for the sake of the children. Remember, this only makes things worse for children. First, they adopt a negative relationship model. Secondly, children in such a marriage carry an unbearable burden - a feeling of guilt for your “broken” life.
Changing our life for the better: where to start
This will sound trivial, but it’s worth starting with yourself. This is really difficult, because no one wants to look for the reasons for dissatisfaction within themselves. What are you striving for, what goals are you pursuing and, most importantly, what are you doing to achieve them? Perhaps, in reality, all problems arise because it is much more convenient to talk about them while sitting on your couch with a pained look than to actually take action?
Psychologist Daria Milai
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Motivating yourself is the key to a happy life. It’s not enough to determine what exactly you want to accomplish in the near future. It is also important to note what it is for. Do you want to earn more money so you can buy things as good as your friends? Or change your friends in order to feel comfortable around them, but all this tinsel in the form of expensive smartphones, cars, restaurants is not even your desire?
