A Few Words That Will Change Your Life

Have you ever come across anyone who is 100% happy with their lot in life to the extent that they don’t want to change a single thing. Of course, there’s loads of surveys and research that confirm that most people express unhappiness in their work, their money situation, their weight problem, their fitness or the quality of their personal lives – or every single one of the above!! Basically, normal people are normally dissatisfied. Little wonder that most people find my self help website by Googling Change Your Life.

But it’s not that easy to change your life – is it? Because most of us, whilst being dissatisfied are also afraid of change. So, if this sounds like you, you’re kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place! The problem is, first of all, that people are afraid of the unknown – even if it’s the great unknown that they dream of! And, through painful experience, they also know that, when they’ve attempted major changes in the past, they’ve failed to stick to their guns.

I’m sitting writing this post on February 15th – and by now, research confirms, over 90% of people will have given up on their New Year’s Resolutions! And there’s just so many studies that prove just how hard we normal people find it to change. Did you know, for example, that the average membership of a gym is three months – and in those three months the average new recruit visits, on average twice! Not going to get fit that way!

Now, I haven’t set out to make you even more disillusioned or to tell you that you cannot change your life. I make my living from helping my clients change their lives. They all ask me how I took such a huge risk when I moved from my native Ireland – with my wife and three teenage children – to the French Alps. They always get the same response – it was the obvious move to make because so many small things had changed in the lead up to what other people perceive as a major change. It wasn’t, it was simply the logical next step.

You see, you change your life by changing little things. That way, your fearful mind – and the normal mind simply loves things to stay the way they were when you were a child – becomes familiar with change. Little by little you completely deconstruct all the things that you want to change about your life and you become so used to change that the things that you want to happen simply happen as that logical next step.

OK, that sounds all very well but how will you start? Start really small – like eat something different for breakfast this morning – or actually have breakfast! Take a different train or bus. Talk to a stranger. Swap the knife and fork in your hands at your next meal. Mix it up – because your mind’s mixed up already – and out of that mix up will come the clarity of purpose you’ve always been looking for.

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Only You Can Change Your Life

It’s within your power change your life – and only you can do it. It’s not important what’s taking place day to day, what obstacles you meet in life, what problems you think you have. All the ups and downs of life are simply that – everything that goes up must come down and vice versa. And all our highs and lows pass – one way or another. There is but one constant in life. And that is who we can be – not who we think we are, which is an entirely different and misconceived thing altogether.

But the average mind doesn’t know who they really are or the heights to which they could rise. And if I told you to focus your mind, you wouldn’t know how. The average mind is weighed down by its own destructive thoughts and the synchronized thoughts of herd-like behaviour. But even the whole herd can break free – look at how normal people in countries with oppressive regimes like Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt are rewriting the political map of the Middle East. Again, remember the way ordinary people dismantled the Berlin Wall. If the apparently immovable objects of entrenched regimes can collapse so easily, then how much more easy can it be for your own misconceptions about yourself and about your life to evaporate into thin air.

After all, the only place that your misconceptions about your capabilities and the type of life you could have are in your own mind. Sure, they appear to be real enough, they may create concrete results, for the worse, in your everyday life – but they are, nevertheless, the creation of your own conditioned mind. Psychology confirms that we are conditioned during our childhood by the people and events that make the biggest impression upon us. It is a psychological fact that you and I are predisposed to thinking the worst about ourselves. All this conditioning or programming, which swirls in our subconscious, creates our behaviour, how we react and, consequently, what others think of us, do for us or to us. Our thoughts create our lives.

With that in mind, isn’t it obvious that, if you could change your thoughts, you would change your life? The whole structure of your apparent life would collapse as surely and convincingly as the Berlin Wall. And a new life would begin. But – and it’s a big but – it’s not as easy as it sounds. The Berlin Wall was only sitting on concrete foundations – the foundations of your life are far more subtly set in your subconscious. So, rather than trying to dismantle the web of thoughts that ties you down, it is far better, far more effective, if you simply ignore their unreality by tuning your focus to real reality – the reality of the present moment.

Freedom from all your fears, doubts and worries is discovered by focusing your mind on what you are truly seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting in the present moment. Understand that, learn how to do it and your life will changed beyond all recognition.

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Create Time to Change Your Life

When I decided to change my life a little over 5 years ago, I had a very common problem: I didn’t have the time.

I wanted to exercise and find time for my family and eat healthier (instead of the fast-food junk I’d been eating) and read more and write and be more productive and increase my income.

Unfortunately there are only 24 hours in a day, and we sleep for about 8 of them. Subtract the hours we spend eating (3), showering and dressing and fixing up (1), cleaning and running errands (1), driving (2), working (8) … and you’re left with an hour or two at most. Often less.

Eventually I figured out how to do all the things I wanted to do. I’ve achieved all of that and more, and in fact I have more leisure time now than ever. But first I had to figure out the fundamental problem: how could I find the time to change my life?

I know many of you face the same problem — you’ve told me as much. So I thought I’d share some of what I did in the beginning, in hopes that it’ll help.

You must make a commitment. You have to decide that you really want to make a change, and that it’s more important than almost anything else.

For me, only my family was more important — and in fact I was making these change for my family as well as for myself. So these changes I was making were really my top priority in life.

It has to be that urgent for you. Think of this not as “improving your life” but saving it. The changes I made saved my life — I am so much healthier, my marriage is better, my relationships with my kids have improved, I am happier rather than depressed.

If you don’t feel you’re saving your life then you won’t make the tough changes needed.

Once I made the mental commitment, I took small steps to give myself a little wiggle room to breathe and move:

Cut out TV. I watched less TV than ever before (eventually I watched none, though now I watch a few shows a week over the Internet). For many people this one change will free up a couple hours or more.Read less junk. I used to read a lot of things on the Internet that were just entertainment. Same with magazines. I cut that stuff out early so I could focus on what was more important.Go out less. I used to go to a lot of movies and to dinner and drinking. I cut that out (mostly) for awhile, to make time.Wake earlier. Not everyone is going to do this but it was a good step for me. I found that I had more time exercising and working in the morning before anyone woke up — the world was quiet and at peace and without interruptions. (Read more.)

In general, find the things that eat up your time that are less important than the changes you want to make. That’s almost everything except the things you need to live — work and eating and stuff like that. Cut back on them where you can.

I had a lot of commitments in my life — I coached soccer, was on the PTA board, served on a lot of committees at work, had social commitments as well, worked on a number of projects.

Slowly I cut them out. They seemed important but in truth none of them were as important as the life I wanted to create, the changes I wanted to make. Lots of things are important — but which are the absolute most important? Make a decision.

If you are having trouble making a decision, try an experiment. Cut out a commitment just for a little while. See whether you suffer from cutting it out, or whether you like the extra time.

If you’re worried about offending people, don’t. Send an email or make a phone call and explain that you’d love to keep doing the commitment but you just don’t have the time and don’t want to half-ass it. The person might try to talk you into staying but be firm — respect yourself and your time and the changes you’re trying to make.

Here’s a secret: the people and organizations you’ve been helping or working with will live. They will go on doing what they were doing without you, and (omg!) they will survive without you. Your departure will not cause the world to collapse. Let go of the guilt.

Eventually I made many other changes, including:

Making bills and savings and debt payments automatic. I set everything up online so that I wouldn’t have to run errands or spend time making payments. This put my debt reduction on automatic, and I got out of debt. (Read more.)Streamlining errands. I tried to cut as many errands out of my life as possible. Often that meant changing my life in some way but I adjusted and things became simpler. I cleaned as I went so I didn’t have a lot of cleaning to do on weekends. I did the few errands I had all at once to save running around.Work less. I would set limits to how much I could work, forcing myself to pick the important tasks and to get those tasks done on time. I learned which tasks needed to be done and which could be dropped. I became much more effective and worked less.Say no. When people asked me to do stuff that was important to them but not to me, I learned to politely decline. Instead I focused on what was important to me.

Slowly I learned to simplify. I simplified my daily routines, my work, my social life, my possessions, my chores, my wardrobe. It took time but it has been more than worth the effort: life is so much better now that I’ve created the time to do what I want to do.

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Read more about focus and getting great things done
in Leo’s book, focus.

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Change Your Thermostat

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Several years ago, I was sitting in my office in Los Angeles, one day, and two barefooted women walked in. Their feet were dirty, and I can assure you, it is not normal for women to walk around downtown Los Angeles without shoes. Both of the women had scabs on their face and were in their late 20s or early 30s. They were dressed like prostitutes and they both looked quite frightening, their eyes glassy and hair unkempt. They did not smell good. All it took was one look to see that the women had been living on the streets, using drugs, and almost certainly selling their bodies. They looked like the lowest form of streetwalker imaginable. There is no gentle way to say it.

I actually recognized one of the women. She had formerly been a candidate of mine. She had taught at Harvard Law School after graduating from there, and I had placed her at one of the best law firms in Los Angeles. She had worked at the law firm for less than a year and then, under mysterious circumstances, she had left the law firm suddenly. In addition, she had been in the process of divorcing her husband and had had her new Mercedes repossessed a few months previously. I had been following this woman’s case with some interest, because her husband had called me several times, looking for her. Imagine: He was so desperate and out of touch with his wife that he even called her former legal recruiter. Now here the woman was living on the street and doing god-knows-what to earn money. She and the woman she was traveling with looked absolutely horrifying. Seeing them sitting in my office was almost epic, and made for a highly unusual day, to say the least.

When the two women took a seat in my office, I did not balk. I simply acted as if everything was perfectly normal. They started telling me that they wanted me to open a checking account for them in the name of a company. They had found a check on the street made out to the company and wanted to cash it, but the banks refused to.

“You can figure out how to get a checking account opened in the company’s name,” they suggested. Without seeming too alarmed, I let them know that this was a felony and that I would go to prison if I were to do this. Since one of the girls had gone to Harvard Law School, she started telling me that she had investigated the matter and there was nothing illegal about it. The entire meeting was so bizarre that it left me in a bit of a haze, but I will give you a little more background as to why.

A little over a year prior to this encounter, I had met the girl from Harvard Law School for lunch at one of the nicest restaurants in downtown. I had made sure to choose a great restaurant because the young attorney was an incredible candidate. She was a former model, and had shown up looking absolutely exquisite, in a very nice suit. She was personable and extremely professional–exactly what you would expect from a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, who also taught there. As we ate our lunch, I began to get the sense that this young woman had “had a lot of fun” when she was younger. There was just something a little “hard” about her face. I do not how to describe it, but I got the sense that beneath her extremely polished exterior was a young lady who had been around the block more than once. I asked her about her upbringing.

She told me that from the age of 15 until she was around 20 or so she had lived a crazy life. She had used a lot of cocaine and had been part of a scene wherein she and other models had traveled around doing a ton of drugs, and she implied that they had slept with a lot of men. She told me she had not even started going to college until she was around 20 and had gotten off cocaine. As a college student, she soon after had led an organization to help young girls get off drugs. She told me that she had gotten good grades (but not great) in the small, unknown college she had attended, and that she had done horribly on the Law School Admissions Test. She told me she believed that she had been admitted to Harvard Law School in large part due to everything she had done to help girls rehabilitate themselves from being addicts. I was shocked by what I was hearing because this woman was one of the best candidates I had ever seen.

A few weeks prior to the girl walking into my office with her friend in bare feet, I had received a telephone call from a graphic designer that she had referred to me to do some work for one of our companies. I had hired him and he was a really nice guy. He gave me an update on his attorney friend, which set me completely aback:

“She started using crystal meth at the law firm. She is totally out of control,” he told me. “I think she got arrogant and did not think she needed to keep her drug use under control once she got the Mercedes and started making all that money. She seems to think she is invincible. She has come so far from when she had been, a once cocaine addict, and she now seems to believe that she can do whatever she wants.”

I could not believe that the same girl I had seen earlier was now hooked on crystal meth and had put what should have been an incredible legal career on hold in order to join skid row in Los Angeles, as a drug addict. This story has haunted me for years, and I have tried for the longest time to make sense of it.

Now, six or seven years later, I feel as if I understand the situation more: This woman could not handle success. She wanted to reset her thermostat in order to be exactly the sort of person she had been before she had improved her life.

One of my favorite things in the world is finding very talented people who are unemployed and not making the money they should, or who do not have the opportunities they should, and offering them the chance to improve their lives. You would be surprised, however, how often people simply are not ready for a change–even for the better. When the opportunity presents itself to many people to change their life in a positive or negative manner, they are simply not ready to accept all the responsibilities that come with the change. Usually, when confronted with an incredible opportunity for a better life, most people sabotage it, or find reasons it will not work.

I want to tell you about someone I offered a job recently; however, before I tell you this story, I am going to tell you a quick story that I think you will learn something from.

When I was in college, I had a girlfriend who was always having severe money problems. She would get money and quickly spend it, and would then need more money a short time later. One day, I told her if she never had any money, she should apply for some student loans. She got student loans, including checks for several thousands of dollars to live off for the semester. A short time later she was out of money again, having blown it all on hairdos, massages, expensive clothes, and other things. She spent so much money that she could barely afford to eat. To this day, the woman has been living in this pattern for years: She will get money, spend it all, and then have to beg for more money. She can never be content with whatever amount of money she has, because she will always surely spend it. Her situation is chronic because her thermostat is set to not having any money.

Here is what I mean when I say the word ‘thermostat’: People are comfortable being a certain thing. They lose weight and then quickly regain it. They get a bunch of money and spend it all right away. People get off drugs and turn their lives around, becoming incredibly successful attorneys–and then get back on drugs and ruin their lives a few years later. This is how people are. They will put themselves back at the level to which they are most accustomed, because they have set their internal thermostat there.

Your challenge in your life is to get your thermostat to the level you want it–and to keep it there. Do not allow your thermostat to change on you. This is how our internal thermostats work: when we change the temperature, our thermostats want to go back to where they were set before.

For example, if you were to start exercising every morning at 6:00 a.m., your mind and body would initially tell you that this is the wrong time to be exercising. Your mind and body would push you the first day, the first week, and the first several weeks to look for reasons and excuses why you should not need to rise up every day at 6:00 a.m. to exercise. It might take you months, or years, before your body and your mind would get used to the idea of getting up every day this early to exercise. Your internal thermostat would, however, eventually adjust so that exercising every single day would become the norm to which you are accustomed. A fascinating article, “Still Running After All These Years,” ran in the Wall Street Journal in November of 2008, about people who have been running every day for 30+ years:

Last month, my dad celebrated the 30th anniversary of his running streak.

In other words, he has run every day for 10,987 consecutive days. The last time he took a pass –he was feeling a bit sore after a marathon–was Oct. 30, 1978.

Obsessive doesn’t begin to describe it.

Harvey Simon has run every day for the last 30 years. As of Halloween, he had run for 10,958 consecutive days. His daughter, [Stephanie Simon], details her dad’s incredible streak and the life lessons she’s gleaned from it. (Nov. 27)

When he travels overseas, my dad, who is 66, plans layovers so he can get in a couple miles around the concourse, lest he miss a day to the time-zone shift. During blizzards, he wraps his feet in plastic bags, pulls galoshes over his sneakers and screws in cleats for traction. Then he waits for a snowplow to pass his front door, so he can follow in the freshly cleared path.

My father, Dr. Harvey B. Simon, practices internal medicine in Boston and teaches at Harvard Medical School. Rationally, he knows that running 10 miles a day, every day, for three decades is not great for his ever-more-creaky body. He’d never advise his patients to do it. In fact, he’s written several health and fitness books stressing the virtue of moderation in exercise. And yet….

He’s run with broken toes and the flu and a nasty infected heel and near-crippling back spasms. He goes out before dawn in every kind of weather; he’s become such a fixture in the neighborhood that a couple times when a freak thunderstorm has rolled in, strangers have driven out to find him. They didn’t know his name. They just knew he’d be out there, plodding away, and figured he might appreciate a ride home.

The ability to go running every day is an example of someone resetting his thermostat to accomplish a goal, and then sticking with it. So too are achieving goals of losing weight, accepting nothing but the best for yourself, managing your money, and staying off drugs. If you are going to accomplish anything, you need to reset your thermostat. Only then will you start to realize all the possibilities in your life.

In the course of doing business, I recently met a woman who started telling me how rough her life was:

She complained about not having health insurance for her and her family.She told me about how her husband has been unemployed for the longest time.She complained to me about how she had personally been underemployed, and had not made very much money over the past year.She talked about how she and her husband could not afford a house, how they had to live in a bad neighborhood.She told me about how with the downturn in the economy, making money had become extremely difficult, and that she and her husband were lucky to make a couple of thousand dollars a month between them.

Over the course of a few business meetings, I got to know this woman fairly well, and found her to be very intelligent, quick on her feet, and knowledgeable–someone who would do very well in a full-time job working for our companies. The problem, I learned in my discussions with her and after some probing, was that, although she was in her mid-30s, she had spent her entire career in sales-type jobs, working as an independent contractor. She had never really worked at a job that required her to stay still behind a desk. Instead, she was used to always running around.

“Have you ever held a full-time job?” I asked her.

She told me about how she had once worked somewhere for a grand total of nine months, several years ago. I sat her down for an hour and started asking her all sorts of questions about her situation, and I determined after some time that I might have a job for her. The job would pay a salary (much more than the piecemeal wages she had been making at the time); it would give her and her family health insurance and the stability she currently lacked.

“My children have not been to the doctor in over a year because we cannot afford it,” she told me.

The only catch was that she would have to do a lot of the work she was currently doing on the phone, rather than in person. To me it seemed like a no-brainer.

As I discussed the prospect of an offer with her, however, I could see that she was finding reasons why it would not work. These were not reasons about why she could not do the job, mind you, but stupid reasons relating to commuting, and other excuses. The more I spoke to this woman, the more I realized that her thermostat was set to be someone who was constantly wandering around, who could never sit still. The life she had been living without health insurance, steady money, and so forth was something that she was so used to, that she would, it seemed, reset her internal thermostat to get back to this place–even if she landed a steady job.

In order to really achieve your goals, one of the most important things you can do is push through your self-imposed limits as to what is possible. The ability to push through these self-imposed limits is something that can benefit you in incredible ways. Most of us have set our lives to operate at a certain level and within certain limits. We have a comfort zone, which is regulated just as strongly as our body temperature, and it is difficult for us to change the internal thermostat.

The chances are great when you have set a certain thermostat based on what you believe you can, or deserve to achieve. You gauge when you are improving, or doing better in your life, and sometimes you may tend to push your thermostat back to where it was before. You need to discipline yourself in order to reach a new level of success, and to this end, the first step is to change your thermostat, leaving it at a level that pushes you to the very heights of what you are capable of.

Agree? Disagree? I don’t care, please tell me what you think by commenting below. I give free stuff away every week to the most thoughtful commenters on my site!

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Related posts: Never Overlook the ObviousBeing Against Something — and Your Job SearchChange Your ReactionsGetting Referrals from Powerful People (We All Know Someone)Production Assistants–and Assessing Your Employer’s NeedsWhy You Must Change–and How to Overcome Resistance to ChangeSummary In this article Harrison discusses how change is one of the most important factors in the lives of people – it leads to progress and growth. You should not reasons that it will not work. Come out of your comfort zones and challenge yourself to get the thermostat to the level you want it and to keep it there. In order to really achieve your goals, one of the most important things you can do is push through your self-imposed limits as to what is possible. Push through your self-imposed limits and change or reset your thermostat for the betterment of your life and career. You need to discipline yourself in order to reach a new level of success, and to this end, the first step is to change your thermostat, leaving it at a level that pushes you to the very heights of what you are capable of.

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How to Change Your Life EASILY: One Little Thing at a Time (Video)

Let’s face it, change is inevitable. The good changes. The bad changes. The really ugly changes.

Historically speaking,  ALL change has given humans  the opportunity to adapt and evolve  -  over tens of thousands of years  -  into who we are today. Sometimes the smallest, seemingly most insignificant changes have enabled humans to eventually make giant evolutionary leaps.

On both a collective and individual level, we create the change necessary to achieve our dreams. Yet even when change is desireable, we find that change is not always easy. . . .

Most people fail to achieve their dreams because their dreams are TOO BIG. Deciding to lose 50 pounds. Getting a college degree.  Owning a successful business. Those are all pretty tall orders.  Just thinking about the enormity of those big dreams can cause some people to psych themselves out. They see the entire mile of road stretched out in front of them. Their dream seems too far away, too distant to achieve. They become daunted and disheartened and give up before they start. Supersizing your dreams can have the unintended effect of preventing desireable change.

Remember when you were young and just learning to ride a bicycle? You weren’t popping wheelies the first day! You probably started out riding a little red tricycle. Then, when you got your first Big Kid bike, you rode around with training wheels for a few months. After the training wheels came off, dad steadied your bike until you learned to balance on your own. Little by little, you gained the confidence and the skills to perform fancy tricks – like riding with no hands . . . .  Okay, maybe not. The point is, you eventually achieved your goal by taking small steps and practicing every day. The same principle you used as a child applies to achieving your dreams today. Take baby steps. Small, achievable steps in the direction of your dream are easy to make. For example, instead of telling yourself that you have to lose 50 pounds, begin your commitment to a healthy lifestyle by adding a salad before every meal. Take a single night class to start working toward your college degree. Get to know the business you want to eventually own by starting in an entry-level position and working your way up. Doing one little thing at a time can turn that Mount Everest into a bunny slope. The Bonus: when you succeed at small things, your confidence builds, making it even EASIER to change your life!

The only way to make these little changes stick is to rewire your brain. You need to untrain your brain from its old habits, and retrain your brain for change.  But remember, old habits die hard! The best method for rewiring your brain is to practice, practice, practice. Practice your little step in the direction of your dream every single day for 30 days. This is how long it takes for changes to become wired into your brain. And you have to be disciplined. The 30 days have to be consecutive. No Fair Cheating! If you skip a day, you short-circuit your attempts at rewiring your brain. Be patient with yourself and with the process. You can make a decision at the end of the 30 days whether to commit to this change, if you believe the change has been positive. Finally, try this Experiment:  Make one small positive change that brings you closer to your goal every 30 days. Do this for one year. At the end of the year, look back and see how much your life has changed for the better!

What one little thing are you going to change? Let us know!

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