You can't change all at once
Everyone wants to change their whole life in one go, here's why that's not a good idea
When your life feels like it is falling apart there is a tendency to want to change the entire thing in one move. We want to immediately go from being Poor, fat and lonely. To Rich, fit and surrounded by friends. And these are noble goals which can be changed. But imagine if some mythical god flew down and said they could change your life instantly into what you imagine to be an ideal life. But you will still be the same person.
Snap.
You look at your bank account, there are more numbers than you’ve ever seen. You lift up your shirt - six-pack abs. Suddenly there's also a plethora of people around you who call you their friend. This is exactly what you imagined the perfect life would be like. But for some reason, you feel unsettled. People are constantly around you and you don’t have the time you used to just sit and think. There is too much stimulation from all these people, so you begin to self-isolate. You don’t answer their phone calls and you spend more time by yourself because it’s comfortable and not what you’re used to. You think you no longer have to work because of the big number in your bank account so you quit your job. You buy a nice house and a beautiful car. You go out for expensive meals every day picking up the check for anyone around you. That number in your account gets a little smaller day by day. But it doesn’t matter, there's still plenty there. You realise you have to work out to maintain this sick body you’ve got, but you don’t like working out, it kinda hurts. So you don’t worry about it for now. “I already had abs, it's probably not that difficult to get them back again” - Things seem okay for a while, but slowly over time you stop contacting all these friends cause you don’t know them very well. Your bank account continues to shrink at a rate you aren’t comfortable with. But you don’t know how to make money, you never did. It just happened to be there. But the fastest thing to fade is your body. You try to hire personal trainers to motivate you to maintain your physique, but you don’t actually care. You can't be bothered to actually put in the effort. So you just progressively get out of shape, eating junk food and feeling worse and worse about yourself. Eventually, after some time, your bank account has run dry, you're out of shape and unhappy again and you’ve lost all your friends cause you didn’t know how to keep in touch with them. You are no better off than when you started.
Let’s contrast this with a more realistic method of self-improvement. No magic, no helping hand just dedication. Your first goal is to get a better body because this will help with your confidence. So instead of going to the gym and trying to blast through years of bad habits in a single four-hour session which will leave you crying in pain from the muscle soreness the next day. And make you completely give up. You instead spend 15 minutes going through a basic bodyweight program. Every day for 2 weeks you keep doing it, without fail. There’s a slight improvement in your body, but not enough that people notice just yet, but most importantly you realise you are capable of showing up every day and keeping promises to yourself, this gives you a boost in confidence. And you think it’s time to get a gym membership because you know you will stick with it. You sign up for your local gym and start going every day, but you do not force yourself to be there for more than half an hour. So if you’re not feeling it you can leave, but you make yourself at least go there every day. Most days you end up training longer anyway and you start to enjoy the development you’re going through and your body starts to show noticeable changes. You become a regular and start to notice other regulars over time. You acknowledge each other and eventually begin chatting until you start to build up a rapport. You guys now share similar values and morals and are on the same path for goals. These people that you met at the gym begin to be the people you hang out with outside of the gym. And suddenly have friends. That solves the problem of not having friends if that is what you struggled with in the first place. But if you had some friends who you fell out of touch with, you could start a conversation over text and eventually meet up with them maybe once a week and slowly redevelop your reputation with them. But through meeting all of these new people and building and developing new relationships you could build a network of people who suggest jobs for you to potentially go to, or learn about gaps in the market. Using the discipline you learnt from training every day you can dedicate a certain amount of time to upskill yourself and start your own business. Learning how to make money effectively on your own, selling, creating a brand and marketing yourself. You learn the skills which make money, and the money that flows into your bank account is something you appreciate because you put the time into learning how to make it and worked hard. And if your bank account drops you know how to fill it up again.
The problem with everything changing in your life immediately is the disconnect it creates. There is comfort in the familiar and huge amounts of change are far from familiar. Humans are creatures of habit and if one's life suddenly drastically changes it can be incredibly jarring. Your entire calendar changes, your habits become completely different, and you can no longer do what you were used to doing in your previous life. Spending all day on TikTok and Netflix is no longer an option if you’re busy with other things. But that is what you are used to so you crave it deeply. It doesn’t bring you happiness but it brings you comfort. People usually want the positive outcomes of good habits and a different lifestyle without putting in the work without realising that true fulfilment comes from the effort you put in and not the final result. So when you base your ideal life on outcomes instead of gradual inputs you just end up resorting back to what you’re used to.
An example of this would be accelerating in a car. The fun is getting up to 100mph, but once you’re there it's quite boring. No one thinks it’s fun speeding down the highway, but accelerating at a green light is great. On top of this, if you instantly went from 0-120km/h it would literally kill you. So the best method is to progressively work your way up to speed.
This is often the problem with new years resolutions and why they don’t stick. People are far too aspirational to the point where the version of themselves they are trying to create in the new year clashes completely with their sense of identity, and their ego. And therefore it cannot be maintained. Instead, gradual changes are the best way to actually change yourself without completely destroying your sense of self which is not something we can do very easily. If you say in this new year I’m going to be completely sober but your main way to socialise is by going to a bar with your friends, you’ll quickly realise that the negative thing in your life (Drinking) that you want to change was associated with a positive thing (spending time with friends) You won’t be able to maintain the promise you made to yourself.
So the most ideal way to become the best version of yourself is not to pull a complete 180 and try to change every aspect of your life you dont like because your subconscious mind will reject the unfamiliar. You can’t go from sitting around all day to working out, working hard and changing everything. You need to slowly introduce new things until your mind has adapted to the new lifestyle. This means that when you have those bursts of motivation to train for two hours, dont do it because it creates an unmaintainable standard that you expect to meet every time. Rather go to the gym and spend 15 minutes just moving. That way you're not creating an unrealistic expectation in your mind for what working out is. And on the days when you dont have that motivation driving you. It won’t seem like such a hassle to go and spend 15 minutes in the gym. The same applies to anything. Want to start reading more? Read a page. Not 6 chapters, and then slowly build up your tolerance so you don’t send your subconscious into a state of shock.
There is a notable exception to this, where you can change your life completely in a single blow. But it is either out of your control or completely reckless if you do it. And that is having change thrust upon you. This can go both ways and you could end up spiralling into a self-destructive pattern instead of improving and becoming the best version of yourself. But self-destruction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s something which allows you to re-lay the foundations of yourself.
So what am I talking about? Well, it's essentially going through trauma. This can be done in multiple ways. The death of a loved one, a huge breakup, a big move to a new city. Any of these things rock you to your core and change the very fabric with which you operate. Generally, these throw you into a new life without you asking for it. And you are often left with little choice but to adapt. Now why it is dangerous in these situations, Specifically, break ups and death our minds go into grief mode, and the subconscious almost entirely takes over in order to protect us. So if we do not get a grasp on it. The pattern of behaviour will adapt into one which forces you to try and numb the pain rather than deal with it, which can be massively self-destructive.
But if you look at when people, specifically men have their biggest “Glow-ups” maybe physically, or in their career or when they repair personal relationships. It’s usually after a breakup. Death doesn’t have the same effect because it usually isn’t our fault and there is very little way to blame ourselves. But breakups cause us to look at ourselves and find any shortcomings we may have and where we are forced to change.
This is recently what happened to me after I got blindsided by a breakup which ended a relationship of over 4 years which I thought was going well. My entire sense of identity was destroyed, and I had to reevaluate every position in my life. Was I behaving the way I wanted to? No. Did I have the relationships that I wanted with people in my life? No. Were my actions conducive to the person I wanted to be? Not at all. For a while, I felt trapped in place. I wanted to change but I could not. This is normal. I would freeze with every action I took to try and improve and change my life and nothing worked. I had to take time to process what had happened. This is important. I think people misunderstand and try to change the wrong aspect of themselves first. Most people will self isolate and try to work harder. That is not the best move. For me, the best thing I did was start to go out more. I met new people made new friends and just socialised a bunch. This wasn’t healthy in many people's minds. My diet got messed up, my sleep schedule was erratic and unhealthy and I got a bit of anxiety. But what was valuable about it is it showed me that I was a likeable person when I felt completely unloveable. When I thought it was impossible for people to ever want to be around me. I met new people and had them wanting to spend time with me and I remembered who I was. And it wasn’t just in party environments, it was at trivia nights, social gatherings, and dinners. This was enough to get me going again on working on other aspects of my life. But it was in chasing self-destruction for a period that I managed to begin rebuilding myself. I clearly have some way to go but that’s what this is. I want to work on becoming better hopefully if there’s anyone else out there who needs it also. Let's get better together.
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