Are you fed up, or are you dealing with something difficult in your life and you don’t know what to do? Is it time to finally make a real and substantial life change? This can be scary, but there are times when you really do have to take the leap. If you feel the need to shake things up but you aren’t sure where to begin, you’ll get a few ideas below.
Take a Trip
Many people find travel life changing, and there are so many different ways to approach it. Sometimes you just need a little down time, and there’s nothing wrong with taking your usual beach vacation and spending a few days lying in the sun. However, something more ambitious can truly make a difference in the way that you see the world. Going and spending some time in another country, immersing yourself in a different culture, can open your eyes to the many different ways that people live and think. You can combine travel with cooking, language classes, or volunteer work to help you become more immersed. If you can get a sabbatical from work or save up some money, you could travel for a few weeks or months.
Domestic travel can have an effect as well. You’ll have a different view of your own country once you have gone on a long road trip, experiencing the various regions and getting a visceral sense of its size. It’s very different from flying from one city to another or across the country. Your first steps if you’re thinking about traveling more might be to read some books or watch some TV shows or online videos about trips others have taken. There are also travel blogs and social media groups for travelers that can help you decide where to go and what to do.
Change Your Career
A career change is one of the biggest and scariest steps you can take. Many people identify strongly with their career, and it’s hard to imagine doing anything else even if they don’t particularly like their job. There’s also a lot of uncertainty around it. What if you don’t find another job? What if you start doing something else but you don’t like it? For some, their job is also an important part of their social life and community, and they may be worried–sometimes rightfully–that they will lose that if they move on.
However, there is community elsewhere, and career changes are far more common than they were for previous generations. Technology means that entire career fields are being created that didn’t even exist a few years earlier. No one knew what a social media marketer was 20 years ago. People also change fields because they become disillusioned in the one they are in, or they are just looking for a new challenge. They may want to make more money, or they might want a job that helps people. If you’re considering looking for a new career, start by researching fields that interest you, creating a resume suited to your next venture, then consider talking to a career counselor or a life coach.
Remodel Your Home
Maybe a home remodel isn’t exactly the first thing that comes to your mind when you think life changing, but there are a number of ways this can in fact be the case. One of the biggest ways a remodel can change your life is if you need to make your home more accessible. Remodeling can mean you are able to stay in your home instead of having to leave. If you have mobility issues, you might assume that you will have to move if you live in a house with multiple stories. One option is to install a home elevator. As you will see when you review the options at Stiltzlifts.com, a home elevator can be easily integrated into most types of homes, and having one can mean retaining your independence. You can make other accessibility adjustments as well, such as widening doorways, lowering kitchen counters, and redoing flooring so that your wheelchair can move about on it easily.
However, there are other ways that a home renovation can change your life as well. Adding a painting studio or a home gym can mean that you are finally truly committing to something that you love and that you value yourself enough to spend money on it. If you have always longed to be able to host regular dinner parties or out-of-town guests, remodeling your kitchen and dining room in the former case, and adding a bedroom in the latter can make that possible, greatly increasing your quality of life. If you’re thinking about a remodel, start by looking for ideas in books and magazines and online. You can keep files of home design that interests you and work from there.
Change Yourself
It’s one thing to change things in your external environment, but what about working on yourself? Sometimes, this can be the most powerful thing that you do, and how you go about it successfully flies in the face of a lot of conventional wisdom. You’ve probably read and heard about how to set goals. Goal setting is important, but it’s not the whole story. What is actually even more important is thinking in terms of habits. You can develop goals on paper using various methods all day long, but what will really get you where you want to go is changing what you do every hour of every day.
If your goal is to learn a language, the only way to do that is to set aside regular time to learn and practice. It’s setting a new habit of putting in those minutes each day that will allow you to reach that goal. On the other hand, maybe you need to change how you react to things in your life. Ultimately, this is really the only thing that you have any control over, and accepting this and practicing it can lead to radical shifts in how situations play out for you.
