31 Ways I Completely Changed My Life and Started Over at 38.
On giving myself a second chance. I am worth it.
In 2014 I was 38 years old and decided to change my whole life. Finally, I decided that I had had enough. I said to myself, f**k this. One woman's anger and frustration were about to boil over. But I had a choice boil over or turn over a new leaf. It was time to transition, embrace change and thrive.
The decision was all mine.
What was the first step?
Making a conscious choice to change and holding myself accountable for the outcome. If you don't like what you are experiencing, you must change your responses and environment. It has been one incredible personal and professional growth journey, self-preservation and learning.
Some of which I am going to share with you today.
But first, you must acknowledge the process of change may mean you have to:
Change what you daydream about.
Change your habits.
Change what you read.
Change your friends.
Change how you talk to yourself and others.
Change your job.
Change your family.
Change your negative thoughts to positive ones.
Are you ready?
Here are 31 ways I completely changed my life and some valuable life lessons I learned.
1. Cultivate Your Circle
I went through all my friends in life and online and asked myself this:
Are they bringing me down or lifting me up?
I gather you would guess what I did next if they were the latter. Unfortunately, people can contaminate our way of thinking if we let them. Avoid getting pulled into downward spirals of negativity. Replace people who suck your life out of you with those who fuel your soul. It is okay to unfollow people in real life too. You'll make new friends even when friends from the past fade away. Life goes on.
2. Shout Out Your Strengths To Build Your Confidence Muscle
Don't be shy. Having worked with successful people in the past year, they all share one thing. They credit their success. There is nothing wrong with that. I gave myself credit for my strength and success, something I had never done. I banked it all and withdrew it to reveal a more confident, capable, empowered woman. I kept doing what I was afraid to do and said "yes" to myself and my new definition of success. Do it, and you'll feel wiser and more confident. Your past success and strength will empower you at this stage of your life. Recall them regularly.
3. Develop A Greater Appreciation For Family
Be present and stay connected with loved ones. It was all work and no play in my twenties and early thirties. For years I sacrificed precious time with my family. I lost my health and my happiness to make gains for others. As a result, I got very little return on my investment. My mother's sudden passing in 2010 profoundly impacted my life. I never got to say goodbye or tell her how much I loved her. It is a daily reminder to be present and always tell the people I love how much I love them.
4. Pay Attention To The Present Moment
If my point above resonated with you, you would acknowledge it is precious and all you have.
5. Let Go Of The Fear Of Judgement From Others
Start thinking and doing what you want, and stop caring so much about what other people think. Most of us worry about too many people and things that don't deserve our attention. It diminishes our sense of self-worth and causes us to second-guess ourselves. You give away your power and shape your life to reflect others' opinions and expectations. You know what I say…
There is a better way to live.
6. Keep Learning
Broaden your perspective and open your mind further. Knowledge is power, and to use it in a way that helps others is even more empowering. Read more books, and listen to podcasts and audiobooks regularly.
“Once you stop learning you start dying.” ― Albert Einstein
7. Sleep More
Go to bed earlier. Even 20 minutes earlier each night. It can have a significant impact on your emotional and physical well-being.
8. Set Clear Personal and Professional Boundaries
Boundaries are physical barrier and energy field that protects us so we can do our best work. In the past two years, I have learned more about the importance of boundaries than in my adult life. I understand what I'm prepared to tolerate from myself and others personally and professionally. In the past, I used to keep adjusting my boundaries to fit each relationship. Now I know boundaries are about your relationship with yourself and your values. They maintain your emotional well-being and personal integrity.
9. Let Go Of Self-Doubt
Learn to understand that self-doubt is a bad habit. It is habitual behaviour. When repeated repeatedly, a thought process becomes fixed in our mindsets. We then start to believe it as our truth without any evidence to back it up. Instead, ask yourself what evidence you have got to support your brilliance. I bet you have lots.
Doubt your doubts before you doubt yourself.
10. Eat For Emotional And Physical Health
Train your mind to respect your body. Become more mindful of your nutrition and lifestyle habits. Acknowledge how your emotions affect your food choices and long-term health and well-being. I gained five stone in weight because I used food to relieve stress. I tried to support my emotions and numb them with unhealthy foods. My lack of self-awareness and inability to deal with feelings led me to overreact to situations in my life. I became an emotional eater. I developed a chronic illness and buried my head in the sand until I reached my turning point. Get sicker and stay stuck, or heal my health and move forward.
11. Make Up Your Mind
Make your mind up about what you want in life. If you don't, I will tell you what can happen otherwise.
1. People choose for us
2. People force us to choose.
3. People move on.
4. Life goes on without us.
12. Learn To Act
“Act your way into a feeling rather than feel your way into an action.”
The more we act on what makes us feel good, the more we become focused on the benefit of the result it gives us. We then automate the action by choice. From my experience, this removes the negative emotions of "I can't do this", "I don't have the time", "It's too hard", etc.
Have you noticed it's easier to act your way into a feeling than to feel your way into an action?
13. Think of Your Goals As Your Legacy?
Have you ever thought of goals as part of your legacy?
The last thing you want to do is to die with your story left untold.
You need to live your story. What will be your legacy?
What steps would it take to create your legacy?
14. Learn To Rest
Learn to rest when you get tired and not quit. Rest is a form of self-love and helps us refill our cups to serve from our overflow.
15. Find An Outlet To Combat Stress
One that helps you to avoid internalizing your emotions. Walk, talk, lift weights, read, scribble, paint or craft whatever you must to get it out of your head and prevent it from manifesting in your body. Just do it.
16. Develop your "Super Powers."
Write down all your positive characteristics. Then, reflect on what each word means to you. Do this weekly, and it will compellingly prime your unconscious mind.
17. Show Up, Brave
You have to live bravely in difficult times. If life may seem unfair and unkind to you now, you must believe with conviction that it won't always be that way. Behind every dark cloud is a blue sky. You have to believe it will show up, and things will improve once they are within your control. Blue sky thinking comes from within. Then you can wear it outside and see things with a clearer perspective. One step at a time. One day at a time. One hour at a time. Forward, always forward.
18. Never Underestimate Your Ability
You are capable of a lot more than you think you are. I spent years underachieving in many areas of my life. However, in the past 3.5 years of living, I have been living out my dream. I got my health and happiness back. I am working daily on increasing my profile as a writer. I am building my business from scratch and working harder than I've ever thought possible. You can do something about your present situation no matter what that is. All you have to do is hold yourself accountable for the outcome and change required. Your past doesn't dictate your future. If only one per cent of people are 'successful', odds are at least one person who reads this will decide to make a change and set themselves up for success in 2018.
Is it you?
19. Identify Your Definition Of Genuine Happiness
Happiness is difficult to achieve for many. It took me years to define it. Yes, it is hard to maintain as it is continual work. To remain happy, you need to keep checking in with yourself regularly. As a professional coach, I've seen that happiness can escape many people. That is because they don't understand what will make them happy. Like everything in life, you have to have a starting point, and this is it for happiness. We must define happiness on our terms. Otherwise, society will do it for us and always fall short.
20. Make Yourself Your Number One Priority In Life
Are you at the top of your to-do list every day? Then you can show up in the best capacity for the people you love and serve. Self-care can mean the difference between "getting in a state" and 'being in a fit state.
21. Work On Your Emotional Fitness
We must remember that our emotional fitness is as necessary as physical fitness. Our thoughts and emotions and how we act and feel about ourselves are essential factors in gaining physical fitness. We can choose to self-direct or self-destruct. The world and your environment are your gyms, and the emotions are your weights. Keep lifting yourself up, and that will build the muscle that is confidence.
Can confidence save your life? It saved mine.
22. Work On Your Physical Fitness
View exercise as part of an essential preparation for success. It will enable you to be in top form for performance in life and business. Start where you are and use what you have to do what you can. The many other physical and emotional benefits speak for themselves.
23. Develop Your Creative Side
Creativity comes in all shapes, and everybody is creative.
According to researchers Ebersole & Hess (1998), here's a list of things that creative expression may do for you:
1. Create balance and order
2. Give a sense of control over the external world.
3. Make something positive from a loss, bad experience or depression.
4. Maintain your sense of integrity.
5. Help resolve conflicts.
6. Make thoughts and feeling clear.
7. A greater sense of well-being and personal growth.
24. Don't Sweat The Small Stuff
Life is quite simple, but we insist on making it complicated. This is because the mind loves to think. So it tries to figure it all out at once and overthinks. So it starts making things more and more complex than they ever were in the first place.
We get bogged down with too many thoughts and lack action because things seem too complicated. As a result, we stay stuck. Trying to solve every problem your mind throws into your head is a great way to ensure nothing gets done. Instead, prioritize what matters most, chunk it down and work on that task until complete. Then, move on when you are ready. Your brain will thank you for it later!
25. Aim To Create New Positive Habits And Not A Result
Focus on the new behaviour you want to achieve, not the outcome. Ensure the new habits you create will keep you motivated and inspire you to keep challenging yourself. If you love it, you will live it. The best practice you can create is one that makes you and the people you love happy.
26. Take One Step Forward Daily
You can achieve anything if you know how to take that first step. Believe it or not, that first step is where eight out of every ten people give up and throw in the towel. When you look at your goals, no matter what they are, and you see them as daunting, you'll never be able to do anything. You'll develop decision-making paralysis and be overcome by fear. This fear will cause you to doubt your ability and become uncertain about the way forward for you. But once the first steps are mapped out, achieving your goals becomes more possible. That first step will define all the steps that follow every day.
27. Don't Half-Ass Your Efforts
Learn to be patient and take your time. Slow and steady progress has been a valuable lesson for me to learn in life. I always tried to rush things. My need for instant gratification and urgency left me stuck. I resigned myself to downward spirals of self-sabotage and the draining of my emotional energy. No matter what you do, put your heart and soul into it and trust the process. Don't rush it. Why? Because you may like me in the past half-ass it! Always use your full ass and your heart.
Newton's law of motion applies to all our goals in life.
An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion.
Momentum is momentum, no matter how slow you are going. If you are moving forward, it is progress.
28. Do a social media detox for 24 to 48 hrs once a week
Human behaviour is addictive. Adding to an even low-running battery can be a massive energy drain. Unplug yourself from the mayhem. Let the battery die on the phone instead. Recharge and reconnect with the conscious human beings that matter most.
29. Be Grateful
Give five minutes of your day to write in a gratitude journal. It will change your life. Be grateful for what you have while fearless in pursuing what you want. Gratitude has been one of my most influential motivators for change.
30. Allow Yourself To Be A Beginner
It is essential to remind ourselves that we all have to start somewhere. For me, every new day is a fresh start. We should permit ourselves to be a beginner in everything we do. It removes the pressure of perfection that society can put on us if we let it! Even if you think you have mastered it all, stay humble. There is always more learning to do. Otherwise, we stop growing.
31. Learn To Fail and Fail
It is okay to keep failing as long as you keep going. One day you are going to get better. Failures are always our first attempts at learning.
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. Maya Angelou
What is your real challenge when starting over again in any area of your life?
If there was no struggle, what would it look like?
All images via Pixaby and Unsplash unless otherwise stated.
For more, see my website here.
