Changing Your Life Is Only as Difficult as You Make It
How difficult do you make it?
When it comes to finding the best ways to complicate my life, I’m an expert.
This tends to come from overthinking things, overanalyzing, self-doubt, uncertainty, fear, and similar factors.
Why? Sometimes it’s because of the idea that if it looks too good to be true (or too easy) it probably is. Other times because I’ve long believed that nothing worth having is ever easy. Then there are external factors like the opinions of others, societal BS, and the like.
And of course, my own fears, self-doubt, concerns, beliefs in being deserving or not, and so on.
However, no matter what the factor is – it all comes down to me.
Nobody but me is in my head, heart, or soul. Thus, nobody but me can determine what works or doesn’t work for me.
When it comes to my life and any changes I desire to make to it – I alone can choose those.
Yes, there are factors to take into consideration like the needs and desires of my spouse, care for our cats, and other things.
But for the parts of my life that are wholly mine – namely everything within me – I alone can change them.
Hence, changing my life is only as difficult as I make it. And that goes for you and your life, too.
More complexity doesn’t mean better
When I first started learning medieval fencing, the focus was single combat. Me versus someone else.
Then we got into melee combat – fencing as teams. This could be anywhere from 2 to 5 people, to a dozen or far more.
When it comes to melee combat, you generally serve in 1 of 3 roles. And sometimes they shift depending on the length of battle and what the opposition tosses your way. But those roles are soldier, commander, and cowboy.
A soldier takes orders, goes into combat, and if they’re told to move into a meat-grinder of swords and “die” – that’s what they do.
A commander might do the overall strategy for a battle scenario, like a general. But they might also adjust units tactically on the field, like a sergeant. Either way, they direct a battle strategically and/or tactically.
Cowboys either do their own thing, find their way into the backfield, act as distractions, or have a set goal – and are neither soldier nor commander.
My primary skill in this is tactical. Though I have a good head for strategy, I’m best at situational assessment and adjusting on the fly.
Here’s my point – the most basic, simple maneuvers are always best. If your plan includes more than 1 or 2 points of decision or mechanisms to function, you’ve created multiple points of failure.
If the idea is to roll your line of soldiers to the left, the simple approach is that all of them roll left. Adding a person as a pivot point means you’ve added a point of failure – but it’s still a simple tactic. However, have two pivot points, and now you’ve multiple points of failure and doubled the probability of it.
Hence why more complexity doesn’t mean better. It’s making something simple more difficult.
Changing your life is never one and done
The truth is that there is no one-time-only change that you can make for your life. Or rather, you can’t sustain your life on a single change.
That’s because change is constant. The only constant in the Universe. Change can, will, and does occur all the time. And most of it is not yours to control.
But there is change you can control – that’s your approach to life, the universe, and everything.
This is very specific to your life, your universe, your everything. But the truth of your reality is that it’s yours before all else.
As Albert Einstein said,
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
What that means is that how you perceive reality is dependent on you.
Your life experience, the environments you’ve known, the people you surround yourself with, the culture you experience and soak in, your education, and lots of other factors will form your perception of reality.
And that’s the illusion of reality that Einstein speaks of.
Collectively, there are aspects of “reality” nearly everyone agrees on. It’s still loosely defined enough that some people reject or don’t accept elements of it. Nonetheless, we share the world.
But your life, your reality, can be altered by choice by you. And that’s through conscious awareness. In other words, mindfulness.
Mindfulness is easy
Being actively consciously aware is easy. All you need to do is focus on being present, here and now.
Then, to gain mindfulness of your life, ask questions answerable only here and now, like,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What am I doing?
- What are my intentions?
These questions can only be answered in the now. Thus, they make you actively consciously aware/mindful.
It really is this easy. Try it for yourself. Ask any one of the above questions and see how present it makes you.
If it’s not difficult and challenging, is it worthwhile? Absolutely. Life will have complex moments. There will be challenges and difficulties. Some situations will be easy, others seemingly impossible.
Changing your life – depending on where you’re starting from – can look incredibly difficult. But does it need to be?
No. It’s only as difficult as you choose to make it.
Changing your life step by step
For me, the most difficult part of working on changing my life has been chunking it down.
Changing your life will take time. Recognizing and accepting this is super important.
How old are you? That doesn’t matter, so much as looking at how long it’s taken to build what you already have. To become who you are now took time. And while you can change faster than the time it took unintentionally to become who you are now; it still takes time.
Chunking it down – when it comes to changing your life – is a matter of not just focusing on the end goal, but stepping stones along the way.
Want to start a business? You can’t just snap your fingers and start. There are lots of stepping stones you need to take to get from the idea for the business to the creation, building, and opening of it.
Changing your life works exactly the same way. Do you want to become healthier? You can’t simply snap your fingers and be healthier. You must take steps to get from where you are to where you desire to be.
But it really is that easy. You don’t need to overanalyze every idea, just start taking steps. As Lao Tzu said,
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Howsoever you desire to change your life, it’s only as difficult as you make it. Every little step you take, every action you do, is a part of the process.
You have so much more power than you realize.
If you’re working on changing your life, take at least one small step every day. It might simply be altering how you approach things, your self-talk, or general thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
Keep it simple. That’s all you need.
How difficult do you tend to make changing your life?
This is the six-hundred and sixth (606) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
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