The Question is: How to Change Your Life?

In an earlier blog post, Loomings of a California Spiritual Journey, I listed four questions I planned to answer by taking a pilgrimage, to California where I grew up. These questions were general and could serve various individuals who want to reflect and refine life practice. Basically, they sketch out a “a how to change your life” referendum you take on yourself. How do you change your life? Well, you have to figure out what went wrong, and then plan how to do things differently.

First Question: What Went Wrong with my Life Plan?

I ask myself the first question. What went wrong? I can look back over the years and identify some “oh … yeah bad idea” moments. Such as:

1. Leaving for college at 16. This was something my parents wanted me to do, but I readily went along with the plan. I wasn’t in any real way ready to be responsible for myself. I missed out on a lot of opportunities. Plus I had no idea what direction I was even going. Recipe for problems, and problems there were. I wish I had stood up to my parents and refused to leave. Although I didn’t quite realize it at the time, I could have done that. I know it was a long time ago, but when I trace back my various situations, it seems to me that they all lead one into the next, like a fish ladder going downstream, back to this one mistake.
2. Married wrong person. Twice. Two different people, once each. I think you’d have to be in denial to ignore this mistake. Not that it was all bad, not that I’m not grateful to have my kids but … yeah. I appear to find a certain type of overbearing man attractive. I’m not sure where this came from. Must keep an eye on myself from here on out.
3. Moved to Texas. The argument could be made that leaving California at all was a bad move. But by the time we got to Texas, all heck had broken loose. I’ve come to think of that fifteen years as “The Babylonian Captivity of the Brands.” I agreed to go to Texas because I *wanted to stop working and stay home with my kids.* Long sigh. Little did I know what Texas had in store.

There’s probably more mistakes in there somewhere

Those things are, I know, a long time ago. Sometimes you go so far down, you have to spend years just mopping up the costs and problems that came from the things you not-so-shrewdly decided a decade or more before. I knew I’d screwed up, but I couldn’t do anything about it for a while.

I noticed that this step, of acknowledging bad ideas you carried out, was missing in the other articles on this topic I read. But I think it’s critical. If doing the wrong thing isn’t why your life needs improvement, then how can doing the right things fix it?

Second Question: Did I Make Some Critical Errors in Thinking?

I’ve heard it said that “life is an experiment that can only be done once.” Sometimes you do stuff, and then you realize it wasn’t the best idea … and then you wonder what you were thinking. This can come out of bad internal reasonings or, as some would have it, disconnection with your inner self and/or core values. I identify four critical errors in thinking.

Critical Error 1: I put other people’s needs before mine year after year.

Men, children, even friends sometimes. The students I taught. Everyone, basically. I’d do stuff for others but not for myself.

Critical Error 2: Not Taking Stock of Who I was Inside

I have not always been true to my own feelings. It didn’t seem, all those years ago, that I could do much for myself anyway. Nevertheless, trying to know yourself is the beginning of mental health and wellbeing. That’s an actually Greek saying: gnōthi sauton. It was inscribed at the Temple of Delphi. So it’s not a new idea.

I have a favorite scene from the movie Excalibur, in which Merlin the Magician describes Uther Pendragon:

“He was brave. He was strong. He was a great knight. But he never learned to look into men’s hearts … least of all his own.”

Guilty as charged. Of course, there were fears and hopes and desires in my head that no one could know about, and I felt that, since I couldn’t share them, maybe they should just be buried. It didn’t work, of course.

Critical Error 3: Giving in to Pride over Principles

A lot of the reason I didn’t do things I later wished I *had* done stemmed from my pride. Doing those things involved admitting that I’d made a mistake, which I didn’t want to admit. Of course, by refusing to admit my mistakes, I just compounded the problems over years.

It’s easier to correct mistakes, generally, if you do it early rather than late. A stitch in time, saves nine. That means, if something is beginning to unravel, fix it now, before the whole garment is in shreds. I didn’t understand that.

Error 4: Stubbornness

A lot of people are like this, they make some kind of long term commitment and then they realize it was a bad idea to get started down this trail and they don’t want to admit it.

If you refuse to fix the mistakes of the past, hoping that somehow your mistakes will become something else, then you are “throwing good money after bad,” as they say. When I cleaned out my Dad’s house after he died I found out some things he hadn’t addressed while he was alive, that maybe he should have. I feel grateful to him for writing down his feelings and leaving the journals where I could find them. So that I could see what had happened to him, look around and say “Oh my God, I have to stop doing this refusal-to-admit-I’m-wrong right now.”

By the time I got to that point, though, I’d been walking around in a circular rut for decades. As they say, it’s never too late to change course.

Third Question: Who am I now, and who do I want to be?

Today, I am unencumbered by the expectations I used to live with. For one thing, children are grown up. No more the expectation that I would always put the kids first. While I was in California last week, I thought about this. What freedom a person who doesn’t have dependent children has. I actually enjoyed those childrearing years a lot. But now that things have changed, my horizons are different. Now on my own, I could choose a lot of different things.

Today, I am a single woman, a school teacher, a mother of adult children, a yoga practitioner, a member of a couple of local groups with social purposes. I am a homeowner.

Where do I want to go from here? I would like to go back to California, but to do that I’ll need to prepare things and people around here first. Who do I want to be there? Well, I want to be a free and respectable person, someone who has a role in the community, someone who is connected and contributing. A school leader, perhaps, not just teacher. Writing, too, is very important to me, I’d like to continue growing my writing.

Fourth Question: Is the Person I want to be Reachable?

Years ago I wanted to be that teacher that the principal leaves alone… a teacher whose kids listen because they want to. I have become that teacher. Only once this year did my principal check to see me teach. He knows I’ve got this.

I also wanted to be a friend who people call up out of the blue … a traveler who can make an exciting journey our of a local day or a foreign month. A writer who is read by interested readers. I’ve made progress in these areas. There’s still a long way to go.

Karen and I like to say, personal growth is like the asymptotic line of the graph of 1/x. You can approach, but never actually meet, that person that you so want to be. I’ve made progress on who I want to be in the last two years. And more will be revealed.

Summary: How to Change Your Life

Of course, there’s more to it than that. This is just a sketch of meta-thinking in an ongoing process of life change. Really, this whole blog is about how to change your life. And a few recipes, health reflections, plus a couple travel articles.

Changing your life takes time. Some of the steps you can do include:

• self reflection
• journaling
• support groups and counseling
• exercise
• reading self help books, though not too many
• considering how you spend the hours of your day
• talking to friends about how they see various vexing situations
• learning to be alone
• learning to be a friend
• investigating new activities and/or opportunities that you didn’t do before because it was too scary
• learning to say no to stuff you actually don’t want to do
• learning to say yes when you do want to do something even if someone might judge you
• being your own best friend

Annotated Bibliography for “How to Change Your Life”

Betterup: How to Change Your Life. The most comprehensive list of reasons you might want to change your life I’ve ever seen. Also this: “Our data shows that 55% of people are languishing.” I think that’s pretty generous. I hope you can agree with me here: we’re not languishing like those other guys.

From Mark Manson: How to Change Your Life. In which he argues that, actually, it isn’t about your car, house, job, or romantic partner, it’s about *you* and the fact that you don’t do enough of the right things. He’s a consultant, of course. Very glib, but some good points.

Oberlo: 9 Steps for How to Change Your Life. Noteworthy for including the concept of a “keystone habit,” a behavior change that triggers other behavior changes.

The Muse: 57 Small Changes You Can Make to Change Your Life. Some of which include, assume people have good intentions, don’t get sucked into political discussions, let go of the results, and turn off the background TV.