How Do You Start Bringing Meaningful Change to Your Life?

So often I’m asked, “How do I change my life?”

The answer that question is really very simple. And yet, it can seem horribly complex and overwhelming when you are mired in a life that seems utterly incapable of change.

The best place to start is by first changing the way you think about yourself and the life you’re living.

After all, you are the core substance of your own reality. When you change, your reality changes as well. As your reality changes, those around you are impacted by that change. It naturally follows that the world impacting your life inevitably changes in turn.

If you are broken in terms of your own heart and spirit (as so many of us are), you aren’t able to embrace the Universe and all it has to offer in the way of true blessings. Change in regard to yourself can then seem extremely difficult – if not practically impossible.

But the truth is, nothing is impossible.

Love? It’s definitely attainable. Happiness? It’s always within reach. Healing? Absolutely. Fulfillment? Yes, it’s right there for you to seize and enjoy.

All it takes is shifting your focus away from all that isn’t working in terms of your life and focusing instead on making your own life better by creating a new way of thinking and believing, by literally creating a new “reality” for yourself.

Such thinking can – and will – bring healing and genuine empowerment to your life.
Just the simple act of changing your way of thinking, you are already breaking free from your own chains of impossibility. You are empowering yourself through your own ability to see clearly the tremendous amount of possibility that exists for your life.

Imagine your life right now as a mirror. What you feel/believe/fear is reflected right back at you. But as you open yourself to the immense amount of opportunity and true possibility that exists, you come to realize that you are more in charge of your own existence than you ever thought you could be.

For instance, if you have been raised to believe that love is a weakness (resulting from your own past abuse, neglect or a generally dysfunctional family life to which so many of us can relate), you simply cannot give love to someone else from a healthy position of strength no matter how much education you have nor how high your position in society might be.

You are essentially operating from that deep-seated perspective of weakness as if you are hiding in the shadows of life and others are out reveling in the sunlight. Everything you do, every expression of love you try to give, every commitment you attempt to make will be crippled by that sense of weakness.
How do you change that…ridding yourself of that horrible inherent sense of weakness in terms of loving?

Some would tell you to get a puppy – let the puppy teach you how to love from a position of strength. I’m not going to suggest that. I’m going to ask you to do something bigger and perhaps much scarier:

Start by loving yourself.

That’s right: Yourself.

Not just “kinda sorta” love yourself – but completely. Freely. Unconditionally.
After all, if we truly believe that the Higher Power created us, we then acknowledge that we were created out of supreme love because that is the power and true essence of the Universe: Love!

When we learn how to believe in love, how to live a love-filled life, when we completely walk in love…there isn’t anything that can possibly make us feel weak again. It starts by truly, completely, unconditionally loving ourselves. And that kind of love is healing in every sense of the word.

Realize that everyone in your life is operating from his or her own value system created from their own individual life experiences and they may not see things the same way that you do.

Take the time to achieve insight into the lives of others and from it, you’ll understand what makes them “tick.” Why they react as they do. You’ll come to understand that friends, relatives and romantic partners aren’t on the same level as you are emotionally, psychologically and even spiritually.

Such insight makes it possible for you to relate better to them, to understand in a sense “where they’re coming from” and enables you to be more patient with them as they “come up to speed” with where you happen to be in your dealings with them.

Forgive yourself.

Yes, forgive yourself! The person you were in days gone by, making unwise choices that took you down a painful, faulty path is not who you are today. You’ve learned important lessons from the past. Now it’s time to strive to let the past go. The past is little more than ashes sitting in a fireplace. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life sifting through ashes, do you?

No, of course not.

So let yourself off the hook for the past you’ve led. It’s dead and gone. The more you resurrect the past in your own mind, the more you keep yourself imprisoned by that fireplace filled with ashes!

If you struggle with the process of letting go, I frequently advise those who yearn to release themselves from the past to try the following exercise:

Take a doll to a deserted beach, into the woods, even in the far reaches of your own backyard if you have no other secluded place to go. Hold that doll, cradle it and tell yourself that this doll represents your past.

Cry if you feel the need as you embrace the doll, re-affirming to yourself that the past represented by that doll has died and you are mourning the past for all your own misguided intentions in those days.

Then dig a hole and bury the doll – with it, your sorrow, your sadness, your regrets. Give your past an important, meaningful burial. When you feel ready, leave the burial site knowing that you are now stepping out into a new day and time for yourself. Literally bury the past and leave it there. It has no place or meaning in terms of your future.

Many have come back and told me this exercise was extremely cleansing and rejuvenating for them on both an emotional and spiritual level.

Have faith in yourself and your own future.

Yes, faith! Faith, next to love, is about as bonded as you can get with the Universe. Faith can literally perform miracles if open yourself wholeheartedly to it.

Visualize faith this way: You are standing on the brink of nothing but sheer impossibility but you have faith. Faith that when you open your arms wide and you thrust yourself over the abyss of uncertainty, you won't be afraid. Your own faith will give you wings that take you safely to the other side.

That is the true essence and definition of faith.

Without that kind of deep abiding commitment in terms of faith, we are basically only pretending to have faith. Faith involves giving our all. Believing in what has yet to become reality. Confident that no matter what, faith will give us what we need, precisely when we need it.

If you truly have that kind of faith – if you believe the impossible can become possible, if you can thrust yourself toward the unknown and say to yourself, “What I need will come to me when it's time for me to receive it” – you will never be afraid again.

Genuine faith will lead you and guide you, bringing you exactly what you need.

By having enough willpower to keep that faith alive every step of the way - even when you are at your lowest point emotionally and spiritually, where you can barely put one foot in front of the other - you won’t have to wear yourself out looking for a future filled with love and happiness.

That future will faithfully come to you.