I suggest two practices for making changes in your life. The first is to do what you think is right. I write a lot about the idea that there is a space between what happens to us and what we do about it, and that what we do in that space determines our growth and happiness in the long run.
There are four things that make us human:
- conscience,
- imagination,
- self-awareness,
- and free will
The conscience is the most important of the four. When we don’t feel at peace in our lives, it’s often because we’re going against our conscience, and we know it deep down.
We can get in touch with our conscience by asking ourselves questions and pausing to “hear” the answers. For instance, you might ask yourself, “What is the most important thing I need to start doing in my personal life that would have the biggest positive effect?.”
What comes to mind?
Now, ask yourself: What is the most important thing I need to start doing in my career that would have the biggest positive effect? Again, you need to stop, think, and look deep inside to find the answer.
If you’re like me, you’ll know these things are important by listening to your conscience, which is the voice of your wisdom, self-awareness, and common sense.
What is life now asking of me? is another great question to ask yourself. Pause. Think about it. You may feel like you haven’t been paying attention and that you need to be much more careful about how you spend your time. Or, if you’re always tired, you might decide that you need to start eating better and working out.
Or you may feel like you need to fix a key relationship. No matter what it is, sticking with a change that you know is right is a very strong and powerful thing to do. If you don’t really believe in your goals, you won’t have the strength to stick with them when things get hard. And the conscience is what leads to a conviction.
We all have a public life, a private life, and a life inside ourselves. What people see is how we act in public. What we do when we are alone is our private life.
Our inner life is where we go when we want to get to the bottom of what drives us and what we really want. I really think you should work on this inner life. Here is where our conscience can teach us the most because we are most open to listening.
Changing your role is the second key to change. I’ve always said that if you want modest changes in your life, you need to change the things you do. But if you want to make a big change, you need to work on your paradigms, which are the ways you look at and understand the world.
And changing your role is the best way to change your way of thinking. You may have been given a new job at work as a project manager. You might have a baby or a grandchild.
You might take on a new role in the community. Suddenly, your role has changed, and you see the world in a different way. This new way of looking at things leads you to act better.
Sometimes roles change because of something outside of the person, like when their job responsibilities change. But sometimes we can change our role just by changing how we think about something or how we see it.
Say, for example, that you are seen as a control freak at work and you know you need to start trusting others and letting go. Well, maybe you can change how you see yourself and change your role from “supervisor” to “advisor.”
With this change in your role and your way of thinking, you would start to see yourself as a consultant for your team members. They would be able to make decisions on their own and ask for your advice when they did, instead of you being the one who has to take responsibility for everything and follow up all the time.
The problem is that the most important habit is the one you have the hardest time keeping. Use your self-awareness and sense of right and wrong to figure out which habit you may need to work on.
Most of the time, the best way to change is to focus on one thing or one habit and make and keep small promises to yourself about that habit.
Little by little your discipline and self-confidence will increase.