Making Changes
A lot of the information on The Wrap is here to help you make choices rather than tell you what to do. We're not trying to tell you how to live your life, just give you the facts needed in order for you to decide what's right for you.
Having more information might mean you’re looking to do things differently and that's great if that’s what you want. Making changes to improve your quality of life is a really positive step to take and a sign that you're wanting to be in control of your future. However, making changes can be scary and difficult to do, at least at first.
Humans are creatures of habit and we love routine - trying to change how we live our lives disrupts this and it can often feel easier to carry on as normal, even if that leaves us feeling bad or causing us harm, rather than make the changes we want.
How to make changes
If you try to make changes but you’re struggling to make them stick, don’t worry, change isn’t a straight line and often we learn more about what we need to do from the setbacks than from the successes.
Are you sure you want to make any changes? It might sound like a stupid question but quite often people are in two minds about what they want – this is sometimes called ambivalence. Until you know what it is you want to do it’s hard for anything to change. One of the best ways of helping you decide whether making a change is a good idea or not is to draw up a list of pros and cons.
Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side write down all the positive things that may happen if you make a change and on the other side all the negative things that may happen. Chances are you will have more things on one side than the other, or one side will have things that are more important to you than the other. Either way, hopefully you should have a clearer idea about what you want to do.
Once you’ve decided that there is something in your life that you want to change, it’s usually easier to do this if you are working towards a specific goal. Goals should be realistic and achievable, otherwise you are setting yourself up to fail. When you meet one of your goals it's also really important you celebrate the achievement. Small steps are often important when making lasting changes.
A really great website with ideas on making positive changes in your life is Action for Happiness. They have campaigns, articles and tools you can use, all focused around making positive change in your life and improving your happiness. The Prince's Trust have lots of inspiring stories and ideas around changes to your career plans.
Change isn't always easy but accepting the current situation when it doesn't seem right is rarely the right approach. Good luck!
