Why change?

[saaretjie]

How do you guys keep yourself motivated towards change?

I mean... It's so easy to just accept your life the way it is... No matter how crap... Instead of trying to overcome an (apparent) losing battle, just accept that life sucks, and maybe it will get better maybe it won't. Just to go deeper into your comfort zone and just leave everything else.

Has anyone ever felt like this?

[Parthon]

I've felt like that many times, even now after so much progress in my life I still regress into the whole "It's not worth it." kind of attitude.

Motivation for me comes from acceptance, but there's really two sorts, the fake one and the real one.

The fake kind of acceptance is where you listen to that little voice in your head that tells you how crap it all is, how life sucks and how nothing can ever get better. This isn't even real, it's just a set of opinions about what is real. Any kind of valued judgement isn't acceptance, it's generating an opinion. This seems like observation but is in fact generating, and the trap is that you generate these opinions and feelings of negativity. Then you trick yourself into believing that they are an observation, and you believe you are just accepting what's true.

True acceptance comes from discovering what's real, and discarding what isn't true. Examples of this might be if you had money problems, which you really don't. The reality is that you have X dollars in the bank, Y dollars in bills and are getting paid Z dollars in W days. X+Z might not be enough to cover Y, and you might have a bigger Y before W days. There's no opinions or views, just a statement of what's so.

Once you have real acceptance, then you have power, and it's that power that rises up which gives you motivation to do what you need to do. You can use this power to make the changes that you want to make where ever you want. Until then though you are mired in created opinions and are trying to deal with them, which aren't even real in the first place. This can leave you feeling stuck and helpless.

Facing what's real can take a lot of courage though. You need to be brave enough to break down your own personal opinions to get to the truth, and as humans we hang onto our opinions for dear life. Except these opinions often keep you away from the truth.

One tricky part about acceptance is feelings and emotions, because they are real, but can be triggered by opinions. They are best used as a sign post to point you towards where to look for the truth.

Just a few midnight thoughts from me, I hope they have helped.

[Anya]

I absolutely agree with Parthon…

One of the biggest challenges is to clear out the way…And I mean it! You will just have to revisit many issues (thoughts) in you head and ask a simple question: “Is that true?”. It’s extremely tough at first but then you get to discipline you mind and you just go through them at they (thoughts) come…

And, I got to tell you, this work never stops, you get bombarded with them over and over again. But every time this digging and diving into the root of the issue makes you stronger and more determined.
I am personally not trying to fight these feeling (frustration, anger, loneliness, jealousy)…I sit down and listen to myself and ask questions…I am trying to be patient with myself. I am taking my time. Life does not appreciate rushing and carelessness.

Please, do not give up. I wish you good luck!
Anya

[cdn2wheeler]

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." -- William Edwards Deming

[NotesMaeve]

Originally Posted by saaretjie

How do you guys keep yourself motivated towards change?

I mean... It's so easy to just accept your life the way it is... No matter how crap... Instead of trying to overcome an (apparent) losing battle, just accept that life sucks, and maybe it will get better maybe it won't. Just to go deeper into your comfort zone and just leave everything else.

Has anyone ever felt like this?

I enjoy being a joy to myself, simply put. I love myself, but I simply adore who I am growing into when I view the progression over the years. I've gone from being the really nerdy girl who thought emotion was low brow and for idiots to this really fun, passionate person. It's fun to be someone who doesn't struggle to do well. It's fun to be a generally likable person. It's fun to learn.

I met my future BIL last night and he was asking my fiance and I why we stuck with exercise. It feels good, and not just in the moment. The things you do that are good and feel good touch every area of your life. It's wonderful.

[Angela]

Things are going to change no matter what you do, you can count on that.

In my experience, if I don't do anything about anything and just go on about my life in a normal way, things tend to get a little bit better over time. Like on one of the line graphs, the normal tendency is that the line just goes up almost imperceptibly over time, and when you look back, you can see that things are a little better, generally.

For me, that is simply not as much FUN as generating big LEAPS on the line graph. Breakthroughs! For myself and for others. It's just way more fun to play that way.

And I recognize that sometimes there are periods of flatline or even regress, that's just the way it goes. But overall, it's like the stock market for me, and I would rather invest heavily and let compound interest work its magic, and trust that the downturns in the market will turn around.

[Andrew Brunelle]

We all change whether we consciously decide to or not. Our cells replace themselves completely after seven years. We are ever-changing on a biological level, changing, adapting to new circumstances, and our biology is even working behind the scenes to better ensure our survival and the survival of the species. If our ancestors had simply accepted that life sucks and we should just accept it, we wouldn't have the Internet or anything at all, really. Without the tools we made, we probably would have gone extinct. We are evolving at a rate never seen before. We are also destroying part of the planet, but awareness is increasing about that as well, and I feel that we will soon evolve over most of our material needs, besides food and shelter, and become more in harmony with the Earth we inhabit. So instead of accepting your life the way it is, go for evolution. We should strive for bettering our consciousness and our way of life. Let us go forth into the growth consciousness and we will learn so much we wouldn't have had we just stayed complacent.

[daredevil83]

Originally Posted by saaretjie

How do you guys keep yourself motivated towards change?

I mean... It's so easy to just accept your life the way it is... No matter how crap... Instead of trying to overcome an (apparent) losing battle, just accept that life sucks, and maybe it will get better maybe it won't. Just to go deeper into your comfort zone and just leave everything else.

Has anyone ever felt like this?

Maybe one day you will come to the point, where you'll say: I can't stand it. Your suffering will be too big to ignore it. Then you will (probably) see the whole situation in different way. The change will become something deserved, and then you'll receive the answer to your question, and the motivation to change will appear.

Maybe your life is so good (in your opinion) -and you like it - that it doesn't need to be changed? I think, that there is no need to feel being forced to change just because other people say, that everyone should work on his own personal developement. The motivation should come from inside.

Greetings!

[Jennihul]

Life never sucks. No matter what happens. There are no losing battles, only learning experiences.

It's not just rhetoric. It's how I live. So if I can see the world that way, anyone can.

Jennifer

[saaretjie]

Originally Posted by daredevil83

Maybe one day you will come to the point, where you'll say: I can't stand it. Your suffering will be too big to ignore it. Then you will (probably) see the whole situation in different way. The change will become something deserved, and then you'll receive the answer to your question, and the motivation to change will appear.

Maybe your life is so good (in your opinion) -and you like it - that it doesn't need to be changed? I think, that there is no need to feel being forced to change just because other people say, that everyone should work on his own personal developement. The motivation should come from inside.

Greetings!

Or... I'll look at life... say I can't stand it... and shoot myself in the face...

That's a joke BTW... Hopefully there'll be no face shooting in my life

[daredevil83]

Originally Posted by saaretjie

Or... I'll look at life... say I can't stand it... and shoot myself in the face...

That's a joke BTW... Hopefully there'll be no face shooting in my life

You're right. Suicide is the one of possible solutions. And it can be the kind of decision - the worst, in my opinion, but I think that everyone has to discover in his own, that life is worth to experience (or not). I don't know, why one person reaching the bottom of his life thinks "I have to do something with my life!" and the another says "I have to kill myself!". That's good question.
But please, never choose to commit suicide! You'll lose so much.

I don't know the easier point to start personal growth. Think of alcoholics who decide to quit drinking. They often become a completely different persons.

[Ilya]

Why change? If nothing else, just for the sake of changing. For the flexibility. In any system the most flexible element, the one with the most options is the one that controls the system. It is the opposite of the bottleneck. I like to be in this position. And for that I have to know how to change often and how to change fast.
Of course, there are more specific situations in life when I have to change to achieve some goal. Then the habit of changing comes handy.