How the big changes happen in life?

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

─ Leo Tolstoy

If you remember, the main aim of our life journey on Happy Living was to be better persons than ever before by understanding ourselves & our behaviors. It is highly likely that each one of us has at least a few negative behavioral patterns which need to be changed by practice. But, let’s be honest here. It is not that easy to change a behavioral pattern which has been rooted in your personality for years. 

We're all unique in our own personalities and have very special characteristics. You should always appreciate your uniqueness. Once you accept your own uniqueness, you won’t be in an internal conflict with yourself anymore.

But, all of the above do not justify the fact that we should always stay the same! In fact, we should seek for ways to progress & grow. The important thing is to make growth a consistent part of our life.

Let’s see when the urge for change arises? In which cases do you want to modify your personality? For instance, when your characteristics and life rules (standards) are not in the line with your life values. Let’s say you have financial security as one of your top life values, but you've been broke for a long time. What do you do then? You decide to do something to change your situation. If you don’t do anything, it will certainly lead to frustrations. As we have already discussed about frustrations and making decisions, you might already noticed that most of the subjects in the articles are tightly related to each other and they're part of a chain. Anyway, back to our example mentioned above, the person is broke because of his decisions, rules and standards. So, to change the situation he needs to raise his standards and break his life rules which are limiting him.

Usually the big change in our personality or our behavioral pattern happens in two different ways: either life will change us or life will change us! Either subconsciously or consciously. You have probably seen some people who've had hard times in their past, grow stronger than the average people. That is life teaching and shaping their personality. However, it is not guaranteed for everyone to grow and prosper out of the hard times. That is highly dependent on each person's life beliefs which make them react to the situation in a specific way. In other words, their life beliefs make them to interpret the same experiences in a different way. The examples of the life lessons could be countless: the person loses someone important in life, and will be changed afterwards. Again, the way of changing depends on the person’s beliefs and the way he responds to the situation. The person experiences a terrible near-death accident and it will change her. The probable response of her to the experience could be in a spiritual way when she appreciates the value of her life more than ever before. She could be more grateful for the value of her health and each seconds that she has on earth with her loved ones. The most important thing to always remember is that life happens no matter how, it is our job to be wise enough to react to it properly. Usually the big changes that life brings, could potentially change the way that we have been interpreting our experiences. In other words, it could change our life belief system (usually in a subconscious way).

The other way is that we have experienced life in a certain way for a while (usually in a frustrating situation for a long time) that we reach to a point where we consciously decide to put an end to it. In other words, we reach a threshold by the little stuffs piled up which would be unbearable for us not to change. When something gets unbearable for us, it means that we have linked so much pain to it, so we will do anything to change the situation to reduce the pain. Let’s say you’ve been in a job for a long time, but you hate that job. You don’t like your working environment, the type of work you do or whatever it is that’s keep bothering you. You'll finally reach to a point to say I’ve had enough of this! That is the point you have reached your threshold in which you'll no longer settle for anything less than you want. In the best case scenario, you'll change your beliefs to meet your true desires in life.

You might be asking about the cases in which you don’t like the way of your living, but you’ve not been able to change the situation yet. What is the reason of that? What should you do then? A simple piece of advice to you would be to take it easy. Either the situation you're experiencing in your life is not yet that influential to change you, or the little stuffs were not enough to build your threshold point. As I said earlier, life will go on, so flow with it and don’t force yourself to change. That just makes your frustrations worse and you’ll end up miserable. The big change will happen when its time arrives. Meanwhile, make peace with yourself and appreciate your uniqueness. At the same time, never give up learning, practicing and growing.

In a nutshell, you don't have to insist on the change, if the time has not arrived yet. Be in peace with yourself, and appreciate your uniqueness to flow with the life in a beautiful state.