How to Improve your Life without Changing a Thing


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A few posts back I mentioned watching the movie Wild.  It’s about a lady whose life has hit “rock bottom”, and how she finds herself again and reboots her life by going on a hike.

I haven’t read “Eat, Pray, Love” (or seen the movie), but my understanding is that it deals with similar concepts.  There is a woman recovering from a difficult divorce, who goes on a journey to find who she is and what she’s looking for in life – joy, spirituality and love.

There are many similar stories about “transformative journeys”, where people come to a point in life where they are questioning things:

Who am I?  Why am I here?  What will make me happy?  What gives me purpose?  What do I really want out of life?  Is this all there is?  Isn’t there “more” to life?

So they embark on journeys of self-discovery; which usually involve walking away from the life they had and the life they knew, discovering *something* about themselves, and coming back a changed and hopefully more whole person.

 

In 1949, Joseph Campbell released a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  He had studied mythology from different cultures, and found a common thread in most mythology is “the hero’s journey”.  In the hero’s journey, someone starts in an ordinary world, and begins a quest only after they are compelled to by some event or tragedy.  Their quest takes them to different places, and a journey of growth and awakening, until they finally return to a variation on their old life, where they are more at peace and balanced.

At its essence, the hero’s journey is a story of personal change, and growth.  And stories like Wild, or Eat, Pray, Love tap into this basic narrative.

 

Think of the questions:

Who am I?  Why am I here?  What will make me happy?  What gives me purpose?  What do I really want out of life?  Is this all there is?  Isn’t there “more” to life?

These are hard questions, and ones I think we all ask ourselves from time to time.  The hero’s journey appeals to us because at some level, we have all thought of just walking away from everything and starting over.  Or at the very least, taking a “break” from our regular life and having our own journey (come on, admit it.  I know I’ve thought it, and for the most part I like my life).

The thing is, it’s not really an option for most of us.

Most of us can’t just walk away, or even take a time out from our regular life.

We have responsibilities that make this impossible – jobs, mortgages, kids, etc.  Impossible may be a strong word, but at the very least it’s extremely difficult.  Part of the challenge is, our choices have implications – so if we just decide to walk away from our jobs, financial obligations or families; chances are we are walking away forever.  These aren’t the sort of things you can just “test out”.

 

There’s a deeper problem with the hero’s journey however.

Even if we could just walk away and go on a journey of discovery and transformation, those stories are misleading; because they tell only part of the story.  They are kind of like romance stories which end with the couple getting married.  The romance leading up to the wedding may be the exciting or romantic part, but it’s just the beginning.

Just as finding love is very different from being able to hold onto it forever, having a transformative journey and finding yourself in the short term doesn’t mean you won’t end up just as lost again in the future.

Making changes is one thing.  Sustaining them is something else.

 

I have a childhood buddy who went on his own version of the hero’s journey.

We were probably in our early 30’s at the time, and he was working a professional career.  One day I received a group email from him saying he had quit his job and was moving across the country to become a white water rafting instructor.

Ummm, alright.

He and I had gone for lunch a few months prior, and I had no idea anything like this was looming, so I assumed something must have happened.  But he was gone, and we didn’t speak for a number of years.

A few years ago I heard he was back, so we got together one night for dinner.

I had to ask – what the hell had happened?  Why did he leave?

I’m sure there were a number of factors, but one of them he told me was deep dissatisfaction with the regular 9-5 life, where you are caught in this cycle of work, eat, sleep, rinse and repeat.  He asked himself those same questions – what am I doing?  Why am I doing this?  Is this all there is?

He had no dependents, and he had always loved the outdoors.

So he left.

 

Yet here he was, back home.

Back in the same career he had walked away from.  Largely living the same life he had been living before.

I asked him – if this was a life he needed to walk away from, why was he back?  And was he happy (or at least content) now, back living his old life?

In response, he told me a bit about the past few years of his life.

He had been living a fairly nomadic life.  He worked as a white water rafting guide/instructor during part of the year, and when the season was done he travelled the world.  He saw all sorts of things; amazing sights and places.  Thing is, he largely saw them alone.

He would meet women, and have some companionship.  But he was never in one place for very long; so with any relationship he got into, both people knew it was a temporary thing.  And after a while, he started to feel rootless and yearn for something more.

It wasn’t just that though.

Over time he found his job as a white water rafting instructor wasn’t what he thought it would be.  He had become sick of the day to day office life and wanted to have more adventure and excitement in his life.  Yet somehow, spending his days on the rapids was no longer exciting.

It was no longer fulfilling.

I remember sitting there in the restaurant, and him looking at me and saying:

“You know, I realized that it doesn’t matter what you are doing.  Eventually, everything becomes work”.

Those words still resonate with me, and I find them very powerful.

Eventually, everything becomes work.  Everything.

 

Everything becomes work, yet here he was back doing the same work he had done before.  So I asked him, what had changed?

The realization that everything eventually becomes work made him understand he had two options.

  1. When even the adrenaline rush of riding the rapids can become routine, how can we ever expect life to remain fresh and exciting? We can’t, unless we keep changing things up.  So he could either continue changing things up every time routine started to set in, and go off on some other adventure.  But since everything becomes routine, this would apply to jobs, relationships, lifestyle, etc; and he would always be on the move.
  2. The other option was changing his approach, so that was what he did. He was able to handle going back to his old job and his old life because he changed his mental approach.  His outlook, and attitude were now different.  He accepted that life isn’t always fun, and isn’t always exciting.  He approached his job as something he may not love, but also didn’t hate.  And it was enough for him, because it allowed him to support the life he wanted.

 

If you really look at the hero’s journey, what is it about?

Is it about the quest?  The adventure?

Was the story of Wild really about going on a hike?  Was Eat, Pray, Love really about escaping to a foreign land to, umm, eat, pray and love (sorry, I told you I haven’t read it)?  Was my buddy’s journey really about white water rafting?

No, the journey (or the quest) is just a short term thing, a break from ordinary life.  That may recharge someone for a bit, but it’s temporary.

Sustained change is about the lessons we learn; it’s really about personal and spiritual growth.  It’s about letting go of who you think you want to be and the life you think you should have, and instead accepting yourself for who you are.  It’s about finding peace, and contentment, and meaning in your life as it is now.  Which doesn’t mean you can’t change or improve, but it does mean you don’t have to.

 

What can you actually change in life?

Often circumstances dictate things, and you aren’t really able to change much.  You can get a different job, but eventually it will become work.  You can find a different partner, but they will have good and bad too.

Most of us can’t walk away from our lives.  We can’t go on some incredible transformative journey or adventure.  But I think we CAN come to terms with the fact that our life IS our adventure.

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Our attitude shapes almost everything.  Our expectations shape our experiences.  And how we approach things becomes our reality.

As my buddy found, eventually everything becomes work.  Everything becomes routine.

When things become routine, its human nature for us to start taking things for granted.  And when we do that we stop seeing the good in our lives because it has become our new normal. 

Instead, we see the negative.   We see the things we feel are missing, and we focus on our flaws, and how we aren’t who we thought we would be.

 

We are the only ones who can turn that around.

We can start by accepting we won’t always be happy, and we don’t need to be.  By accepting that things will suck sometimes, and that’s alright.

Changing our outlook involves changing our focus away from what we don’t have, and instead focusing on what we do have.

To do that, we need to remind ourselves everyday about the good we have right now.  We need to start practicing active appreciation, and teach ourselves to see the beauty all around us that we have become blind to.

Real change comes from within.  And the one thing you can always change is your outlook and attitude.

7 thoughts on “How to Improve your Life without Changing a Thing

  1. Love this topic. I’m 37 and frankly tired of seeing inspirational quotes all over the internet about living dreams and making over your life as if there’s some magical way to achieve this completely zen state of living.
    Hogwash.
    While it is true we all feel deeply connected to something or someone at one point or another, it all requires work. Some people work because they love their job, a lot of people work because they love their family. There’s no magical light at the end of that tunnel. You do because you must.
    I sound cynical but I feel like struggling is such a beautiful part of the process.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Natasha! It’s been a while.

      As you may have gathered from a number of my previous posts, I personally believe that a push for “happiness” (and people believing they should always be happy, or they have a “right” to be happy) is a huge contributor to what appears to be an increase in unhappiness.

      A few of my main life philosophies – my life is not my own, and finding out what is “enough” for me is more important than thinking I’m somehow special and deserving of something more.

      That’s not to say I ever plan on settling in life, but it’s more a recognition that no matter what you have, you can always have more. So if you focus on wanting more all the time, it’s a never ending pursuit.

      Rather, for me happiness is about finding that “enough” (in a job, relationship, whatever), and then celebrating it, and appreciating it. Holding onto the beauty in the things we do have instead of taking them for granted.

      And accepting that there will be bad times, but we need the full range of good and bad in order to be able to appreciate what is there.

      To me that makes more sense.

      Like

      • I understand exactly what you’re saying. Appreciation is difficult sometimes. I’m guilty of it ALL the time. For instance my children started school this week. I live in a good neighborhood with good schools but it didn’t stop me from mentally screaming expletives when they forgot to pick my son up on the bus today;)

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Hey Drew, I feel like you wrote this for me… 😂

    Reading this post felt like a character in the song Killing me Softly!

    Anyway, you are so right (again). Your life is the adventure and even if you tried to escape from it, eventually what you escaped to will turn into work.

    But human nature doesn’t allow us to be fully content with life. We will always search for something more than what we have now.

    Liked by 1 person

    • “human nature doesn’t allow us to be fully content with life. We will always search for something more than what we have now”

      Agreed, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However early on I think we start to believe that “more stuff” is important, and as we get older hopefully we realize that at the end of the day, it’s just stuff. I’m spent a lot of time trying to understand what actually matters to me, and I think I get that. So part of the key to me is remembering to appreciate what I DO have, and not forget that a lot of what matters is already around me. It’s just so easy to stop seeing it, because when you already have it it becomes your norm.

      There are things I’m missing that I hope to find, but there’s a lot that I DO have that I am thankful for.

      Like

      • Oh I definitely know what matters to me. And I am grateful everyday that I have them in my life. But there are days when I feel unsatisfied or lonely. But because I am responsible enough not to throw away everything I have for something (perhaps) temporary, I don’t walk away from my reality. Those who do are dreaming for that perfect life. And like your friend, he later realized there’s no such thing.

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Great post,

    “When things become routine, its human nature for us to start taking things for granted”…this is so true, and somehow we stop trying to improve things. Only two things are are constants in our lives:
    – the place we are born,
    – our parents.

    All other things are passable 🙂

    Thank you

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