There’s nothing more frustrating than putting in work and feeling like you are not seeing results. This is especially true when it comes to improving your quality of life.
For many of us, it goes something like this:
Grow up, make friends, get a job, settle down, have kids, the end. There is little emphasis put on how to make friends, whether to settle down, whether you want to have kids, or how to maintain a life that is customized for you from beginning to end.
At some pivotal point, you recognize that you have been on auto-pilot. You’ve spent a good amount of time living on a conveyor belt, and one or more areas in your life are headed in a scary direction. Maybe it’s your health and the increasing risk factors you face at each doctor’s visit. Maybe it’s the isolation you dread at the end of the work day. Maybe it’s the life that’s yours but doesn’t quite fit who you truly are or want to be. In any case, you want it, you need it to change. You want a better life.
What often comes next is a manic search that leads down the rabbit hole of all the latest trends and how-tos to get the body, the job, or the relationship of your dreams. You feel desperate, yet hopeful. And because you’ve had a sudden awakening, you also have this surge of energy to pursue real change.
But change doesn’t come.
Your efforts quickly become half-hearted attempts at a path you feel increasingly doubtful you can actually move towards. You lose steam and confidence. In a moment of defeat, you feel like a failure and wonder why your life isn’t getting any better.
Does this sound familiar? If so, it’s not unusual and you are not alone. In a world where intention and effort are exchanged for compliance and reliability, making life better requires something more nuanced than marking off a few checkboxes of generalized improvements. Creating a more ideal life is an intimate exploration specific to your wants and needs. Creating a better life must be specific to you. So, what will actually help you make your life better?
Clearly define what “better” means.
What is better for me, is unlikely to be better for you. Your identity, values, and needs inform what you, specifically, want and need in your life. Be it entrepreneurship or corporate America, monogamy or polyamory, running a marathon or simply eating clean, better is truly in the eye of the beholder. Life can only get better if you have a clear definition of what that means.
Don’t generalize it either. Take each area of life as a stand-alone. Maybe your career is great but health needs work. Maybe communication is amazing in your relationship but the sex and intimacy leave you wanting more. Whatever it is, get specific and clearly define what better means to you.
If you are unsure of what better is, explore how it will feel. Will you laugh more? Will you flirt more? Will you look forward to each Monday as if it were Friday? When you figure out how it will feel, think about what you can do now to implement those experiences into your life.
Have an honest appraisal of where you are at currently.
While it may be easy to define where you want to go and how you want to feel, it can be surprisingly difficult to be honest with where you are now. However, you set yourself up fordisappointment and failure when you are unable to be honest, yet compassionate with where you are today. This is NOT about self-pity or self-loathing. This is about gaining clarity.
To start your appraisal, think about each of these areas: career and finances; community, family, and friendships; relationships, sex, and intimacy; physical health and wellness; emotional health and wellness; and spiritual health and wellness. Define their relative importance in your life. What is going well and feels in sync? What feels out of balance and depleted or in need of transformation?
How did you get here? Look at moments that amazed you and the ones that horrified you see what lessons you might learn about your needs, wants, insecurities, and fears. Remember, where you are at currently is not where you’ll be forever. It’s just right now.
Set realistic expectations of the effort and time required.
Insta and TikTok may have you believe you can create the life of your dreams with little to no time or effort. While that may be everyone’s first wish, I hate to tell you that’s total bullshit. There are no lamps and there are no genies. This is life, and change requires time and effort.
Creating a better life requires you to confront, deconstruct, and heal from the life you currently have. You didn’t just magically appear in the current moment of your life. There were a series of experiences and decisions that landed you here. Each decision was likely the best decision available at the time you made it. Maybe you were lacking tools to process emotions. Or, it’s how you learned to connect. Perhaps, it’s how you’ve always survived. Whatever it may be, there is a function to how we interact with the world we live in.
Chances are, what was once a brilliant way of surviving, is now wreaking havoc and preventing you from being able to thrive. Understanding this means effective change will require effort and time to allow those bad habits to die, negative voices to be silenced, and old wounds to heal. Set realistic expectations that allow you the flexibility and grace to grow into new ways of being.
Focus on the direction, not the destination.
One of the biggest challenges to creating a better life is learning to focus on the direction rather than a destination. It’s a natural response to fill in the gaps of your ideal life with tangible markers that signal “success.” However, living is not a fixed point in time. It is a continual journey marked by change and evolution. One that requires you to adjust and evolve too.
Once you have clarity about where you’d like to go and where you are at currently, let the imagined markers go. Instead, allow them to inspire the compass guiding you in the right direction. Take a moment before each step to see if it is still directing you north. If you find that North starts to look and feel different than it did before, stop heading towards your original destination.
Pause. Reflect. Allow yourself permission to recalibrate and follow your true North once more.
Recommended books to read: Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes, and Take Control of Your Life by Mel Robbins
