What Do You Think Has Most Kept You from Changing Your Life

What Do You Think Has Most Kept You from Changing Your Life?

Fear of lost income?

Dread of upheaval at home?

Fear of change?

And what do you most want to change? Nancy knew it was time to change her life when she realized that she was spending many hours every single day thinking she had to leave New York City, even if it meant changing her great job. She just couldn't take the crime rate or the crowds any longer. What she really longed for was a nice, big garden.

How many hours a day do you focus in your mind's eye on changing your life? When you mentally play out the change, however you define it, what's the first obstacle you come across? For Nancy, back in 1980, it was the money. "How could I possibly support myself? Even though I made over $40,000 a year, had only my one mouth to feed, and had great benefits, I lived paycheck to paycheck. I was stuck. Then it finally dawned on me that since I was so dependent on that paycheck, I'd be most comfortable coming up with a way to change my life without giving up my income stream."

Once that lightbulb went off, Nancy quickly arranged to cut down on her hours at the officeto go into the city three or four days a week and work from home the rest of the time. Her plan was to gradually move her base of operations to upstate New York, where she would buy a house. Same job, different home address.

She made arrangements to crash three nights a week at a city friend's home, and started looking to buy a house upstate. Her hope was that she'd eventually find a way to make a living outside the city, but she realized that keeping her city job was a wonderful, albeit temporary, bridge.

"Once I found that bridge, I could begin to explore my alternatives, not just to think about them all day long. All of a sudden, things began to fall into place. I decided where I wanted to buy a house and began looking at properties. I had about given up, when someone said, 'I know the person who'll help you find a house.' That's when I met Marc, and the rest, as they say, is history."

How can you begin to explore your alternatives now? Are there any bridges you can build that will make it easier for you to move in the direction you want to head?

The Domino Effect

When you begin to make changes in your situation, you build your courage for the next change or new experience. And so one change follows another. You hate your job, so you start a small home business of your own. Your business grows, so you feel you can leave your job. And you door at least you take some vacation days or a leave of absence to try it out.

You have more time for your business, so it continues to grow, and you also have more time for yourself and your children. You get to know them better, and you have more freshly cooked, healthful family dinners together, at home. You save money on day care and sitters, to say nothing of restaurants.
You need fewer work clothes, the dry cleaning bill evaporates, and you find that you need fewer things to console you for what your job was making you miss at home. In short, your expenses go down and your pleasures go up. Your job no longer binds you to where you've been living, and you begin to think about moving to a place where you've always wanted to live.

You develop new hobbies and interests. You're more alive. You watch less TV and do more in the community. Change, you begin to realize, is good.

But it's not always easy. There are ups and downs. The new business grows slower than you hoped, you feel lonely working at home, there's less money than you expected, and you're putting in longer hours.

What went wrong?

Maybe nothing. It's hard to change your life, especially when it's not your choice . . . a divorce, a layoff, a flood. But even when you've finally done what you've always wanted to do, there are bound to be bumps in the road.

And the process of beginning to change is a long and winding road. It's been on your mind for a long time, you've gone back and forth, you've had to make hard decisions, you may have to hurt someone you love.

A friend of Marc's used to say that waiting for something to happen would be a lot easier if only he knew exactly when that something would occur. So he'd set a date, not as a goal, but as a way of getting past the when and on to the "What can I do to make it happen?"

With determination, time, a good support network, and a belief in your right to be happy, you can and will break free. You get to decide when.