How to Kick-Start Your New Life

If you feel like you’re in a rut, now is the time to do something about it

If you’re like most people, you repeatedly decide to change aspects of your life. You plan to start working out more often, redecorate your home, spend more time with your family/friends, etc. etc. And then nothing happens. Well, it’s time to do something about it.

The Critic Within

You are your own worst critic. Because of this you may have created images of yourself as the kind of person that never manages to get things done, or that only makes mistakes. Unfortunately we tend to live up to the images we make of ourselves, either we want to or not.

You need to change the way you think in order to change the way you act. If you think about yourself as someone that can make things happen, this is the kind of person you eventually will become.

Related: You Are Number 1

Benefits Of Status Quo

You should not underestimate the benefits of status quo. If there were no benefits of your current situation you would have changed it long time ago.

Think through what’s positive with today’s situation and try to keep those positive factors in a future, different scenario.

Maybe you are unsatisfied with your job situation but feel comfortable with having a fixed income every week? Or maybe putting down some extra hours every day at work is a way for you to avoid having to deal with problems in your social/family life?

When you’re able to pinpoint what’s important for you, you’ll be able to make the appropriate changes to start your new life without loosing the benefit of today’s situation.

‘Should Have, Could Have’

The easiest way to cope with a situation is to postpone any action for later. When you’ve already expressed that you “should have, could have” it’s extremely easy go from there to “but it’s nothing I can do about that now”.

As if the fact that you’re aware of what you should have done somehow gives you an excuse to be lazy!

Be aware that if you allow yourself to become merely a passenger on your own life journey, you’ll place yourself at the mercy of others.

What Do You Really Want?

The main reason that our urge to change usually stops with a thought is that we haven’t made clear for ourselves what we want to do with our lives. At the same time, we’re often brutally aware of how we don’t want it to be.

Your mind does everything in its power to fulfill your thoughts and wishes. And wishes are actually what your body believes every thought you have to be. The more you think the thought, the stronger it becomes.

So if you’re stuck thinking how hopeless and tiresome everything is, that’s going to be how you describe your own future. And your body and soul is going to do everything to make it happen.

Is that really how you want to live your life? Didn’t think so…

How To Change Your Ways

Spend 90% of the time you’re thinking about your life to think about how you want it to be. And max 10% to think about your problems.

But, of course, just thinking about it is not enough.

Men's Health
A magazine can inspire you

You need to act too, taking all those little steps that help you getting to where you want to be.

Get a gym membership, and maybe a subscription to a men’s health magazine that can inspire you, if you’re not satisfied with your health or your body.

Or learn about lifestyle changes you can make and products you can use if your’re not happy with your looks.

Remember, you are the one that decides who you are, and what you can or cannot do. You decide what to prioritize, what to believe, and what your limits are.

We all have our limits, but it’s you – and nobody else – that puts them in place. It happens way to often that we get stuck in patterns that doesn’t work – we don’t get the results we want – because we haven’t made clear for ourselves where we want to go.

Make a commitment to seriously try to do something in a new way, or to stick to a decision you’ve made, so that you can start your new life.

In the beginning this takes a lot more effort than to act the way you always have. But if you’re not completely satisfied with you’re life, you need to change something.

If you keep on acting as you always have, you will keep on getting the same results.

Related: 5 Tips for Men to Keep Wrinkles and Aging at Bay

3 COMMENTS

  1. I appreciate your thoughtul analysis and try to remove the buts. I have tried your approach for years and now given up. I am not sure why it doesn’t work. Defiantly we all have different personalities that help or harm ourselves. The younger men seem to have lived around an atmosphere that they are great and don’t mind telling others. I am more realistic.
    For me I have given up. As you say if you do the same thing you have always done you will get the same results. Your response doesn’t work or help.
    Please expand and provide more to your analysis instead of placing guilt that it’s all our own fault that we lack self esteem or confidence. Indeed some is our own fault but there are other factors too.
    I find we as a culture are our worse enemy. Grindr, Adam 4 Adam, and a mountain of other apps destroys us. You sign on to chat and socialize with a response is negative and hurtful at best or no response of rejection.So you look for other social events and sights but there are few and far in between. You mention the bar and I find the same guys there but drunk.
    The self confidence you gain when you are young is the strongest factor that will remain with you for a life time.
    You live in a religious, self righteous community with the only choice is to move which is running from your problems.
    I apologize for such a negative attitude. For me I have wasted too much time in trying and would like to just accept myself until then isolation is the most comfort. Hopefully my time is short and the pain can stop.

  2. This is exactly the predicament I find myself in. I used to have a fabulous body. I worked out 4 or 5 times a week until several medical things happened. Pancreatitis , a broken left tibia, an obstructed bowel,many Bladder infections,prostate surgery and another broken leg, tibia again but the right leg.
    Feeling much better, any takers.