What is it that you really want in life, work, home life, hobby, or any other aspect of your life? Do you know? Have you ever considered it?
For many people life can be frustrating without any reason, people go to work, save money, or settle down in a particular area without ever stopping to consider why. We tend to spend a great deal of our precious time living our precious lives on autopilot, trusting to fate or God, or coincidence to guide us to the most appropriate solutions to our really big decisions; things like where we live, how we meet a partner, what work we do for a living.
Well, if you recognise any of this in yourself, or you don’t but are stuck on your next move despite having great life goals set out for yourself, here are three techniques that might just help you work out what it is that you really want.
1) Create a timeline for the next three years, do this on an open space like a wall of a study or even physically create a timeline by hanging things on a thread across a room. Make sure the things you put on the timeline are visual, pictures, articles, drawings, writing but short pieces, objects, anything that reminds you of what your passions are. At this point don’t worry about how realistic things are, just make sure you truly represent who you want to be over those three years. Once you think this is well represented by your material, spend a few weeks just looking at it all, for as long as you like, maybe every time you have a tea break you sit and look at it for 5 minutes, and here’s the thing; you will start to see definite patterns and themes that you can pick out and work with to guide you in your decision making. This works on the principle that your primeval brain has an innate ability for pattern recognition and data sorting. Let your subconscious do the hard work for you and reap the rewards when you follow up on this in your daily life.
2) The photo collage of terror! Almost the direct opposite of the first method, this one is to create a photo collage of everything that annoys you, go round your office, your whole workplace, your home, your car, anywhere you spend time regularly, and photograph all the things that annoy you about the places. Keep these on your phone and when you have a minute or two, go through a couple of them at a time and come up with simple solutions for changing things so that they are less annoying. You will not be able to change all of them at once, and some will not have simple solutions, but by working your way through them and starting with the easily changeable problems, you create a ladder of positive influence that allows you to grow in self-esteem and confidence to the point where you find you can tackle increasingly difficult annoyances and start to really take control of the way you live your life.
3) Change your outlook; by altering things within your visual range you can completely alter your experience, so go for it in as big a way as possible; new posters on the office wall, rearrange the office furniture, change your habits for lunch breaks and stand/ sit somewhere different in meetings, when eating meals etc. change the activities you do with your family, change your routine or talk to someone new at work. By changing your stimuli, you change the patterns and behaviour of neurons, creating new ways of thinking and changing the dynamics of your brain functions. You will be amazed at the effect simple changes to routine can have on the way you live your life.
once you have tried one or more of these methods, sit down and give yourself some quality time to go through the results, be honest with yourself and the method, don’t try to force change, if it didn’t work try a different method. You should find that it becomes easier to notice the patterns in your life either positive or negative that influence the way you are living. it will never be a quick fix, and it will never completely revolutionise your life, but it will give you an idea of where you can start to practically change things to make life more about you.
Shevek Pring 