When Life Changes Who You Are - For the Better

One theme in my life that has always plagued me is injustice. When I was a kid, I can remember many occasions when I was accused of something that I didn't do, and it always fell into two categories. One was that it looked like I was guilty, and I didn't speak up because I felt like people wouldn't believe me.

And the other was when my intentions were misunderstood, and I couldn't make the adults understand why I had done something. And because of this, I'm always trying to be careful not to do the same thing with my own kids. But they are similar ages, so they have arguments and different things happen, and I sometimes jump to conclusions, and I can see the same face on them that I had years ago.

Disbelief at the injustice of it all. So that leads me to one important point, which is seeing or missing the truth in a situation. In the last ten years, I've been able to see more clearly the role that I'm playing in a situation because I'm not lying to myself about what my motives are.

And because I can see myself more clearly and objectively, it's easier to see what is really happening. The problem, however, is what to do with this new perspective. If I see that I'm being selfish, for example, then I can't continue to act that way, so it changes what I will do next.

If I see that I am saying something to someone in order to get my own way, then I can't just keep going with it. And I've caught myself and corrected my actions again and again, and that has changed who I am and how I interact with the people around me. And that brings me to telling people the truth.

I always thought that I just wasn't good at confrontation, but now I can see that telling people the truth about themselves to their face isn't the best thing to do. I'm never able to tell people the truth about themselves, even when I really want to. But there is a good reason for this.

And that's my motivation for doing it. Why do I want to tell them their faults or why they're wrong? Of course, the answer is because I want to change them.

I want them to be different or to behave differently. But me telling them will never have the outcome that I'm trying to achieve. Also, it's just not good for me to bring someone down and attack them, even if they do it to me.

But for all of the insight and clarity I have, I'm still what I would call optimistically naive. I want to believe the best about people, and I want to believe that good things will happen for me. I want to think that people are honest in all their dealings with me and that they don't have selfish motives.

And because of this, I often feel let down by people. But that's on me. I lied to myself.

And if the promise of good things doesn't work out, then all I can do is pick myself up, dust myself off, and carry on.

See Your Experiences Differently—Grow on Purpose

When I'm in the shower or engaged in a task that doesn't demand my full concentration, I sometimes find myself dwelling on unpleasant events that occurred earlier in the day or week. Upon realizing this, I consciously choose to stop ruminating on those matters. They're already in the past, so there's no need to continue tormenting myself over them.

However, later on, I catch myself revisiting those thoughts, and I'm unsure how long I've been caught up in them. These thoughts become a recurring loop, and despite my best efforts, I can't prevent myself from falling back into that pattern. Another involuntary tendency of mine is to reflect on different periods from my past.

Occasionally, these memories are positive, but more often than not, they are less-than-pleasant experiences. They usually involve moments of embarrassment, stress, shock, or pain. Nevertheless, they hold significance in my life.

What unifies all these experiences is the presence of regret. They are situations that I regret, and while in some cases, I couldn't prevent them from occurring, I regret my actions or the choices I made within those circumstances. Reviewing these experiences is essentially a subtle way for me to replay events I have already lived through.

Repetition undeniably plays a crucial role in my life. Additionally, when I find myself trapped in this cycle of reflection, I'm able to perceive the experiences differently from how I initially saw them. Naturally, with age, I now have a broader perspective than I did ten or twenty years ago.

However, it's not just about that. Looking back, I see the situation for what it truly was and confront the unfiltered truth of my own role in it. This can be unsettling, but detached from the emotions associated with it, observing my actions objectively proves beneficial.

Another loop I find myself stuck in pertains to the future, rather than the past. These are thoughts tied to strong urges, scenarios where I envision myself saying or doing something specific to a particular person. These thoughts circulate repeatedly in my mind, and I remain trapped in the loop until I express those words or carry out the necessary action.

Reading the Quiet Moments Between Life’s Changes

Life changes from time to time, but in between these changes are long periods where things stay the same. And if you're not happy with your life or how things are going, then these periods can seem like forever. I always thought of time as not being my friend at all.

I was always racing against it, losing it, or wasting it. And there was never enough of it. But in the last ten years, I've learned to work with it more.

I still often don't feel like I've got enough time to do everything, but I'm managing it better now. In the last ten years, my life, for the most part, has been changing in a good way, and there have been some, what I would call landmark changes, mixed in with other smaller changes. But first, I want to talk about the times in between.

Because the spaces in between the changes are important to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, this time helps me get used to the changes that have happened. Although it's very difficult for me to be patient in this part of the process.

As soon as I have change for the better in one area of my life, I instantly want change in the other areas too. But that's not how change works for me. So even though I think I'm ready for more change, I've found that I do need time to settle into it and get comfortable with it.

And this could take months and, for some things, even years. This "waiting" period also helps me get ready for the next change. Some change needs to be prepared for.

So now I need to talk about the changes. There are different kinds of changes that happen in my life, and they can be put into three categories. The first and easiest kind is an opportunity for change that comes to me out of the blue, without me doing anything.

This happened to me quite a few years ago. I was in a job that I didn't like that wasn't going anywhere, and suddenly I got a call offering me a better job. I didn't even have to think about it, I just knew it was the right thing to go for.

The second type of change is change that I have planned for. But of course, you never really know if something is going to happen until you do it. My wife and I wanted to move house, but we weren't really sure if we would be able to afford it.

And there were a few moments when we thought it wasn't going to happen. But we reached a point in our preparations and decided to go for it, and we were successful. The third change is something that is not planned and just starts spontaneously, just like this YouTube channel.

I haven't had the time or the motivation to do anything new for a long time. But the idea hit me one day, and I really felt like it would be a good thing for me to do. Starting something by myself and taking the initiative to do it in order to bring about change in my life had to feel right.

If change is forced too much by my own will and desire, then it never works for me. These three kinds of change have two things in common. First of all, there is an element of risk.

They involve me taking a chance. And secondly, they involve me needing to trust that things will work out for the best.