How to Change Your Life: 5 Tips

Everyone sometimes thinks about changing their life: moving, finding a new job, or giving up harmful habits.

However, it is not as easy to make these changes happen. Change can be scary: the path to change seems too long and exhausting. But it can be made easier — here’s how.

What does it mean to change your life Psychology Professor John Norcross of the University of Scranton writes in his book “Self-Help That Works” that almost all changes in life that people strive for can be divided into four categories:

1. Getting rid of harmful habits. This can be the desire to quit smoking, stop eating fast food regularly, giving up impulsive purchases, and much more.
2. Achieving new goals. Running a marathon, earning a million, taking 10,000 steps a day or reading a book a week – all these changes have some sort of end goal, desired result.
3. Interpersonal changes. This category includes all our desires related to other people. For example, starting a family, starting a relationship, finding friends, or improving relationships with relatives.
4. Improving the quality of life. These changes should be made when everything is good in life, but some “fine tuning” is missing – for example, wanting to better control emotions and worry less about nonsense.

Why is it so difficult to change life

It’s all in our brain, or more specifically, in the basal ganglia. They play an important role in establishing habits and automating actions. One of the functions of the basal ganglia is to conserve resources, and all new and unfamiliar actions just require increased expenditure of these resources.

Another reason why it is so hard to change life is the uncertainty that scares homo sapiens even more than negative but known consequences.

In one experiment, scientists asked volunteers to play a computer game in which they had to turn over stones. If there was a snake under the stone, the participant in the experiment received an electric shock. Throughout this time, scientists measured the physiological indicators of the volunteers and determined their stress level. It turned out that the strongest stress people felt was not when they saw the snake and knew that an electric shock was waiting for them, but in the moment of uncertainty – when they were just about to turn over the stone.

Behind every change in life, even the most desired and positive, there is always uncertainty hiding. For example, quitting harmful habits may lead to nicotine withdrawal and exclusion from the social circle of colleagues who discuss all the interesting things on breaks. And attempting to get in shape may be frightening with the possible awkwardness that will have to be experienced while getting used to the gym equipment under the watchful gaze of regulars.

But all of this can be overcome. Here are some tips on how to do it.

ADVICE #1 – Prepare a scenario

To make a change in life seem less complex and intimidating, it can be broken down into several specific actions and scenario plans. Instead of an abstract desire to “get healthy,” make a plan for what medical exams to schedule, research clinics’ websites and social media, determine which days you can go to the gym and allocate the funds for it.

Philosopher René Descartes’ method can help overcome the fear of uncertainty. The “Descartes Square” allows you to outline your life in detail that awaits you in case of a certain decision and to make your actions more specific. Divide the square into four parts and write down a question in each one.

• What will happen if it happens?
• What will happen if it doesn’t happen?
• What won’t happen if it happens?
• What won’t happen if it doesn’t happen?

Answer each question in detail and honestly. Try to make the answers as specific and close to life as possible. For example, if you plan to change your job, don’t forget about the little things like a good canteen in the new office and the opportunity to finally stop communicating with a toxic colleague. This way, the change scenario will be more realistic.

ADVICE #2 – Choose the right time

Starting a new life is really easier on Monday, and even better, with a link to some important date. New Year, birthday, first day of the month, new moon, wedding anniversary – any significant point of reference for you. It is known that on the days when some conditional period begins, people feel increased readiness for change. This is how the effect of a new start works.

Katie Milkman, a professor at the Wharton School of Business, writes in her book “How to Change” that the effect of a new start arises because people are inclined to divide their lives into episodes or chapters. And the beginning of a new life chapter – even if it’s just another workweek – creates the feeling of a clean slate. These days help a person overcome the sense that interferes with change, that they have already failed before, so it won’t work this time.

But even if you enthusiastically embark on a life change “starting Monday”, there is a high risk of soon giving up. Only 9-12% of people keep their New Year’s resolutions, made under the influence of the new start effect.

Doctor of Psychological Sciences Christina Neff believes that the reason is that with new goals and inspiration come increased expectations from oneself. She advises not to burden oneself too much: it is not necessary to try to memorize a hundred German words or run a half marathon on the first day.

It is better to take small steps and not scold oneself for failures. The harder you are on yourself, the higher the chances of giving up attempts to change.

Advisory #3 – Set Limitations

Limitations can be useful. For example, deadlines in work help overcome procrastination. You can also set deadlines for steps to change your life.

Financial obligations can also work as limitations. In one study, two thousand smokers participated in the experiment, decided to quit their harmful habit. One group of participants was required to transfer money to a bank account for six months.

The whole amount could only be received in one case: if after the experiment, the nicotine tests came out negative. Of course, under the pressure of financial obligations, people quit smoking more readily than participants in the second group who were not threatened with fines. If you have already lost hope in the fight against this harmful habit, you can organize a similar experiment and transfer money to someone you trust.

Limitations may also come from your obligations to someone. For example, during the lockdown, people trained more at home if they had obligations to their trainer, even if he only called via “Zoom” or sent messages periodically. This is also how online schools and courses work: when you need to not only complete tasks, but also submit them to the teacher, people study more diligently and quit less often.

Advice #4 – Make Changes Enjoyable

We often strive for big and beautiful goals but forget about the daily discomfort that we have to endure. It will be easier to reach the goal if you find the most comfortable and even enjoyable way for yourself.

Psychologists Ayellet Fischbach and Caitlin Woolley offered experiment participants to eat healthy or exercise more. But one group was able to choose healthy dishes or exercises to their liking, while the other was just given the most useful food and effective but boring exercises.

It is not surprising that the results in the first group were much better: the initial impulse to exercise lasted for a longer time and they chose healthy food more often.

Too much strictness towards oneself on the way to change only hinders. If you scold yourself for every pizza eaten or impulsive purchase, the desire to give up the big goal is likely to arise. Therefore, it is important to set allowances for unexpected situations: for example, allowing yourself not to go to the gym if the workday has run late.

The effectiveness of this flexible approach has been confirmed by an experiment by American scientists. Its participants were required to perform very boring tasks: entering a captcha on the website over and over again. A reward was promised for achieving the goal of 35 per day. All participants were divided into three groups. In the first, people had to do the tasks every day all week, in the second – five days out of seven. And the third group was also instructed to work throughout the week, but allowed to miss up to two days if necessary.

In the group where allowances were made, 53% of participants achieved the goal, in the second group only 26%. People from the first group, with the strictest rules, performed the worst: only 21% of participants reached the goal.

Tip #5 – Don’t Stop at What You’ve Achieved

Sometimes changing your life isn’t as hard as maintaining and preserving the results. Often people backslide only because they view changes as temporary obligations.

Stanford Business School professors Suzy Huang and Jennifer Aaker suggest treating changes in life not as actions with a final goal, but as a journey. Although it must also end, in a journey we focus more on the process than the result.

The power of this metaphor has been proven by researchers who asked experiment participants who recently achieved a goal in work or sports to think of it as “the end of a journey”. In other words, their achievement is not the final stage, but only one stop on the way forward. Participants from another group, who did not use this technique, were less likely to follow their goal, such as renewing their gym membership.

It’s important not to give up on changes in the first few months, then they will become a part of life and replace old habits. The secret of good habits lies in making them automatic.

“There are people who don’t need to give up on the cake in the refrigerator because they don’t even buy it. Or they don’t notice it because of a kind of shield in their consciousness. A person sees the cake, but instead takes fruit from the shelf because they want to eat it. The longer you ignore temptations, the stronger these shields become,” says psychologist Wendy Wood.