When people think of changing their lives, they imagine, perhaps, a movie montage of flipping everything on its head and getting new stuff: new clothes, better hair, and if it’s a weird teen movie, they take off your glasses too. But changing your life is anything but loud and grand; it’s definitely not like movies portray. It’s quiet, very quiet. It involves making tiny changes every single day and experiencing occasional failures. It’s about choosing to get up 10 minutes earlier, switching your morning routine, and adding a new color to your wardrobe. It’s about making small changes that might go unnoticed until you wake up one day and realize that your life is completely different, and you cannot recognize the person you see in the mirror in a good way.
It’s easy to expect that as soon as you decide to make a change in your life, you should be immediately different, but it doesn’t work that way. There will be good days and moments of relapse. You will fail a lot, maybe cry too, and try to give up. Changing your life is not about cute journals and new appearances; it’s about daring to sit with yourself and dig until you find out the source of the pain. It’s about being brave enough to tell yourself the truth about the role you have played in your misery. It’s about allowing the wound of your digging to sting without trying to suppress the pain. See, I could sit here and tell you that it’s easy and that it’s going to be smooth sailing, but that would be a lie. It’s not; it’s really hard and emotionally tasking. You will be tired a lot, but it is the single greatest and most rewarding thing you could do for yourself. It is the height of self-love.
Changing your life is hard, but so is staying the same. So is waking up day after day, knowing deep down that you could be better, knowing that you are made for so much more than you have settled for, knowing that you haven’t even scratched the surface of your potential. It is up to you to choose which hardship you are willing to live with. I hope you change your life in a way that makes you excited to wake up every day. I hope you love yourself enough.
