I woke up this morning and I just hated everything. Lara Croft, Tomb Raider

New Years is very much a time when people to tend to rush to make changes in their lives so it should come as no surprise that one of the top YouTube search results this past week was “how to change your life in 2022”.

Is it understandable that people would want to make changes after the stress and confinement of the last two years?

Absolutely.

Is it healthy to examine your life from time to time and assess what is going well and what just isn’t working with a view to making changes?

Heck yes.

Is it wise to start bashing down the walls of your house without a clear renovation plan?

You see my point.

And yet that is exactly what many people do – in their haste to escape their misery they turn a blind eye to the many good aspects of their lives and focus only on what isn’t working.

And once they head down this path the ‘thing’ that they have labelled as being the root cause of their unhappiness just seems to grow larger and more odious and more unbearable by the minute to the point that this is literally all they can think about until one day they snap and out comes the metaphorical sledgehammer.

If you are sitting there nodding your head right now, you know what I am talking about.

But if living with a problem no longer seems possible and ‘blowing up your life’ to escape it is not a viable option, what other alternative is there?

In short, is there a way to work on making changes that will enrich other areas of your life in such a way that the situation you are obsessing over (yes obsessing) is no longer your primary focus, or at the very least becomes tolerable until sufficient time has elapsed for you to formulate an effective plan to change your circumstances and take the necessary steps to enact it?

And, most importantly, is it possible to do all of this without losing your perspective regarding all of the good things that you actually do have going for you in your life so that you can make wise decisions regarding what to keep and what to change?

In other words, how can you make significant changes in your life and still manage to ‘count your blessings’ at the same time?

This paradoxical question is one that I have spent time pondering over the last two years and one that seems to be becoming increasingly poignant as the new world ecosystem takes shape all around us, for as much as it is a mistake to try to cling to a way of life that no longer serves us, we also need to avoid ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ as we try to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.

After all, how do you change your life for the better during a time when circumstances around you (and around the world) are in an unending state of flux?

Perhaps the simple answer is that you don’t.

Perhaps the challenge of the next phase of this journey is simply to find a way to appreciate what you have and learn to take each day as it comes.

Perhaps the most effective way to change your life in 2022 is to simply to learn to embrace the idea that when the world is changing rapidly and unpredictably the greatest gift you can give yourself is the ability to enjoy the ride.