This is an exciting time for me. I’ve been slowly building a better life for myself and I’m now seeing a lot of incredible things come to fruition. Here are some steps I’ve taken to get to this point.
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve done is to keep my sights set high. It’d be easy to settle for something ordinary and “safe”, especially with all the challenges and emotional issues I’ve had. However, I chose instead to dream big and then chase after those dreams with everything I’ve got. Knowing where I want to go has allowed me to work backwards and develop a plan to get there, and working on that plan a bit each day has both taken me closer to my goal and put me into a great present life situation. I’m sure that I wouldn’t be where I’m at now if I had opted for a more conventional path, so I’m glad that I dreamed bigger than that.
In the previous paragraph, I mentioned another critically important thing: working hard to get what I want. I’ll never get where I want to be if I don’t work for it. A lot of the work has been extremely hard for me; I lost track of the number of times I felt like I was stuck or regressing, and there were a few occasions in which I nearly completely abandoned my self-improvement journey. Somehow, though, I always stuck it out, and now I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor. And as I continue moving up in life, I look forward to seeing the increasing benefits of my hard work and the application of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Of course, I’ve had a lot of help in getting to this position. I’ve gotten a lot of ideas and life hacks from reading as much as I can on a number of subjects. Since there are people who have already done some of the things I want to do, it helps to read their stories and see what worked for them. Everyone has their own way of doing things and some highly successful people have strategies that are completely different than those of other people in similar positions. By reading a lot of books and absorbing many different perspectives on the same subjects, I can get an idea of what’s out there and what might work well for me, my plans, and my situation. Plus reading a lot of ideas from a lot of different people gives me a much lower chance of becoming a blind follower of any one person or philosophy. I try to find some value in as many places as I can while also keeping in mind that nobody has all the answers, a practice that has served me well since I started it.
Lastly, I’ve used my free time (and occasionally some time I’ve requested off from work) to explore my corner of the world, see what’s out there, and make myself into the person I’ve always wanted to be. Among other things, this includes trying a lot of different things, traveling to several places (some new to me and others I’ve visited before), and regularly doing fun things with cool people around me. Saving money, effectively managing my time, and getting my priorities straight has allowed me to do all of this. While I’m in the middle of something, I try my best to quiet my mind and be present in the moment. This includes avoiding thoughts such as “I have to go back to work in a few days” or “This will be over soon”. It’s easy to avoid those kinds of thoughts when I’m in the middle of an engaging activity but it’s much more difficult when I’m doing nothing. However, it’s in those moments of doing nothing that this exercise is most valuable. Enjoying the feeling of being free to relax without letting outside distractions creep in gives me a glimpse of how my life will be when I can do this all the time. And making good use of the time I have now has gotten me much closer to where I want to be in life.
I’ve slowly put all of this together over the past year and now I’ve developed a routine that has continually made my life better. It took a long time to get in the groove because I initially just stumbled into this stuff and had never done anything like this before, so I had to tread water for a while until I started to get the hang of it. I’m still amazed when I think of all the positive progress I’ve made in such a short time. Last year was much better for me than the previous year, and this year has been even better than last year. Now that I’ve learned a lot and know how to learn more useful self-improvement stuff, I think I’ll progress faster than I ever have before. I’m looking forward to the next chapter of my life and what adventures it has in store for me. I’m ready for them.