Change My Life, Please

Remember the old joke, “Take my wife, please”? The joke was that someone was expected to use something, namely their wife, as an example, but the turn in the joke was he was really asking the other person to literally take her. I wasn’t all that funny then, and still isn’t. The point I always wanted to ask, even as a kid I remember thinking this, why don’t you just do something about it if you don’t like her? The same is true for our lives. I often hear people say things that sound so much like, “Change my life, please!”

The point I want to make is that it is your responsibility. No one else can change your life, no one else can change my life. I used to spend great amounts of time whining about how miserable my life was. I didn’t live where I wanted, I didn’t have the money I wanted, and I wasn’t doing what I wanted. One day I realized that it was my responsibility to change these things, or shut up about them. Do I still whine sometimes? Sure!

I remember once my brother, who is thirteen years older than me, asking me what I wanted to do. I was about forty at the time. I said I hadn’t made up my mind what I wanted to do when I grew up. He said, in a tone that told me he wasn’t joking, but making a point, that I was grown up. His point? I needed to decide and stop making excuses. That was the first step in realizing that I needed to step up to the plate.

The things you want to change in your life are not going to happen by magic. No one is going to hand you whatever you want on a silver platter. You very likely are not going to win the lottery, or have an unknown rich uncle die.

Whatever you want will take some planning, at least to the point where you really know what it is you want. Then it will take some action. Without these two things, you can pretty much figure that nothing is going to change for you.

I want to make the majority of my money online and I want more freedom and the ability to travel. I have wanted these things for years, but I have only half-heartedly done anything about it.

(why is it that whenever I write the word “heartedly” the spell checker tells me it is not a word. It isn’t? Well, it is now! I decree it so!!)

Anyway, I have to do whatever it takes to make those dreams, those desires reality, or I need to give them up. That’s the only way I can change my life.

What about you? What is it you would like to change, but either expect it to fall from the sky, or haven’t really done anything about? What excuses do you give? Are you waiting to grow up? If you are reading this, you are grown up enough. Don’t say, “Change my life, please.” Say, “I am going to change my life!”