Want to Change the World? Start with Yourself!

A practical guide on what to do when you feel you got out of balance

It’s been a while since my last update. Have been going through some big changes in the meantime giving me enormous amounts of things to think and eventually write about, but – as it frequently happens – you get this problem of choice. What is going to be the following subject that I’d like to write about?

And then this one somehow came up quite naturally… ‘Begin with changing yourself if you want a better world around you’ might sound very cliché, but is not a bit less true because of it. This simple rule applies in my opinion to one’s career as well as personal life very well. 

If you turn to coaching, for instance, or are busy with personal development in some other ways, you would hear it rather often that it’s all not so much about what happens around as how you react to it and what you think about it. If you cannot change the situation, change your attitude to it and it’ll get better or will be solved by itself this way or another.

Though in general this topic seems to be of a more psychological nature, spiritual even, if you will, but the practical application of it I suggest here might be a good guideline for those who are, like me, convinced that by harmonizing your inner world your life somehow starts getting better. It cannot but also do good to your career if you learn to notice and register these mood changes and learn how to effectively deal with them.
 

A lot of things people frequently report regretting are things they do or say in anger, out of hurt feelings or revenge. Well, maybe you do find your boss or a colleague an asshole and would sometimes feel the urge to let them know it, but before shouting out the worst things at them, mind this great saying I literally translated from Russian ‘think twice before spitting into a well, you might just as well need to still get your drinking water form it’ implying that broken relationships are difficult to fix.

Call it magic, but have you ever experienced anyone willing to do you wrong while you were smiling your shiniest smile and being all happiness? On the other hand, when you go out with a big frown on your face, slouched posture, feeling blue, sad or irritated, you’d probably notice all kinds of misfortunes come your way, starting with a flat tire, missed train or unheard of rudeness of a cashier.
 

Without going too deep into why this happens and whether or not it could just be a not scientifically proven coincidence, let’s just assume that’s how it goes. Consequently, this means you could influence how much good or bad luck you attract and take your own responsibility for it.

This might be more of a female thing, obviously affected by (monthly) hormonal swings, but I think that men would recognize having those days too, when things are falling our of your hands, nothing would work out and bad luck and misfortunes seem to be haunting you. Or even worse, the days when you feel angry and annoyed and at some point would actually like to kick somebody’s ass… Well, you can’t expect much positive feedback from the rest of the world then, can you? In this case it should be a sign there’s something not okay with your inner world and that it might need a little adjustment. If I starting feeling like mentioned above, I’d say to myself ‘and now we need to go and neutralize this dangerous bomb called Anna’. Advised by a smart book once, I made a list of things that I know can help me harmonize my inner world in order to also make the world around me nicer. Please find my ‘recipe’ below and feel free to borrow ideas or get inspired by it.

1. Take a power nap or go to bed very early. This one is very simple: in a rested body there’s only space for a rested (read: positive) mind.

2. Have a nice long walk outside, alone or with someone nice (and preferably not too talkative J). The combination of moving (yay, some endorphin for free!) and changing scenes can have an unexpectedly distracting, calming and pacifying effect on you.

3. Go running. If you have never done it in your life, start building it up really slowly and gradually, but give it a chance. If you get into it in a way that it’ll really become your habit, you can even notice some ‘addiction’ affect rising up. But don’t worry – those are of rather ‘harmless’ addictions!

4. Yoga + meditation are my own top of the list means to get in balance again, but that is very personal. I’d say: give yoga a try one day if you haven’t done so yet, whether you are a girl or a guy (yes, yoga for men is uprising and winning more and more popularity!). I could talk for long hours about its benefits, but let it be the topic of another post.

5. Clean your world! And with that I mean cleaning in the broader sense of the word, both physically and digitally. Start tidying up your desk or your living room. Wash your windows. Have a look in your closet and garden or your car and your handbag (yeah, ladies, our handbags, they speak tons about their owners). Maybe the desktop of your computer or folders need a little or a major cleanse too? Have you ever thought of how many unnecessary contacts you still have in your phonebook or people you don’t have contact with in your Facebook friends list / Twitter followers / to be continued? Backing those up if necessary and then deleting gives such a liberating feeling! Throw away, sell or give to charities some stuff you are not using any more – it could actually make someone happy and grateful! In other words, make room for new things and people in your life by getting rid of those you don’t seem to need any more (be careful not to hurt somebody’s feelings though if you decide to for example unfriend them).
 

6. Go offline, like completely offline, don’t touch your smartphone, laptop, say good-bye to social media and switch off the radio and TV. Try even not talking to anyone for a day or a part of it. And try to embrace and enjoy the silence. You’d be amazed to find out how often we just create some noise at the background and stop noticing it. This one could be a very resourceful experience!

7. Go dancing. Even if you have never danced in your entire life, just go somewhere with loud music and crowds of people in the swinging mood and get yourself moving. Doesn’t matter what it looks like, people are not watching (most are busy looking into their smartphones anyway). You’d notice your troubles vanish tune after tune and your bad energies dissolving leaving you in a rejuvenated state of freshness.

8. Go shopping. Uhm, this one is to be taken with care, financial care especailly. But – in reasonable amounts – this one sure works great by me.

9. Meet up and talk to a good friend and/or do one or more of the things from this list together. Friendship + sharing help balance your world like few other things in this world.

10. Do nothing. Just nothing. From time to time it’s a great way to recharge, unplug and recalibrate.

Those are my own top 10 ways to rebalance myself and I encourage you to make a list of your own, to really put it down and look into it every time you notice you need to start feeling better again.
 

Do you have your best ways to deal with ‘getting out of balance’? Would be amazing if you’d like to share them in the comment!

Year 2013: Summing It All Up

Next to the charming X-mas cards, warm and cozy family and friends dinners and lovely wishes for the coming 2014 this nice and sweet December time is all about, one cannot but come across all kinds of reflections on the old year, top-something lists of the best and most memorable moments, varying from sports, the news, television, radio hits to the year’s overview in pictures and events for each of your Facebook friends. And sometimes it does go too far if you ask me, but given the fact that turn of the year has some certain kind of magic to it (at least to me it still does), this summing a year up seems like a reasonable and useful thing to do. As it also just feels good to do so, let me follow my fellow bloggers and all other people who deem this end-of-the-year ritual important and reflect on my 2013 in this very final end-of-the-year post.

This year started out in big uncertainty for me as I quitted my old job in the last days of 2012 and was feeling both sad and excited about it at the same time. As I’m a kind of person who seeks security, it was not quite encouraging to think I’d stay without steady incomes for a while (aside from some unemployment benefits I could count on for some time). On the other hand, all endings mean beginnings of something new, which is why I was elated to a certain extent. And as long as after 3 months of job-hunting I was still unemployed, it made me reconsider how much I disliked my former job and, under slightly adjusted employment conditions and modified responsibilities we got back together with my old employer, which was a great decision after all as far as I can evaluate it now. I’m still working there part-time as a market researcher. This might not be the work of my life and my career has been standing somewhat still this whole year, but I feel productive and get a chance to carry out some really cool things at work from time to time, while still having enough free time to enjoy other nice things in life (and thanks God my boyfriend has his job by the way, otherwise this half-freedom wouldn’t be that very affordable financially). And as to my professional self, which is why I’m writing this blog in the first place, I’m still searching and still enjoying the process…

Another great thing that happened this year was the revival of my blog, the one I started a couple of years back as a means to reflect on my ‘being a late starter on the job market (in a country I emigrated to)’ and then suspended successfully after just one post… Well, this year I had so many career-related subjects I got truly interested in, found out a lot about and couldn’t but share with the rest of the world that I just decided to dust off my good old blogger account and start writing again. Judging by the reactions I received and most of all by the therapeutic effect this revival has had on me, the blogging has got to go on in 2014 as well. One post per month seems also like a frequency easy to keep up with.

In 2013 I also travelled a lot and quite far, like never before, spending most of my savings on trips :). Ah well, you only live once, right? I’ve been to my birth country twice, went skiing in Austria for the first time in my life, flew to Prague all alone, visited two of the Dutch Wadden Islands, Terschelling and Texel, which I never did – shame on me – in almost 8 years I’ve lived in the Netherland, but most exciting of these all was my Grand American Journey along the West Coast of the USA. These trips alone have made my 2013 a year never to forget, full of exciting memories and moments to cherish.

 

My next big discovery of the year – can it still go any further? – was yoga. It’s not like I only encountered yoga this year, but it’s the depth of it I began to discover. Starting with an inspiring yoga weekend in July, I found out there was more to yoga than just an ordinary practice once a week in the neighborhood’s gym. I started looking for an in-depth training or a course and found one. In October I got enrolled in a yoga teacher training that I am still enormously excited about it and have managed to build up my own independent yoga practice so far. I’m not sure yet whether there’s anything I’m going to do with it career- or money-making-wise, but I already gave my first yoga class to a friend of mine and she said to have liked it. To be honest, I found it a pretty exciting experience myself, so who knows what the future in a role of a yoga teacher will bring me…

Though I’ve been job-hunting for quite a while without much success as I pointed out earlier, I have found a new job eventually. I’m starting as a tutor of English for the secondary and high school students on the very last day of this year. And even though it is a small part-time job I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills from, it’s also trying out something new, something I used to be good at in the past and something I hope to again enjoy doing. Boy, I’m thrilled about my first lessons – I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.

As this whole blog is about searching for vitality and most possible happiness one could derive from an occupation, preferably the one that could also make you a proper living, I cannot quite say I’m there yet. But nonetheless, reflecting on 2013 I can say that I’ve done a lot of exhilarating new things, met some great and inspiring people and managed to expand my comfort zone more than in years before. I hope this could be a good example to some: only trying things out you can figure out what’s best for you and not being afraid to let go of the things that are not. Probably the most important thing I came to realize this year is that happiness comes from within and you and only you are the one responsible for making yourself happy. Looking for stuff in life that makes you feel good, being grateful for the nice little things that are already there and concentrating on what’s positive and good rather than on what’s missing makes a huge difference. Absolutely grateful for this wonderful year full of great insights, revelations and experiences that have helped me grow. 

Have you also experienced some great things this year that have made you grow too? I’d be excited to find out! Thanks for being with me in 2013 and I wish you all a great and prosperous, healthy and successful 2014!