7 Powerful Ways I'm Changing My Life To Become A Better Me.

I've decided I'm changing my life, once and for all.

I’ve had enough. I’m changing my life. I’m set on it. By telling the world, I’m putting it out into the universe, and it’s going to feckin happen.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

The clock is ticking.

Do you ever look at your life and feel miffed that you haven’t done more?

Since my Dad passed a few weeks ago, that has been an underlying feeling that I can’t shake off.

When a parent passes, you feel very mortal. Suddenly, there is no endless time ahead of you to do everything you want in life. The clock begins to tick very loudly, and all the things you had thought of doing “one day” seem to be running away from you at a speed of knots.

I always wanted to travel. To see the world. To have a campervan. To have a big family. To have more dogs. My own field. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to ever get a new TV, let alone have even half of my dreams come true.

So I’ve decided I won’t wait for life ever again. From now on, if I feel like doing something, and it won’t harm anyone else, I will make bloody well sure I do it.

My life is changing because I’m sick of having regrets and “what-ifs.”

No more.

I look back across my entire 20s with deep regret - a blur of alcohol, drugs, stupid decisions and domestic violence. The only good things to come out of that time were my two (now adult) oiks. My 30s, I spent repenting for my part in the drama of my 20s, recovering, and trying to be the epitome of a responsible and reformed character who didn’t do stupid shit any more. Now, in my mid-forties, I realise that half my life I have spent being defined by being miserable and abused or by being embarrassed and trying to fit in.

While there are some things I definitely do not want to do ever again (alcohol, for example) and some things I want but will likely not have (more kids), I do need to start regaining some vision past survival and look towards thriving instead. I want to have some more fun in life. I want to change my life. If I don’t do it now, I never will.

I’m looking forward from now on.

Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

Funding my life changes

My financial situation is not great, but it has never been, and I’m still here kicking and screaming, so I won’t let that stop me. I’m dragging my ass out of debt and have no plans to go backwards in that department. I’m holding my head up high and working myself out of poverty.

I don’t want a “proper” job - I’m happy being a writer and a dog behaviourist, working for myself. The economy is a wreck for businesses such as mine - when people struggle to buy food, a dog behaviourist is low, low, low down the list of people’s priorities. My bills have gone up along with everyone else’s, so I’ll need to get inventive on how I can scale to live better than hand-to-mouth.

I’m determined to make the life I want for myself while doing something worthwhile and helpful that I love. If I don’t want to be skint forever, then only I can make that shift in my life.

In my career plan for next year and beyond, I get to do two things:

1. Help dogs and their humans live a happy, confident and good life through my 121s and writing.

2. Earn enough to live on.

Sounds simple. So I’m doing it. I’M DOING IT. No ifs, no buts. It’s going to happen.

I’m being educated in different directions and subjects, elevating myself and scaling my business so that this time next year, I’ll be higher up the professional ladder and writing better stuff too.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

I’m ringing the changes.

I didn’t know it then, but I started this process when I met my partner a couple of years ago after being single for about seven years.

I’d been living as a hermit, leaving the house only to work or to buy my and my Nan’s food shopping. Though the oiks and I had a few holidays in a caravan or a tent, we always went to the same place and didn’t do much else.

I had a very safe and secure little bubble. We were a gang of three plus pets, and nobody was ever allowed into our circle except two of my daughter’s friends, who had become like extended family.

Perhaps keeping our world small was a survival mechanism after what I had gone through in my 20s, but no (wo)man is an island. At least not forever, anyway. Trusting someone new had always been hard, but I instantly felt at ease with my partner.

Through my partner insisting on “doing stuff,” I started going out and about more, seeing more places, and doing more things that wouldn’t have been on my radar had I still been alone.

Losing Dad when he was so young, just 70 (and only 26 years older than me,) has compounded my way of thinking.

So now I will stop playing small and safe - If I don’t believe in myself, who will? I’ll find ways to make the things I want to do happen, by hook or by crook.

You only have one life, at least in this consciousness, and there is only a certain amount of time in which to live it. Nobody else is going to live it for you so stop waiting for permission to do so!

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

This is my year

I know everyone says, “This year is MY year.” You see lycra-clad, cigarette-smoking, drunk people proclaiming it every single year, every December, for their entire bloody lives and never actually doing anything about it … But this year IS going to be my year. I’m screaming it loud and proud with determination, and it IS going to happen like this:

• I’m losing a stone and a half and will be 9st 7lb by the end of next year, and being damn feckin sexy with it.

• I’m saying “yes” to more things, even if they make me nervous.

• I’m saying “no” a damn sight more too.

• I’m earning good money from my writing instead of scrabbling for pocket change.

• I’m climbing the professional ladder by finishing my second level 6 behaviour course and becoming a clinical animal behaviourist.

• I’m getting my health sorted out and putting an end to adeno pain and restless leg problems.

• I’m putting money away for my dream campervan, which I am buying over the next few years, to see everything I want to see - and I’m taking the dog, the oiks and the partner with me too if they want to come.

⬆️ I started that little list by writing sentences like “I’m going to lose a stone” or “I’m going to earn good money” and then told myself off. FFS, I’m ALREADY on that path, not “going to be” on that path. ⬆️

So, I guess part of what is changing in me is my mindset. I’m doing this shit. Not just thinking about it.

It’s easy to spout what the gurus and coaches tell you about manifestation and envisioning yourself as having this or that, and feeling how you will feel once you get there and all that crap. But deciding you are already on your way to getting it is entirely a new concept to me, and I’m a stubborn cow, so now it’s happening, and that is that, full stop, end of story.

I’m rolling up my sleeves because enough is enough.

What are you doing to change YOUR life this year? Or are you happy as you are? Drop me a comment and tell me.

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Today’s Sub Stats:

I promised that I would let you see what a real Substack looks and grows like when it does not belong to one of the Substack superstars.

They make it look so easy, don’t they?

It’s hard not to get discouraged when you see them gain another 1000 subs just for hitting the space bar. But by showing you an average stat screenshot, it might just help you know that it’s not so simple to earn stacks of cash overnight or have 8 million subscribers in a matter of months.

And when you are writing for the love of it, which is what this particular newsletter is for me (my dog one is my work one), it is just nice to have anyone reading at all.