How to live life the easy way

There is an easy way and a hard way to live life; and interestingly, the difference between these two has surprisingly little to do with external circumstances.

So often we assume that we need to change the external situation to be happy. We think “If only I had a better job, different government, more sun….. THEN I would be happy” If being happy involves changing the government, our job, other people, or the weather, we are setting ourselves some very big obstacles to getting there! And then one of two things tends to happen. We either put loads of energy into trying to change something that is very difficult to change; or, we give up and assume we can never be happy.

The key to living life the easy way is to identify what it is we can change, and what we can’t. And then direct our energy into the things we CAN change.

When you want something to be different in your life, try asking yourself:

“Can I actually change this?”

If not, “What DO I have influence over?”

Generally we have most influence over ourselves, our choices and actions, and our state of mind. We have very little influence over other people, and trying to change other people tends not to work out too well! And as our influence over the government, world events etc tends to be small, we will get further in changing things if we focus on what WE can do rather than worrying about what others are not doing.

You might think you don’t have influence over your state of mind, but you do! Here are two simple ways of discovering this.

·         Move, do some exercise, go for a walk, do something fun; and check out how differently you feel afterwards.

·         Think about someone you are fed up with, and look for 3 good things about them. How does that change how you feel about them?

There are many things in life we have no control over, but we ALWAYS have control over how we respond to them.