How to Make Big Life Changes?

[Gilberto de Piento]

Do you have any suggestions for how to make big life changes? I'm naturally very risk averse and I can never seem to do anything but make incremental improvements. I'm also very averse to commitment. I am perfectly described by this statement: “If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.” - Anthony Robbins

Examples of desired changes: change in location, change in job, committing to a relationship.

[Tyler9000]

"Risk averse" comes down to fear. Be honest with yourself about your fears. Then relentlessly brainstorm ways to mitigate the risk of them coming to fruition. After that, assume your worst fear happens and gameplan how you will respond. The key is not to run from fear, but to see it as a foe to be outmaneuvered. In my experience, the real world is way more forgiving than your own imagination.

There's also an issue of perspective. For example, perhaps you see changing jobs as a big life change. After job hopping a few times, I saw the same thing as a completely impermanent incremental improvement. The DW points out that sometimes it's helpful to envision the ultimate goal rather than to stress about the next step. If the first stepping stone is wobbly, that's just a sign to find a better one while still moving in the right direction.

[teewonk]

Many big changes are the result of many incremental improvements. If you figure out what little changes will move you toward a big change, you'd be well on your way.

Other big changes are the result of a "crowbar maneuver." The basic idea is to hurl yourself toward the change and then adapt your life to it. For example, if you want to move, do all your research and move within the day, and then figure out the details. If you want to change your job, track down and apply to 25 opportunities. If you want a relationship, find a community of people that's likely to have some good matches for you, and ask someone out within some short time-frame.

It's good to find where between these two you fall. You need to do some legwork to know what you want, but don't get analysis paralysis.

[Dragline]

Hard to come up with really practical suggestions, when this is mostly mental as the T9000 points out (he's actually AI, did you guys know that? )

But one concept is "burning the ships". It comes from what Cortez is said to have done to prevent his men from considering retreating. Of course he was a hard ass.

In more practical terms, it means eliminating the possibility of doing something "the old way". So if you wanted to change your diet, you make sure that you no longer keep any of the bad food in the house. Trying not to watch TV? -- get rid of the device. Smart phone diet? Stop carrying it around all the time or at least turn off all alerts.

For larger things, often the first step is publicly stating an intention and then taking other steps forward. The idea is to focus on eliminating the things that you will no longer be doing in your new life.

Change your job? Start telling people you plan on quitting soon.

Location? Start working on selling your house or not renewing your lease, getting rid of stuff you won't be taking with you.

Relationships are more tricky, because its not just you -- may involve moving in together or doing some other co-mingling of resources. But for gods sakes, don't waste money on a tandem bicycle. It also could involve ceasing some activity or habit that the other person doesn't care for and picking up something you do together instead. You have to communicate and involve the other person in some way to make this effective.

[DSKla]

Maybe you can ask yourself which of those risks is a "risk of ruin." If the potetial loss would ansolutely ruin your life, avoid it. If the loss is recoverable, or only mildly significant, and the reward is potentially high, take the risk.

Easy example: losing 100% of your assets could be a risk of ruin (assuming you have a lot of assets, as opposed to, say, $1,000--then there is no risk of ruin since it's easily recovered). Whereas losing 10% will not ruin you by any stretch.

Now apply that beyond financial situations. Will committing to a relationship ruin your life if it ends up being terrible? I'd say no. Would moving ruin your life? Would changing jobs ruin your life? Seems like most of these situations fall into the recoverable category by my estimation, and they could even pan out positively.

Cliff notes: weigh the risk and reward. If the risk is not ruinous and the reward is potentially high, why not take the risk?

[Tyler9000]

(he's actually AI, did you guys know that? )

01100011 01110010 01100001 01110000

I'm sorry, Dragline. This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

01100011 01101100 01101111 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110000 01101111 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101111 01110010 01110011

[jennypenny]

How sad is it that DH and I both knew immediately what that said, and what movie it was from.

[Tyler9000]

How sad is it that DH and I both knew immediately what that said, and what movie it was from.

Well done. T9K approves.

[JamesR]

@Gilberto de Piento,

Here's a couple tricks I have to making big life changes.

1) Figure out the what the worst outcome might be. Maybe even read about people that survived the worst outcome. And then decide if you can live with it.

Examples: Before getting surgery, I convinced myself that a botched version would not be significantly worse than no surgery and that I could live with it. Reduced fear of ocean sailing by reading about the most extreme versions - individuals sailing around the world in open boats, falling over board, etc.

2) Pull the trigger. "Fuck it, just do it or else I never will!"

[IlliniDave]

... I can never seem to do anything but make incremental improvements.
Examples of desired changes: change in location, change in job, committing to a relationship.

From one perspective: a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. There's often nothing wrong with making incremental progress towards larger goals.

Change for the sake of change is another matter, one which is often fool's gold.

So the things I would ask are:

-Why do you want to change your location?
-What would you look to gain in a different job?
-What relationship do you want to commit to?

In other words, by themselves the changes appear pretty superficial. If you are unhappy with your present situation, it is best to determine specifically what it is about your life situation that is awry and focus you effort on changes in those areas. Addressing those things incrementally may or may not ultimately result in relatively sudden exterior changes.

Other than going off to college and getting my first job, most all of my Big Life Changes were reactions to events/circumstances rather than something I did because I sought for Big Life Changes.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Thanks everyone, this is helpful!

[jacob]

I've made a lot of what I think many would consider big changes. (Changed countries, changed careers, changed incomes (wage, capital, profit), changed home-type, ...).

I think there are three factors that has made this [easy enough to be] possible

1) Not getting weighed down by liabilities, in particular stuff, that has to be cleared before you can make the change. Having to spend weeks or months "packing" just to move significantly lowers the odds.
2) Having the web of goals / imagination that extends to the big change. Not imagining being happy/ier after the big change makes it easier to stay in the current situation of "acceptable comfort" or "comfortable misery" as it may be. Already having the strong 'vision' also makes the big change seem smaller. It's not so overwhelming.
3) An entire life is usually determined by just a handful of big opportunities/changes. If the desire is for an interesting life, try hard not to say no. OTOH, the majority prefers predictable over interesting.

I don't see big changes as something I make. I see them as something I'm getting ready for and then jumping on when they happen.

In short, I'm setting up my environment---not 100% consistently... more like 80%---to make big changes more likely and easier to carry out when they come up. Conversely, the traditional path that most are funneled into is intended to be as predictable as possible.

[J_]

DARE to live, I would say.

And for the rest I second Jacob's reaction, don't be glued to things or situations.

I changed 4 times my job to a complete/opposite other segment of the building industry inclusive a 10 years period of civil servant, and after that I knew enough to start my own developing-business.
I changed 4 times a country in Europe to live/work in.
I divorced 22 years ago, that was not daring but deliberate/painfully choosing and is nothing I am proud of. And also not regretting it. I remairied 20 years ago.

And I am ready if there comes something in my life what fuels me.

[bad_LNIP]

Most people are risk averse. Jeff Bezos had a "regret minimization matrix" that he talked about when he was considering leaving the lucrative investment banking world to jump some crazy startup selling books online out of his garage...and I think we all know how that worked out.

He essentially said that if he was 80 years old, would he regret not making the decision to start Amazon, considering that he could always come back to the investment world in the future if it didn't work out? He said that took away a lot of the noise about is it the right time, where will the kids go to school, what about my bonus that vests in 6 months, etc....

I would add that you have to focus on success and you can't focus on failure. In fact, I wouldn't really think about failure at all. You have to really get focused on your goal/task and everything else becomes trivial. In the most extreme example, one of my teachers was a Special forces officer, and he asked our class if before going off to war, if we thought it was a good or bad idea to talk about dying. Short answer is never, ever discuss that.

In a less extreme example, I was doing some military training zip lining above water, and I suddenly thought that I would slip, lose my grip, and fall (no harness or anything)...then I looked down at the jagged rocks on the shore below me and saw it happening, and for the first time, I was paralyzed with fear. I have never been afraid of heights or water and have gone rappelling and all sorts of stuff, but for about 15 min, I was 100% sure that if I stepped off, I was going to die.

I say all that to say, focus on what you need to focus on and what you can control in the decision and life change. Focus 100% on it, execute with ruthless precision, and just stay focused on what you need to do to accomplish your task. If there is an obstacle, adapt, overcome, and get to the objective. You have to convince yourself that you can not fail and you are 100% going to win, as long as you execute. Plan B is enforcing Plan A.

[jennypenny]

A new study shows that making big changes all at once produces more change than making smaller changes one at a time. The combined changes resulted in bigger improvements across the board as compared with the improvement from incremental changes. It's the 'web of goals' idea applied to self-improvement. Interesting. It might explain why the people who go all in on ERE get there faster. Maybe it has more to do with lifestyle changes than money?

“Part of what distinguishes this work is finding such broad improvements across so many different domains, particularly given that the effect sizes were so large,” Mrazek explained. Large effect sizes signify that the results were not only statistically significant but also indicative of substantial changes. “Many of these effects were very large — larger than you tend to find in studies that focus on changing only one thing.”

article: Change by the Bundle

study: Pushing the Limits: Cognitive, Affective, and Neural Plasticity Revealed by an Intensive Multifaceted Intervention

[Sclass]

How sad is it that DH and I both knew immediately what that said, and what movie it was from.

Ok, I'm feeling pretty dumb here.

0x63 0x72 0x61 0x70

Say what? What encoding did Hal use?

[Sclass]

crap
close the pod bay doors

Ancient computer used ascii

[IlliniDave]

jp, I do think lifestyle changes for many of us are the linchpin for getting over the hump. I'm sort of the king of incremental "one thing at a time"changes and at one time thought I could effectively ease into ER while still working by slowly adapting my lifestyle to an ER posture. There's merit to that approach, it builds confidence, but it only gets a person so far--to get further I pretty much have to "just do it".

A controversial figure, but Dave Ramsey's formula involves an abrupt all-in approach.

I'm going to have to think about this. Seems like attacking a lot of inner obstacles in parallel might be a good approach for me. Maybe once a barrier goes down all walls tumble easier.

[Ego]

“Many of these effects were very large — larger than you tend to find in studies that focus on changing only one thing.”

Interesting. Now that I think about it, the really large changes I've experienced were things that I had been slowly moving toward but then... boom... a big storm occurred that was the impetus for massive change. I just made sure to raise my sails and harness the storm to propel me in the same direction I had been slowly moving before. Usually the changes came fast and furious. Retrospectively, they appear clustered. I spent some time afterward accommodating myself to the new circumstances and accommodating the new circumstances to me.

In some ways I think that the most important skill in making big changes is the ability to find opportunities in even the shittiest circumstances.

[thrifty++]

OP yes I am the same in many ways.
I think actually the more FU money you have the easier some of the types of decisions you have mentioned are. Because you have less risk exposure if the leap doesnt work out. Eg move to a new job. Hate it. So what I can just find a new one and even leave it for a while if its that bad as I can take a tiny slice from my 200k pile