I want to run away from all?! (CONFESSION of my inner third-person)

There comes a time in most people’s lives when the life they have feels wrong. We may start to feel that we are sick of the same old job, our home which has served us well for years may feel boring and even the people in our lives start to feel irritating. We typically hear of people having a mid-life crisis, where they leave their home and family and go off with a younger person. Men may go out and buy a sports car or a motorbike, women too possibly but not so obviously. People have affairs and marriages break up. When they are asked they reply thing like “I needed some excitement in my life” or “I felt I was getting old, in a rut ad things had to change”.

People are strange we spend our lives looking for peaceful, stress – free, easy lives but when we get it – or even when we do not, when we get a regular routine that works well, we soon become bored with the “same old, same old” of our lives. So how can we ever reach a happy medium and just enjoy the life around us?

The answer is not as hard as it seems. You see these massive reactions to the boredom in people’s lives can be avoided by making small changes. If we change one thing every day we can keep our lives happy, refreshed and fulfilled, as long as it is the right thing.

To find what we need to change we need to sit and look at our life as it is at the moment. Identify the things you are not happy with and the changes you need to make, then you need to break those changes down into a plan of action with one small achievable step to do each day.

Let us say that you are not happy with your work. Firstly, you have to decide why you are not happy, is the work too challenging that it takes over your life, or maybe it is not challenging enough and you feel you are at a dead end. Maybe you are in the wrong environment or do not get along with your boss but love the work. When you have decided what the problem is then you need to decide how you can change things. If you have a good boss but feel trapped maybe you could talk to them about further training and possible advancement, if you are under pressure all the time maybe you could find ways to reduce the pressure. It is never a good idea to approach a boss saying you are overworked without evidence, so sit down one evening and estimate the work you do and the time it takes on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Have a good look to make sure you are not doing other people’s work and if you are find a way to stop doing that. However, if you really are expected to do 60 hours work in a week and have the proof, you can then talk to your boss about how you can reduce the work load.

Should you decide that for some reason you do not want to discuss this or you feel it will be badly received, or you have decided that you do not like the work environment then it is time to think about getting a different job. Again we are looking to make small changes so maybe on day one you could update your CV, on day two you may want to think about where you would like to work, on day three you can start looking for jobs to apply for. Day four write a covering letter and apply for one job, day 5 write another appropriate covering letter and apply for a second job.

All the time you are doing this you are making small changes that will improve your life in the future and stop you getting to a point where you are so displeased with your job that you just quit. In the same way you may think your work is fine but your relationship is stale. This may be due to the hours you are working. So still on a theme of changing one thing a day, sit and figure out what you think has changed since you got together and also think about how your partner’s life has changed since the beginning too.

Relationships can become very stale when children appear on the scene. Men may feel pushed out as the women fuss over the baby and attend to its needs. Women may feel that they have no life left as it is taken up with the needs of this little person who is completely reliant on them. It is very important to talk to your partner if you are feeling like either of these scenarios applies to you. You see it is very easy to think the other partner is happy playing mum or busy working. If you do not discuss your feelings how will they ever know any different?

So maybe changing one thing a day is stopping feeling sorry for yourself and asking your partner not just about their day but how they feel about their day. Sometimes something as simple as dad looking after baby while mum goes shopping, or to the hairdressers, to visit her family or friends without baby tagging on, can make mum feel better and less tied to baby, while dad gets to know the baby and see them growing up. Maybe you can all go to the park or somewhere as a family, which would also bring you all together instead of two individuals in a lonely place.

Whatever you want to change the secret of keeping your life fresh and interesting is to not let it drag you along. Look at your life every day and think about what makes you happy and what makes you bored or unhappy. Be grateful for the good in your life, the love of friends and family, the roof over your head, the security heat and warmth your home provides and the other things that make you happy. Then look at the things you do not like and think of the small things you can change to try to improve the situation.