I have to be honest, I almost didn’t send this LIFEies out. Some of the ways to change your life below are not my style or anything I would advocate. Then I thought, I don’t have all the answers. Maybe a reader would make an unorthodox change that I would not and have success.
However, I still get to share my summary of the best ways to change (read on for the others):
—Make mundane changes in your life—turn off the tv, read a different style of book, try something new.
—Focus on helping others. Studies abound on how this one thing can change your perspective on life. I always say: “if we all threw our problems on the table we would take our own back.”
—Break your routines. Get up at 3:30 am and work out. Finish that project that has been languishing.
—Change your goals. I am a huge fan of reviewing and changing goals when they are no longer impactful.
Enjoy the rest.
Rule #11 from my book The Fantastic Life: The Growth Paradigm
The best part of controlling your growth is that YOU control it. Whether you need to shake things up with an unorthodox change or just need to commit to the goals you already have, you get to decide where you grow and how.
13 Unorthodox Ways To Completely Change Your Life
By: Corey Savage
1. Start with mundane changes
Sometimes it’s not easy to make big changes from the get-go. So start small by making seemingly mundane changes to your life. Try listening to different genre of music, try different hobbies, change how you spend your free time, change your posture, expose yourself to strange new ideas through books and websites, etc. Making these small changes can snowball and lead to bigger changes—this method certainly worked for me.
2. Read biographies
Maybe your worldview is limited. Try to read biographies of men from the past to gain a perspective into what their passions were, how they carried themselves in everyday life, and how they went about striving for their goals. You can feel motivated, learn life lessons, or get new ideas about what you would like to do in your life.
3. Do the opposite of what you normally do
“Do you know what the definition of insanity is? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
If you ever watched the Seinfeld episode, then you know exactly what this is about. Start doing the opposite of what you’d normally do. If you usually put off work, start doing it right away from now on. If you usually let people walk all over you, start standing up for yourself. If you cower in fear of approaching a girl, do the approach before you get all the crazy thoughts that will stop you from doing so. You can only change when you start to challenge the auto-pilot within you.
4. Write a list what you fear and defeat them
Instead of writing down lame goals that you hope to achieve in the distant future, try listing your greatest fears instead. You can often learn more from your fears than you do with your desires.
Do you fear being alone for the rest of your life? Do you fear being looked down upon by other people? Do you fear that you might die without any legacy to call your own? Do you fear that you won’t reach your potential? Do you fear that people will judge you if you were to be assertive? Write them all down and dedicate yourself to conquering them one by one. Once you conquer them all, you’ll be fearless and nothing will stop you from living your life under your own terms.
5. Escape the West
The West has long been corrupted with feminism, homosexuality, multiculturalism, and PC culture. Wondering why your life is miserable while living in some SJW cesspool is like being in a prison and wondering why living conditions are so awful.
Get out of your diseased society for an extended travel or just leave for good. If you don’t have anything to look forward to in your so-called home country, then you only have a better life to look forward to elsewhere.
6. Go live in the wild
Perhaps it’s not enough to escape just from the West. The world as a whole is becoming increasingly infected with progressivism, globalism, modern technology, and other forms of antiphysical degeneracy, so It might not be so crazy to consider living in the wild.
Men don’t become strong and masculine by living in some cushy urban centers with Starbucks and air-conditioned offices. Men were meant to survive and thrive by building, enduring, and fighting. You probably don’t even realize just how comfortable and distracted you are by all the things that surround you until you abandon it all. It’s a personal desire of mine to go live in the woods or a quiet desert, away from all the inanity that our putrid society has to offer.
7. Focus on helping others
It may seem counter-intuitive to be helping others when you’re looking to help yourself. And if that’s how you think, this may be exactly what you need—especially if you’re an accomplished man who has the wisdom and resources to give. In our atomized world that is obsessed with individual pleasure and shallow gratification, altruism and serving a greater purpose is exactly the remedy that many men need.
You can choose to help men close to you, including relatives and friends, or complete strangers both online and offline. Whatever you choose to do, be sure to do it through your genuine desire to bring value to the other person’s life unlike many in the West who do it out of their ‘holier-than-thou’ narcissism.
8. Hop off the fence
Some people are too fixated with being impartial and neutral for the sake of being on the side of truth, reason, or whatever. Being neutral will not get you anywhere in life and you will remain as a nobody. To live, you sometimes have to throw your lot in. I myself am a nihilist at the core, but I know that such is not a life any man should strive for. And it is for that reason I’ve picked up a cause that will push me forward.
9. Break your routines
Does everyday seem the same? If so, then it’s probably due to the fact that you’re too comfortable with your established script. If you don’t like how your life is stuck in a loop, break out by smashing your routines. Try new things that make you uncomfortable, and avoid things that you numb yourself with—it’s the only way out. You’ll be surprised by just how much of a world there is out there for you to discover and experience.
10. Live like a monk
Western consumerism and affluence is toxic to the masculine spirit. All the material comforts afforded by our society turn us weak and complacent, feminizing us in the process, and they shut off our drive for new challenges. Our society never ceases to turn us into mindless and distracted slaves that serve the interests of corporations and governments.
So instead, try living a minimalist life for a while where you only spend money on bare minimum needs while shunning all the mindless pleasures that bring no value to your life. Deprivation will teach you. Experience what it is like to live without desires and distractions, and you just might be amazed how different life feels.
11. Ditch the people who drag you down
They say you’re an average of the five people you spend most time with. It might be worthwhile to examine the kind of people you spend time with. If they’re losers, they will infect you with their loser mentality. If they’re whiners, they’ll turn you into a whiner. If they’re weak and unmotivated, they will sap your own energy. You see the pattern?
I had one friend whom I kept around for a long time out of misguided sense of loyalty. The only reward I got was having us reinforce each other’s loserdom. I’m not friends with him anymore and I hope he’s doing well, but I’m glad I lost him.
12. Take more risks and live dangerously
I have a theory that ennui and meaninglessness that plague our modern societies is the direct result of living a life without danger. Let’s face it, our lives in the West are just too safe and too comfortable; is it any wonder that so many men today are addicted to gambling, drugs, and video games as a result?
To change that, be stupid (but not too stupid): take more risks in life.
13. Change your goals
The problem for you could be what you least expect: your goal. Perhaps your goal is not something you truly want. Maybe it’s a goal you’ve been conditioned to believe is important. Your goal can even be supremely idiotic and you might not even realize it now. I myself had several goals that I later abandoned when I realized how foolish they were.
It’s not always a good idea to have a single, grand goal and devote your life to it, “believing” in yourself that you will eventually actualize it. No, that’s foolish in our fast changing times. You wouldn’t bet your entire savings on a single investment, so why would you do that with goals? If you’re a slave to your dream, take a good look at yourself, take a good look at what you’re after, and take a good look at yourself again. Maybe it’s a supreme goal that you are fully capable of, maybe not. Only you can tell.