3 Ways to Make Lasting Change in 2023

 

01.03.2022 3 WAYS TO MAKE LASTING CHANGE IN 2023 What makes life meaningful? How should I spend my limited time? Where can I find happiness? These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves when we’re considering how each new year could be different, better, or more productive. But the truth is: we don’t need specific days, perfect circumstances, or the stars to align for us to start making positive changes in our lives. Right here, right now, is as good a time as any. Here are three ways you can begin to make lasting changes in your life:   1. Become comfortable with discomfort Growth of any kind comes with a certain level of discomfort. It’s our ability to take action toward what’s most important — despite how we feel — that determines our ability to grow. 2. Process over progress In other words, let go. Let go of the results, let go of the outcomes, let go of the expectations. Decide to do something and do it. Every. Single. Day. Your efforts will compound. 3. Bigger than yourself Exercising to improve your health and well being is a fantastic goal to have. Add the determination to be alive for, say, your daughter's wedding, and your resilience in the face of adversity will sky rocket. Growth isn’t linear. We face failures, setbacks, and misfortunes. The following articles from Lion’s Roar might just help you develop the skills necessary to grow, learn, and live a more fulfilling life despite the circumstances you face.   —Chris Pacheco, Lion’s Roar A/V P.S Looking for a resource to jumpstart the New Year? I'd suggest taking a look at Lion’s Roar’s Wisdom For Well Being, a course specifically aimed at making healthful changes in your life.

Three Methods for Working with Chaos Times of chaos and challenge can be the most spiritually powerful… if we are brave enough to rest in their space of uncertainty. Pema Chödrön describes three ways to use our problems as the path to awakening and joy: go to the places that scare you, use poison as medicine, and regard what arises as awakened energy. We tell our friends of our longing to shed the huge burden we feel we’ve always carried. We suddenly are excited and feel it’s possible. We tell our friend of our inspiration and how it opens up our life. “It is possible,” we say, “to enjoy the very same things that usually get us down. We can delight in our job, delight in riding the subway, delight in shoveling snow and paying bills and washing dishes.”

The Four Points of Letting Go in the Bardo It’s when we lose the illusion of control — when we’re most vulnerable and exposed — that we can discover the creative potential of our lives. Pema Khandro Rinpoche explains four essential points for understanding what it means to let go, and what is born when we do. At times like this, if we can gain freedom from the eternal grasping onto who I am and how things are — our default mode — then we can get to the business of being. Until now, we have been holding on to the idea of an inherent continuity in our lives, creating a false sense of comfort for ourselves on artificial ground. By doing so, we have been missing the very flavor of what we are.

Is This the Secret to Happiness? Buddhism, psychology, and life experience all agree on one point, says Zen priest and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger: a larger, more connected sense of self makes life fulfilling and meaningful. In our Zen group, we chant the five remembrances. These remind us of the truths about the small self — that each of us gets sick, grows old, and will die. Some people run away as fast as they can from these “gloomy” facts, but for others the act of speaking these truths is a balm to the soul. When we acknowledge them, we can let go of some of the impossible demands we make of life, acknowledge our shared human predicament, and start to discover a larger self that is spacious, ever-changing, and boundless.

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