If you are unhappy with your life you have it within you to change it and make things better. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m saying it is within your realm of capabilities to make things better in your life. But you need to want it and you need to have the discipline and the patience to understand that real noticeable change starts with baby steps and could take years to really notice any sort of difference. Whatever you do, stop finding a way to justify your problems and stop looking for people to make you feel better about your sad predicament. Instead, look for people to challenge you, to offer ideas, action steps, and solutions to the problems you are trying to fix. From my experience, those people are out there, but more likely than not, you have to be the one that goes out looking for them. They won’t be looking for you. Often, you probably won’t even want to listen to the ones looking for you because that means you’re not motivated. They found you at a static state. You need to motivate yourself. Pick yourself up and get moving even if it’s a tiny increment a day. Slow progress is still progress. One step is still better than none. Stop complaining. Stop blaming. Stop making excuses. If you need to vent, sure, go ahead and vent, scream into a pillow. Hit a punching bag. But in order to improve your life, you need to act. It might not happen in a day, it might not happen in a year. But you need to try. Sure, sometimes trying will lead you down some dead ends. You might look less graceful than you’d like. Your friends might look at you weird for doing things that are out of the ordinary. But at least you’re moving. At least you’re collecting information. And the more you do, the more you learn about what’s possible, and you learn about what’s possible within you. Most people won’t do what I just said you should do because most people would rather stay exactly where they are and hope to be “saved”. But newsflash, nobody’s coming to save you. So you can sit on your ass and keep complaining for the rest of your life and play the role of the victim or you can stand your ass up and just do something. Anything. Sure, it’s hard. Sure you might know less than you think you should know. But the question becomes, what the fuck else do you have to do anyway? You already know what you’re doing isn’t working. But for some reason, you just keep doing the same damn things and complaining about constantly getting the same sorry results. Who’s responsibility does that fall on? Are you still going to keep pointing the finger towards other people? There’s a saying that goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”. Well, I don’t think that’s any different from improving your life. You got to where you are today by some combination of actions and inaction, some combination of the people you met and didn’t meet. Some combination of opportunities and missed opportunities, and so you’ve ended up here. Well, who do you think is on the losing end of the bargain if you keep going down the road you’ve been on this whole time. Shame on who? If you are unhappy with your life, you have it within you to change and make things better. Stop complaining. Stop blaming. Start doing.

by Jason Lam