Everyone sometimes gets the idea that life stands still. In fact, on the contrary, we are constantly on the move: we go to work and the gym, clean up the house, spend time with family, watch TV series, play the Andar Bahar card game online, read books, and meet with friends — there are so many things to do that we don’t even seem to have time to live.
But if we stop, think, and look back, it becomes clear that the standard of living remains the same. Despite the huge amount of effort and time spent, we don’t see any progress.
Why is this so? The transition to a new level of life doesn’t happen because we stop taking new actions. The logic is simple — if we do the same thing every day, there will be no change.
How to move to a new level of life? These tips will help.
Assessing Your Current State of Living Standards
To move to the next level of life, determine where you are at the present moment. Try to look at the situation as impartially as possible.
To make it easier to do this, look at yourself from the outside. Imagine that you have been asked to evaluate the standard of living of someone you know. This is conditionally the beginning of analyzing the standard of living.
To reach a new standard of living, assess your current state as honestly as possible. The most common categories that are included there are: career, personal life, and spiritual development. However, we are all different, and what is important for one person is irrelevant for another.
So, when assessing your current level of life and counting your achievements, take into account the importance of each criterion for you personally.
For example, for some abstract scientist, it won’t matter how he looks; it’s his scientific achievements that are important to him, which affect his self-perception and standard of living. But for you, for example, a mismatch between your external appearance and your internal expectations is depressing. This factor will be important in determining your standard of living, and it’s worth evaluating.
Determine the starting point because, from it, you will build your way to the goal, to a new standard of living. It’s normal that some areas of a person’s life are better developed while others are worse. When assessing your current state, don’t go into bitter reflections like, “How did it happen?” “My life is at the bottom,” and so on. Your task is to understand where to start on the path to a new level of life.
Goal Setting
Once you have found a starting point (point A), you can move on to formulating a goal for the new level of life (point B).
Getting to a new level of life is a good goal. But it sounds too abstract. If this goal is left like this, it’s unclear how to achieve it.
Your task is to make the goal as clear as possible. Then it will become achievable.
Answer the question: What would it mean for me to move to a new level of life? To receive a wage three times more than now? Or thirty-three times as much? Lose fifteen pounds?
Or maybe your new level of life has nothing to do with money or looks at all. Maybe the transition to a new level of life will happen when you start meeting other people with confidence, stop listening to your mom, or fight back against coworkers who violate your personal boundaries.
The most convenient way is to take a sheet of paper and a pen and write down the goals, the achievement of which will bring you to a new level of life. Remember that great things start small. You can divide your goals into short-term and long-term goals.
Put things that will take one action in the first category. For example, say no to a coworker when he tries to shift his work to you once again. You haven’t improved your standard of living with this one action, but you have made an important step towards it.
In the second category, write what will be the final result of a logical chain of short-term actions. Example: I learned to stand up for boundaries, started spending time only on my work, increased my productivity, took a new position, and got a raise.
This result will be the determining factor in your transition to a new level of life.
Planning the Path to Success
Entering a new level of life conventionally passes through two stages.
Creating a Strategy for Achieving Your Goals
When strategizing how you will achieve your goals, consider your individual characteristics. Remember that every person has a different success story. Even if it seems to you that people similar to you in character or life circumstances easily and simply achieve their goals, and their standard of living is higher than yours, don’t copy their strategy.
Remember that you are you. Perhaps what the other person is doing isn’t suitable for you because of the difference in character, work capacity, or even sleep patterns.
Look for your strengths. One person wins with his persistence. Another needs to make a careful, detailed plan. The third is comfortable going the experienced way, without any plan, just making hundreds of attempts and learning from his mistakes.
And each of these ways is good for improving your standard of living, if it works. Find your path.
Develop a Plan of Action and Implement It Consistently
Even if you’re good at improvising, getting to a new level of living still involves making a step-by-step plan. Break it down into steps of a size that makes it clear how each step will be accomplished. Until you understand how to solve a global problem, you’re standing still and doing nothing.
Personal Development and Education
To move to the next level of life, knowledge is important and can be obtained from a variety of sources.
People have always been interested in self-development. And many people hundreds of years before us have speculated about this issue, conducted observations, experiments and recorded working methods. Take them on board — learn what others know and can do.
The transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next is a unique thing. Imagine what would happen if every generation of people started their lives with the fact that they had to invent the wheel or learn how to make fire. Then mankind would remain at the primitive level of life.
The same can be said about learning. You have the opportunity to adopt the experience of people who have studied a huge amount of information on the topic of entering a new level of life, and you don’t need to go through all the ways yourself. It is enough to learn about the ones that work and take note of them.
