If you want to master meaningful lifestyle changes, you must be willing to be the odd one out. This is something other blogs won’t tell you. They’ll give you the same copy and paste advice, detailing the same old bullet points about what to change, but offer little to no substance when it comes to actually mastering them.
But not here. This post is just as important as the best habits you are trying to create in the first place. Trust me, I’ve experienced this key factor in building better habits.
I want to make the most useful articles about meaningful lifestyle changes that I can – the kind of changes that really make a difference and what I know it takes to master them in the real world, not the world where you read something and get inspired 5 minutes before you put your phone down and then repeat the same old bad habits.
Here’s the truth about making meaningful lifestyle changes that most people don’t want to believe: you will look strange to others. (at least at first)
This is correct. You’ll look odd in a world that wants you to follow the pack and stick to the status quo. Let me explain…
A few years ago I realized that my social media addiction was just that. I wanted a break from that. It was wasting my time and numbing my right thumb. So, as one would do, I decided to take a break.
I actually decided to take it a step further and delete social apps from my phone entirely. It was a strange experience and needless to say my right thumb ended up feeling lost in the wild with nothing to do. But I moved on.
I went on four weeks of social media sobriety. But something strange happened at the end of that month, something I hadn’t even thought about. When I finally got back on social media, I had a ton of messages from friends.
Lesson: Turns out no one uses SMS to send messages anymore…
After I finally responded to the old messages, my friends and family asked me why I hadn’t responded. I told them that I decided to take a break from social media because I realized that I was addicted to the shiny apps that distracted me too often.
Their response? Confused faces. Everyone thought it was kind of weird. It was as if they never even thought about not opening social media apps on their phones for more than their eight hours of sleep each night.
Was I the odd one out?
People in your life will tell you “You’re fine just the way you are.”
If you want to make meaningful, positive lifestyle changes, your friends and family will hopefully support you, but sometimes they’ll tell you “you don’t need to worry about X, Y and Z” and “you’re fine the way you are .”
You’ll look like the odd one out. And the truth is, it’s most likely you will he looks like a zebra among a bunch of horses. But why is that?
Most people follow the same routines their whole lives, never believing that they can change for the better. Sometimes they don’t even think it’s needed.
Most people:
- Sleep in and hit snooze on their alarms 5 times in the morning
- Don’t even think about stretching
- Don’t want to exercise because it’s uncomfortable
- Take a sandwich and chips to work for lunch
- They graze on their desks all day
- Don’t cook every dinner from scratch
- Come home and watch TV all night
- They think their own excuses are good reasons not to do something
And I don’t blame them. I don’t want to put them down. Making positive lifestyle changes is difficult because most people do the above. These things are now “normal”. Life is hard. It’s so much easier to go with the flow and swim in the comforts we so easily enjoy.
But that’s why you’ll look like a duck swimming in its own lane when you start bringing your cooked meals to work. That’s why you’ll look like you’re “changing” when you tell your wife or husband you’re going to dinner after you get back from the gym. You’ll look weird when you tell your coworker that you don’t want to eat the candy they brought for their birthday.
Sometimes you’re going to encounter resistance when trying to make meaningful lifestyle changes. You may have arguments with your spouse about what you want to eat for dinner, and your friends may think you’re distancing yourself when you miss a few nights with them because you want to stay in and keep writing your book.
People will want to keep you as the same person you’ve always been – the person they know and love. And this is understandable to a certain extent.
But if they don’t support you when you’re trying to make positive lifestyle changes, you’ll at least know where you really stand with them.
Go ahead and get the weirdness
Writing this blog is weird. Taking cooked meals to work is weird (I’m the only one I know who does it.) Doing my workouts by myself every week in my bedroom is weird. Trying to master my emotions on a daily basis is weird. Playing football every week is strange (having not played for two decades).
But I’m not saying this to brag. I’m not saying this because I think I’m better than everyone. I bring this up because looking like “the odd one out” is a real thing that people don’t even think about when trying to make positive lifestyle changes. If you don’t care what most people think, fine. But most people do, and sometimes resistance from others can derail them and prevent them from pursuing their new positive changes.
The only way to deal with this is to go ahead and own the oddities. You do this because you believe that what you are doing is the right thing to do.
Continue until your positive changes become “normal”.
Sean C is a writer, passionate about improving oneself by maintaining healthy habits and doing things that make life more meaningful.
