Afraid of change

One day back in time I was sitting at my desk in Naples, Italy, watching beautiful pictures of places in the world, after a day of work at my old advertising agency.

Same day every days, I was thinking that life is sleeping-working-dreaming, getting trapped by my own routine, without any chances of get out of it. Then I realised it wasn’t what I wanted to do and I moved to London, opening another chapter of my life.
That was not a problem related to the routine, that was because I was following the wrong path.

But this article is not one of those articles about the guy who move abroad to be cooler than before.

Routine

Do we actually want to escape from routine? is routine that bad? The real problem is how you feel about it. We are free men, we decide what to do, if your choice is to have a certain routine because you are enjoying that, that’s fine. Everyone has a routine, even that guy who writes about how he feels great and free to do whatever he wants at any time, making you feel like shit and trapped into the big “system” of economy. That guy has a routine, and probably he’s trying to convince the others of the opposite because he cannot accept it.

What you need to do is accept your routine, and be enthusiastic of that, because you are following a path that you decided, and that path is leading you somewhere. But ask yourself this question: where do I want to go? Is the path I am walking through the right one?
If your answer is “yes”, well, your routine is great, mate, just remember it when you feel like you don’t have free time.
If your answer is “nope”, change path, there are infinite paths out there. Simple like that.

Why we are afraid of change

Sometimes we are not happy, but we are afraid of change. Why? It’s legacy.
Have you ever read all those posts on Facebook about how the new design is ugly and the previous one was better? It’s always been like that, with every products, with every services. There’s legacy in the world, and if we are comfortable with something that changes suddenly we feel lost and frustrated, even if the new version is better, because we have to learn again and we don’t find the things we used to find before at a glance.
That’s the dangerous comfort zone. Sometimes we don’t want to change because we are afraid that we won’t find the same things as now, indeed we won’t, everything is going to be different, but hey, that’s the best part of life, if you want to walk another way, just do it, the important thing is that you know where you are going.

What if?

Do not ever be addicted by the what if feeling, try to find a balance in what you are doing. There’s always a “what if?”. What if I change city? what if I change job? How would it be? What if I stop to eat bananas? What if I change all my habits?
The “what if” feeling is very dangerous and it keeps you away from your focus, pushing you down and making you feel depressed and always in search for alternatives. If you are able to keep your goal in mind, you will be more focused on the important things.

Sometimes we are not happy because everything could be better. Our life could be better, our job could be better, we could earn more money, we could have more glory, we could have done a project better, we could have done better choices.
I think we should find a balance in that. The “could-be-better” feeling is great because it pushes you to do better in the future, learning from your experience, but I think we shouldn’t lose ourselves. Everything we are doing could be better, and every life could be better, just live with it, and take advantage of it as a tool to improve your things, not to complain. Realise that what you did has a reason, and it played its role in your journey. If you hadn’t done it, you wouldn’t have been at this point.

Comfort Zone

Comfort Zone always exists, you should be happy to live with it if you enjoy what you’re doing, but it doesn’t have to be the reason of your routine, just because you are afraid of change. We should try to do great things for us, if we are stuck into our comfort zone, we should go away from it, but if we are happy our balance is cool, and gives us the calm to concentrate our minds into reaching our goals. We should learn to live with it in the right way.

Change when you need it. Don’t change if you are walking the right way.