Be your own change

In this post, I will talk about how you can be your own change when life feels against you and everything seems unfair.

How I realized I had been a terrible mentor

I had a conversation with one of my friends.

He was tired of his workplace because he was given a partner he could not cooperate with. Besides that, he also felt that the company didn't teach him what he thought was sufficient. After all, he is a trainee, so expecting some education and instructions is fair, I would say.

I have been a kind of mentor for him, so naturally, he calls me when he has problems like this. However, this time, I realized that I had been mentoring him completely wrong. I had always told him that it is important to speak up if you have a problem so that it can be fixed.

He is very good at this, and many of his problems have been fixed because he is honest and opens his mouth when he feels there is a problem.

I failed as a mentor because I never showed him how to continue and fix problems when just opening his mouth and saying them out loud didn't help.

So this time around, I changed my advice for him. He has had these problems for like half a year, and he had said multiple times to the company that his situation was crap. The company, however, wasn't in a position to help him the way he wanted. The company is small and has limited resources, so not everything is possible.

My friend was very frustrated after half a year of what he felt was just a complete waste of time and that he now feared for his education if things continued the way they were.

After listening to him, I asked him this question: What have you done to fix your problems?

At first, he didn't understand. Well, he had told the company that there were problems. But I asked him again. "What have you done to fix your problems?" No matter how many times I asked, he couldn't give me a straight answer. All his answers always ended with somebody else having the responsibility for his education and happiness at work.

The first problem was that he couldn't communicate well with his partner. They are very different and see the world from very different perspectives. So he wanted a new partner for work, one that he could work well with. When I asked him what he had done about trying to communicate and cooperate with his partner, he told me that they had some talks about it. I asked him: "how well did that work?" He replied, "not very well."

So I repeated my question. "What have you done to fix your problem?" He told me, "well, I tried to talk with my partner again" - "did it help?" - "no" - "what have you done to fix your problem?"

Do you see where I am going? He was stuck in a problem that he couldn't fix, and when he asked for help in the company, there wasn't time and resources to fix his problem for him. The same thing applied to his feeling of lack of education.

My biggest failure in my time as a mentor was that I never taught him how to fix his own problems.

How to fix your own problems

I want to say that it is always a good idea to communicate your problems aloud. If your boss or company doesn't listen, they have a problem. But how can you fix your own problems if people around you won't or can't help?

My answer is simple: Educate yourself.

Now. You can't know everything about everything, so it is essential to keep one's priorities in mind. Set your goals and work towards them. Check my post here, where I talk about goalsetting, or keep reading, as I will also tell you a bit about it later.

So when my friend told me he had problems communicating and working with his partner, I told him that he needed to educate himself on the subject. I told him that he should watch some YouTube, just 15 minutes of Youtube videos every day. That should be enough to get something like 31 hours of education if you only use your weekdays in just half a year. You also get a lot of time to practice different techniques and theories as you learn them. If you devote this kind of time and energy to a specific problem, you will progress and become better.

He answered that it couldn't be right that he had to use up all his spare time to become a master communicator only to be able to work with this single person.

But I stopped him right there.

Did I say "master communicator?" or "use all your time and energy?" no, not really. All I asked him to do was 15 minutes of youtube while he was relaxing on his couch or whenever he had time, and I would argue that most people can find just 15 minutes through the day.

My friend didn't want to do that because he thought it was unfair. Okay, that's great! If your goals and priorities are somewhere else than becoming better at teamwork and communication, that's great. But don't whine about others who won't fix your problems when you don't even try to fix them yourself.

The next problem was that he didn't think the company did a good enough job educating him and felt he was falling behind. One of his goals is to become a master craftsman in his profession.

What have you done to fix your problem? What are you currently doing to move toward your goal?

To the first question, he told me he had said out loud that he felt the tutoring wasn't good enough. To the second question, he thought of himself as an excellent trainee, always working in a good mood, ready to receive all the wisdom from people better than him, and with a fire to try out himself.

So boiling all this down, he just left his education to his company and the system. He had no specific habits to educate himself. Why would he expect others to make such habits and effort, when he doesn't do it himself?

Be your own change

When everything fails, the only things you can control are your own actions.

Make your goals by asking yourself these questions:

1. What kind of person do I want to be/become?
2. What kind of life would I want to live?

Some of my personal goals, right now, are: Get more energy for myself to have enough for others. And "Make more of what makes you happy."

I can't expect people to give me energy nor have energy for me if I don't try to lighten up my mood and energy level myself.

So how do you be your own change?

Make habits. Find out what can push you towards your goal. Even just a tiny bit. I found two specific things for my "energy goal:"

1. More exercise - Gives me more energy overall
2. Clean house - a dirty place deprives me of energy, so I need to keep it clean.

Please do this exercise for yourself. Think about your goals. Pick two or three goals that you want to prioritize. Take your time. Go outside, take a walk while you think, or meditate somewhere quiet. Whatever works for you.

Got your goals straight? Great job! Now choose one or two things that could move you towards your goals, or find one or two things that you do right now that don't benefit your goals and stop doing them. Here are some things that can help you move toward your goal:

• Watch youtube
• Start reading books or blogs
• Listening to audiobooks
• Talking to friends, getting ideas from them
• Eat healthy foods
• Exercise
• Does your goal require you to do something for others? What can you do? Maybe ask them what they need.
• Are there people around you who have the same goal that you can team up with?
• Are there people around you who can help you in your everyday?

Here are something that maybe could hinder you in moving forward.

• Are there any bad habits you do?
• Are you watching too much television?
• Are you too much on your phone?
• Are you getting healthy foods?
• Are there negative people around you?
• Do your family and friends understand your goals?

My own habits

I hope you have found just a few things for each goal. Now I need you to be very specific about the time and place to do them. If you can stack the habits on top of each other, it would be even better! Here is an example from my own life:

Goal: Get more energy for myself, to have enough for others

Problems identified:

1. I don't get enough exercise
2. I don't eat healthy enough
3. My house is not clean enough

Habits to fix problems:

1. Go on a walk for 30-60 minutes a day, or go to the gym
2. Make your food with less cheese and white bread(melted cheese is a blessing and a curse), don't order takeaway
3. Clean more often

How I stack my habits during my day:

1. Clean house for 45 minutes
2. After cleaning the house, make and eat lunch
3. After having a healthy lunch,  go to the gym or take a nice walk with a headset and audiobooks/podcasts.

Can you see it? One habit leads to the next, which links it all together. I have done this for three weeks, and it's already started going on autopilot, so I don't think so much about the boring stuff anymore. Now I even look forward to having a clean house and kitchen so I can cook delicious food and get some fantastic exercise in the sun!

Be deliberate

No matter how many things you already think you do, I have found that it helps to be conscious of all your habits.

You mustn't just go through life thinking that you give enough and that others need to give more. Make deliberate choices of what you do (habits) and why you do it ( goals).

• It is okay to get help, but don't give your life up to the chance of others. Take control and be your own change.
• Start with what you can control, and often life will follow.
• Don't worry so much about problems that you don't try to change yourself.
• You can't know everything about everything, so decide what is important for you and focus on that.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope that you find value in what I have to say. Please subscribe (little box in your lower right corner of the screen) to get the next post right in your inbox as soon as it is out!

See you soon, and have a great day!