Change Your Life Forever with One Massive Decision

So you want to change your life? You’ve tried whatever Matt D’avela has suggested recently, and of course, it hasn’t worked. “Change Your Life with XYZ” sounds great for a YouTube video title, but there aren’t many things that will actually change your life. Tidying your room, learning to code, taking cold showers, and reducing your time on social media all have their benefits, but they simply don’t fall into the “change your life” category.

No, if you actually want a new life, you’re going to need to look beyond the productivity Gurus who tell you to find a mentor or life coaches who tell you that reading a book a day will give you what you need.

To really reset your life, you need to make a massive change. And it doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are five ways you can change your life for real.

1. Move Abroad

You may hear that learning a new language is a great way to change your life, and there’s a grain of truth to that. However, that grain is only one part of a loaf called “moving abroad.”

Can there be any argument that leaving your home, friends, family, and everything you know behind and starting a new life in a foreign country wouldn’t completely change your life? It’s almost the definition of changing your life.

  • A new language
  • New friends
  • A new culture
  • Different cuisine
  • New places to explore
  • Potentially new jobs

Moving abroad literally changes almost everything about your life.

At 21, I moved to China. My parents took me to the airport, and I landed in Beijing alone, not knowing where I was going or how I’d get there. I jumped in a taxi and, despite learning two years of Chinese, couldn’t understand a thing the driver said to me. He took me to a hotel, and I happily checked in, finding out the staff there all spoke English.

I woke up jetlagged at about 6 p.m. and walked the streets surrounding the Hotel. On one of the street corners was a man selling some kind of meat on sticks. I bought two. Sitting in the hotel lobby inspecting the meat, I wondered what it was.

That was the first day of my second life.

It wasn’t a holiday, phase, gap year, or mini-retirement. A decade and a half later, I hadn’t gone back home – I hadn’t gone back to my old life.

I made new friends, got a wife and family, got a new job, and enjoyed many other benefits that only expats have.

2. Start Keto

You may have heard of the ketogenic diet as a fad that everyone was doing a few years back, but before you scroll past this section, hear me out.

Keto really can completely change your life. A recent study from the University of Toulouse and Duke University Medical Center concluded that their psychological patients who went on keto were “associated with significant and substantial improvements in depression and psychosis symptoms and multiple markers of metabolic health.”

You don’t need to be in treatment for a psychological condition to gain the benefits of keto, just ask yourself:

  • If I could lose all my excess body fat quickly and without starving myself (or killing myself in the gym), would it change my life?
  • If something could flip a switch and pull me out of my depressed state almost instantly, would it change my life?
  • Would it change my life if I suddenly had enough energy and mental clarity to do more at work and not feel exhausted at home?

If you answered yes, then you owe it to yourself to give keto a chance.

The first time I tried keto, in 2018, I lost 40lbs (18kg) in about three months. And I was eating bacon and steak every day! I couldn’t believe it.

However, after enduring the strict Covid lockdowns and daily mandatory testing in China for three years, I finally moved to the U.K. Still, the lockdowns had taken a mental toll on me, as they had on many people. I had stopped keto mid-pandemic because I literally couldn’t go out to buy meat – we stockpiled pasta, rice, and noodles and survived on it (and McDonald’s delivery, which strangely always seemed available.)

I felt low energy, depressed, and like there was no end to the anxiety and misery of just regular life. Being back in the U.K. I decided to go back to keto. I bought a fridge full of quality meat, butter, cheese, and leafy greens and hoped for the best.

A week went by with no change.

On around day ten, I woke up and couldn’t believe how I felt.

Razor sharp – as if I’d been pumped full of some kind of concentration drug. And more importantly, that feeling of depression had lifted off me as if it was never there. I felt like a completely different person.

3. Start a Family

When you’re single, vast swaths of your life are spent alone in some capacity. Perhaps your evenings are spent watching Netflix by yourself, you might go for a few hours after waking without speaking to anyone, or mealtimes are usually a meal for one affair.

Suddenly, you find someone to spend your life with, and all that changes. You wake up, and she’s there. You get home from work, and she’s there, and lonely TV dinners become meals for two.

Getting married (or finding a life partner) will change your life, but it doesn’t come close to the difference having a child makes.

A running joke among parents is that single people (even married ones in their forties) have no idea how much free time they have. Next time you see someone with no kids say, “I just don’t have time for XYZ,” watch all the parents’ side glances and wry smiles. Parents do everything nonparents do, but before they get to work on time, they’ve fed, clothed, washed, and taken their little monsters to school. And remember, kids aren’t like employees; they don’t want to eat breakfast, bathe, or do any of the things the parents are trying to get them to do (maybe they are like some employees.) And at the end of the day, they can’t head to the bar, put on their pajamas, and spend the night on the sofa. Nope! Back to school to pick them up, check homework, make sure they tidy their rooms, cook them dinner, and somehow try to figure out a way to get the little monsters to bed.

It may sound like I’m bagging on being a parent. The truth is that it is hard, but no one would change it for anything in the world. It’s the most demanding and most satisfying thing you’ll ever do. (Yes, Matt, it’s more satisfying than doing 30 days of cold showers or bullet journaling.)

4. Choose a New Lifestyle

Choosing a new lifestyle in order to change your life might seem redundant, but few think about their lives as a lifestyle.

Think about Bruce Lee for a moment, what kind of lifestyle did he live? What about Tony Hawk or Jean Michel Basquiat? Each of them chose the type of lifestyle they wanted to live and lived it out.

Now, back to you, what lifestyle are you living right now? If you can’t categorize it as simply as “martial artist,” “Skater,” or “artist,” maybe you’re not living out a lifestyle at all, just a life.

Now, I’m not saying that if you’re into retro gaming, you should quit your job and build a retro gaming hub with a second-hand games store attached—but maybe you should.

There are tons of ways to live out the lifestyle you want, and here’s a good litmus test for yourself: How do people describe you?

Do they say, “Oh Jeff, yeah he’s a good guy.”? Or do they say, “Oh Jeff yeah he’s all about retro gaming.”?

I wrote a whole article on different lifestyles you might want to choose, so go read that. In the meantime, here are a couple to consider.

  1. Creative Lifestyle – you spend all your time working on your art.
  2. Athletic Lifestyle – you spend your days working on your sport or in the gym.
  3. Traveller Lifestyle – you’ve been everywhere and speak a bunch of languages.

5. Begin a Spiritual Journey

It’s so easy to look at other people and what they are doing and say to yourself, “That’s not for me,” but that’s the point. Changing your life means doing something that “isn’t for you.”

“Yeah but still, I mean, starting a new diet or a differrent workout routine is one thing, but I’m not going to start going to church or reading the Bible!”

It sounds like you don’t really want to change your life or are unwilling to.

I’m not trying to convert you here. But I am saying that you should go explore things that are way outside your comfort zone and find out for yourself if they are for you.

Everyone has some preconceived ideas about what it means to go to church or what the Bible says, but why not read it and then make up your mind?

It will change your life.

Gregory J. Gaynor

Meet Gregory, the writer & brains behind Face Dragons. He's the go-to guy for getting things done.

Gregory's been living the digital nomad life in Asia for as long as anyone can remember, helping clients smash their goals. He writes on topics like software, personal knowledge management (PKM), and personal development. When he's not writing, you'll catch him at the local MMA gym, nose buried in a book, or just chilling with the family.