How I did it: It's been nearly 13 months. I was going to give myself until the end of 2009. But today I decided that the goal says a year and it's been a year so let's wrap it up.

I didn't get everything completely changed that I thought I wanted to have change, but some key life areas are altered measurably by small changes. Highlights:

Career Situation / Outlook

• I am well into my MS degree program and, while it's been a little bumpy, I have been doing okay. Nothing gang-busters about my performance but I'm enrolled and I'm getting through it.
• I have hope, with regard to career and job issues. For years I felt incapacitated and angry and useless and beholden to the complicated and messy arrangements with D, and now I have a 6 month paid internship at a very good company. I would not have imagined that such a thing was possible a year ago.

Relationships

• I would love it if there had been more progress on this front over the past 12 months. My family and I are not hitting it off particularly well and I have not built up the circle of friends I had dreamed of last year. However, I have a handful of budding friendships, which is better than last year.
• The biggest and most impressive difference in my relationships since last year is that I am no longer tangled up with Rob. We have a few ties that still keep us talking periodically, but for the most part he's not in my life or in my thoughts.
• With respect to my self-esteem and hopefulness about the possibilities for romance and children in my future... I am not in a relationship, nor do I see options around me, nor am I feeling open or receptive to these things right now, but I am very much more confident that at some point once I start my working life next year, I will be able to meet someone. I don't have the feeling of impending doom that I did last year, with regard to aging. And I am far more comfortable in my body and have much higher self esteem than I did last year. 

Health/Fitness

• I have not managed to become an exerciser. My fitness life is virtually unchanged. However, my diet is quite good. I don't do the amount of cooking that I had hoped last year I would start to do, however, my all-day-long grazing is exclusively on healthy food and, since June 19th, 2009, my drinking days have averaged about 2-3 per month, which is a very dramatic improvement.

Home

• There has been some progress on getting the clutter reduced. I have gotten a lot out of my mother's garage and that feels good. I have a ways to go with becoming a tidier person in general - keeping my home in nice enough shape that I can enjoy it.

All in all, I would say that this goal IS successfully accomplished. My life IS different. And the way that I made it different was by reminding myself CONSTANTLY to try, try to make different choices than the ones that came naturally. Keeping aware of my goals on 43t really has helped me to bring myself again and again to the task of doing things differently.

But, more than that, I would say that I didn't actually do all that much. The biggest difference between this year and last year is a result of just a few key actions:

• I moved to Boston and registered for classes.
• I found a good shrink.
• I started going to AA meetings.
• I applied for the internship even though it seemed beyond my capabilities and it scared me to pursue it.

Those four things have resulted in my experience that my life is completely different.

Lessons & tips: I have discovered through this process a few things:

1. Though I am grateful to have a life that has more direction and hope, and that doesn't feel embarrassing to have to describe to people, I realize that the critical changes I have to make are still basic routine changes. Cleaning, exercising, social interaction, reaching out to people more regularly. The really simple things that I have not yet changed still make me feel like my internal gravitational pull is toward an unhappy life. It reminds me now that those little things are essential to achieving changes that feel SUBSTANTIAL and RELIABLE and ENDURING.
2. Over the course of 12 months a lot can change. Hell, a lot changes in just weeks if you do one thing radically new.You don't have to change EVERYTHING by yourself. If you change just one or two things, those changes will change everything else. It's not really as monumental a task as I thought... although handling changes, emotionally, can be a pretty monumental task.
3. 80% of the change will come from 20% of the effort. I gotta figure out which 20% and stop spinning my wheels feeling like nothing can be achieved.
4. The things I did that I couldn't undo -- the decisive decisions that couldn't be un-decided -- are the things that made a big difference. Applying to and enrolling in school. Buying that ticket to Italy. Sending in the resume. Showing up for the interview. When there are opportunities in life to take a leap, those are great opportunities, because life WILL change if you just do it. You don't have to keep hammering away, you just step off the edge and you're in a new life.

Resources: Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth <-- the book and also the webcasts of the interviews Oprah did with him. I don't care if it is cheesy or silly or what, I found them very helpful and thought-provoking.

futureme.org (writing letters to my future self was also, I think, something that helped shift things for me)

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Oct 10, 05:50PM PDT | 6 comments | 11 cheers