It is one thing to say you want to change your job or your company. It is one thing to say that you want to change a relationship in your life. It is one thing to say you want to change a bad habit or learn a new skill. It is quite another thing to say, "I want to change my experience of life." Yet more and more as I work with my coaching clients, this latter change emerges as the true underlying motivator for creating a new life direction.

So what does it mean to want to "change your experience of life?" And what motivates people to do it? And how does the approach to making such a global change differ from that which works for making smaller changes?

What does it mean to want to change your experience of life?

We all experience life in our own particular way. Here are just a few of the key things that affect this experience:

• We experience life by how we see things, and differ in how closely or clearly we look - in how willing we are to expand our awareness and focus our attention.


• We experience life by how we hear things - and differ in how we attach meaning to what we hear.


• We experience life by how we think about and interpret things. If we think in generalities we have a much different experience than if we learn to draw finer and finer distinctions that put us in touch with the nuances of differences that are not visible at the macro level.


• We experience life by how we feel things - and differ in how deeply we feel and how much we let our emotions drive our actions.

We each create our own template for "experiencing life" by adopting patterns and habits in each of the above areas. And these patterns, in turn, affect all of the external structures of our life - our jobs, personal relationships, and ways of facing the day-to-day challenges of managing our money, our time, and our tasks.

Basically you create your own world and within that world all of the pieces are held in place in a kind of unity. To get a mental picture of your life structure try picturing an atom with all of the molecules making up that atom held in place by structured and fixed relationships to all the other elements. Without that structure, the atom loses its identity. But sometimes, a change in "identity" is actually what you really want. And it is at that juncture that the desire emerges to "change your experience of life." At this point it is not trivial "window dressing" change that is desired, it is fundamental, foundation-shaking shifts in perspective and experience that become the driving motivator.

What motivates people to want to change their experience of life?

How is it that anyone can become energized at such a grand level that they are willing to re-examine and change their whole experience of life?

To reach a place of openness to vast change, there must be a clear and overwhelming awareness and conviction that the current "life structure" is no longer working. Frequently this awareness and conviction arrives via one of two routes:

1. Some violent damage is inflicted on your current life structure by an external force beyond your control (e.g., death, divorce, job loss, sudden disease or loss of limb, etc.). And after the carnage, certain key elements are missing entirely, with others left hanging without points of attachment. The entire structure is left fragile or completely unworkable.

2. A "domino" effect occurs that happens something like this: You begin to experience the harbingers of change - you start to feel uneasy, or increasingly unhappy and dissatisfied. You look around, searching for some way to make a quick fix and bring everything back into harmony or alignment. "Ah Ha!" you say. "I need a change - I just need to move to a different city (or state); I just need a new job/career/company; or I just need to get some new friends." And so you make these changes, but before you know it you are back feeling the same uneasiness and dissatisfaction. Maybe you try again - several times - to implement these piece-meal changes. But down inside you can still feel the termites eating away at your foundation - the structure is crumbling - and the Band-Aids are becoming less and less effective. Then one day, you wake up and put into words what had only been a nagging unformed thought in the back of your head: "I don't just want to change the pieces of my life, I want to change my whole experience of life."

No matter how you arrive at this place, it is a fundamentally different place then just desiring to make small, incremental changes. And it requires a different approach.

How can you approach changing your experience of life?

There are four key things that I have found helpful to people in process of redesigning their fundamental life structures and experience of life.

1. Realistic time expectations. While you may be able to change your job, or start a new relationship in three to six months, the time frame for changing your entire experience of life is much longer. It usually takes at least a year - and often considerably longer. It is a "process" not a quick fix. It helps if you realize that you are literally engaged in the process of creating a new "context" for your life so that future changes have a solid foundation on which to build. You are re-discovering and aligning yourself with your deepest needs, desires, motivators, talents, skills, and natural tendencies. It is a time when you are focused inward so that in the future you can focus outward with a new clarity.

2. A way to break the bonds. Often the first step in the process of rebuilding your experience of life means actively examining and tearing down pieces of your existing life structure. When you are making small changes - think of the analogy of remodeling a room in your house - then it is OK to leave the rest of the structure in place. But when you are re-examining and changing your entire life structure - analogous to completely rebuilding a house from the ground up - you have to be willing to take it down to the studs or even to the bare cement foundation. I have observed that in the initial stages of this process it is not uncommon for people to need to step completely away from the existing structures that hold them fixed in place in order to do this work. Many find it necessary to quit their jobs, or take sabbaticals, or walk away from existing relationships in order to gain the clarity they need to think in new ways. I realize that this is not a popular thing to say, because I fully realize that people hope that they can make big changes from within their current structures. But I have observed all too frequently the need that people have to step away from their current structures in order to rebuild, for me to be able to deny this reality.

3. A willingness and commitment to revisit core elements. Our life structures build up over time as we learn and grow and add pieces bit-by-bit. They are often a hodgepodge of elements, some inconsistent with each other, which grow in fits and starts over years and years. In order to change your experience of life, you must examine the core elements of everything:

• Who you are: your likes, dislikes, strengths, weakness, talents and abilities, temperament, needs and values


• Your environment, including:


• Other people - what kind of people do you like to be around and interact with?


• Your physical environment: (nature, air, light, sound, animals)


• what kind of an environment pleases you, motivates, and inspires you? What things (e.g., house, office, car, clothes, furniture, etc.) do you want in your life? What ideas (concepts and information) do you like to be exposed to? What intangibles (e.g., time and energy) will affect how you experience your life?


• How you do things - things that come naturally to you, your preferred ways of doing things, how you work best.

Only then will you be ready to reconstruct your new life structure from the core and critical pieces.

4. A willingness to step into chaos. During the process of tearing down and rebuilding your life structure - and thus changing the very nature of how you experience life - you will move back and forth between periods of chaos (usually experienced during the tearing down phases) and periods of order (during the building phases where things seem to be coming together). It is imperative that you be willing to "sit with" the chaos when it comes, and trust that in the process you are going through chaos is just a necessary step.

In summary:

Changing "your experience of life" is not a challenge that everyone is up to - or even interested in. But for those who are, it is a magical and life-changing process that can lead to a more glorious, more integrated, more deeply fulfilling life experience.

What is your point of view? Please post your thoughts on the discussion board.

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