I NEED TO CHANGE MY LIFE, I JUST DON’T KNOW HOW

Ten Steps from Where You Are to Where You Need to Be - Gary Null PhD

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it,
move with it, and join the dance.”
— Alan Watts

Where Are You In The Cycle Of Your Life?
And Why It’s Important To Know

One day you wake up and realize that you are thirty years old, or forty or fifty or sixty or seventy, and you ask yourself: What am I doing? Usually we only reexamine our lives at the start of these decades, almost like New Year’s. At the New Year, we make our resolutions. About May, we realize we have not accomplished a thing. We have started and stopped, and we are back in the same old patterns.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard described this condition with surgical precision: anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. We sense, at the turn of each decade, the full scope of what we could be and the full weight of what we have not done. That dizziness is not the problem. It is the invitation. The problem is what we do with it: we close our eyes, we grip the railing, and we go back to what is familiar.

Now I am going to ask you to do something different. Today we are going to explore the medium in which you exist: your beliefs, your attitudes, your actions, and your emotions. I am going to ask you to start by emptying your life, so you can understand who you are and what your life could be. Think of all the mistakes you have made. Think of all the things that have blocked you. You are going to find out what you can put in their place.

Usually, instead of emptying, what we try to do is add. We are almost afraid to accept that if we got quiet, faced our problems, and tried to understand their lessons, we would have to surrender some of our beliefs. Almost everything we do is based on our beliefs. What if our beliefs, or parts of them, are simply wrong? What if we changed our belief systems?

The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart put it directly: The spiritual life is not a process of addition, but of subtraction. Let us begin by subtracting.

Step 1. Clean Out and Start Over

Think of your wardrobe. What would change if you cleaned it out and told yourself that you wanted all new clothes? I used to drive my friends to despair because every two years I would completely redo my apartment in a different style. My friends would say: You are changing your apartment again, Gary? Why are you going through all this effort? And I would answer: Because I am bored with the old décor and part of the excitement of life is creating something new. Of course it is an effort. But do you know what takes more effort? Trying to adapt to something that is boring. Another day, another dollar, and we eat the same things and go to the same places and have the same conversations. We adapt to boredom or mediocrity in our day-to-day lives.

The average American home now contains thousands of items. We are not accumulating possessions, we are building fortifications. Every object that does not serve our essential self is a brick in the wall between who we are and who we could be. And every subscription, every app, every streaming service, every notification channel is a digital version of the same clutter — occupying attention the way the objects occupy space, preventing the very stillness that change requires.

I know many men, from forty on up, who are going through andropause. They are losing their sense of energy, enthusiasm, and passion, as well as their muscle mass. Ask such a man: What kind of body do you want? The answer is usually: How much effort is it going to take? If it is too hard, disruptive, and uncomfortable, I cannot do it. So your comfort level determines your reality. You have adapted everything to a low level of discomfort.

As each decade approaches, we focus less on what we need to do to change. We squeeze our lives into an ever-narrower frame of existence. We hang out with people who are like us and we exclude everyone who is not. We just adapt.

Let us start over. It is a brand-new day. In every aspect of your life, select something fresh and vital, from the color of your clothes to the type of friends you choose to what you do with those friends, to what you do with yourself, even your body.

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
— William Morris

Step 2. Examine How You Compensate for Feelings of Inadequacy

Some of the ways we compensate are by never fully relaxing, never wanting to let go, never truly being in the moment, always planning, and having to control everything. When we feel inadequate, what we are really feeling is vulnerable, and we do not want anyone to know, so we protect our vulnerabilities by disguising them. The older we get, the more layers of insulation we throw up around our deficiencies.

Social media has given inadequacy a permanent megaphone and a global stage. We now measure ourselves not against our neighbors or our classmates but against the curated highlight reels of eight billion people. A forty-minute daily average is spent managing online identity — selecting photographs, editing captions, monitoring reactions. That is not self-expression. That is compensation. It is the digital equivalent of the layers of insulation we have always built around our deficiencies, except now the insulation is visible to everyone and the deficiencies feel deeper because the comparison set is infinite.

The psychologist Carl Rogers observed that the curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. As long as we are compensating, we cannot change, because the compensation is designed to prevent us from seeing the thing that needs changing. The layers of insulation are not protecting us. They are imprisoning us. And the first act of liberation is to stop adding layers and start removing them.

Everyone has mastered something, whether it is shining shoes or cutting hair or making clothes or broadcasting the news. But can we really grow by repeating what we do well and eliminating the very thought of what we cannot, just to avoid feeling inadequate? What about the rest of life? Where is the balance? Without balance, your life will be distorted.

Step 3. Explore What Is Missing from Your Life

To know what is missing from your life, you have to take the time to go into that conscious focus called mindful meditation. Be present in the moment and be mindful of what you would ideally like in your life. Find out for yourself: this is the kind of friend I want, the kind of body, the health, the career, the quality of time for self or others, and where I would like to live.

Write down everything that is viscerally important to you — what comes straight from your heart, so you feel connected to your essential energy. Identify by name what you want and then honor it. Sometimes there is a discrepancy between our desires and our circumstances, which creates conflict. Everyone who has a desire for A but is living at C is going to feel the rub. Every day you are going to be reminded that you are not living your ideal.

You can do one of two things in response. You can either change so you can at least have a chance of manifesting your ideal, or adapt to the pain of not living your ideal. It is going to be one or the other, and I am hoping it will be the first. That is how we have a life. We do not allow others to tell us what we should be doing to be happy. We tell ourselves: This is what I want. This is what I am going to do. Here are the tools I need. Here is my plan of action. Then do not let anything distract you.

The philosopher Aristotle called this eudaimonia — human flourishing. He argued that every human being has a unique potential, a telos, and that the purpose of life is to actualize that potential through deliberate choice and sustained effort. Happiness, for Aristotle, was not a feeling. It was an activity — the activity of living in alignment with your highest capacities. When you feel the rub between where you are and where you want to be, that is your telos calling. It is not comfortable. It is not supposed to be comfortable. It is supposed to move you.

Step 4. Ask Whether You Possess the Resources and Openness to Change

Slow down to the speed of life. Focus with a sense of complete attention and appreciation and give yourself however much time it takes to get where you need to go. Learn to accept that change cannot be rushed, nor can it be delayed. Delaying is procrastination. It is diversion. Notice how clever your mind is in distracting yourself from what you need to be doing. Look at how ingenious the excuses are.

Do you say: I do not have the tools, so I cannot do it, instead of saying: Let me get the tools I need?

In 2026, this excuse has taken on a new and particularly insidious form. Artificial intelligence can now learn a language, generate a business plan, write a résumé, compose a cover letter, and create a portfolio in minutes. The tools for change have never been more accessible. And yet the rates of stagnation, depression, and chronic dissatisfaction have never been higher. Because the obstacle was never the tools. The obstacle is the willingness to use them. The obstacle is the willingness to endure the discomfort of transition, the uncertainty of the middle passage, the vertigo of letting go of who you have been in order to become who you need to be.

You are either going to move forward or you are going to stand still. If you stand still, watch how you react to this negative adaptation. You will feel bitter, angry, and self-righteously indignant at the world because you are not happy. You will blame everything on circumstances. If only — if only what? If only you were rich, or young, or somewhere else?

No. These are immaterial to a happy life. Find the attitude and the tools you need to create your own change instead of making excuses for staying stuck.

Step 5. Recognize That Distraction Diminishes the Present Moment

Eliminate distractions. In 2008, the average person was watching television for almost six hours a day. That number has now been replaced by something far more invasive: the average American spends over seven hours a day consuming digital media across all screens. But the nature of the distraction has changed. Television was passive. Digital media is interactive, personalized, and algorithmically optimized to prevent you from stopping. Infinite scroll eliminates natural stopping points. Autoplay removes the decision to continue. Push notifications interrupt your chosen activity with manufactured urgency. You are not simply being distracted. You are being engineered.

The philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote three and a half centuries ago that all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone. That was before the smartphone. Before TikTok. Before AI companions that simulate relationship so you never have to endure the discomfort of solitude. Pascal’s insight has not become less true. It has become the defining diagnosis of our civilization.

How much time do you spend in a day distracting yourself? Think of all the scrolling and notifications and chores that are meaningless. Why not just say: I am not going to engage in anything that distracts me from what I need to balance my life.

Take all the distractions away and what are you left with? Just you. What would happen with just you? Are you afraid to find out? A lot of people cannot talk about themselves because they do not know who they are. That is the result of the distraction factor.

Here is a practice. For one day — one single day — put the phone in a drawer. Do not check it. Do not reach for it. Observe what happens inside you. Observe the anxiety. The hand reaching for something that is not there. The strange silence. And then observe what begins to fill that silence. Because something will. And whatever fills it — a memory, a feeling, a creative impulse, a conversation that goes deeper than any you have had in months — that is you. That is what was there all along, beneath the noise.

Step 6. Confront the Fears That Come with Change

Change cannot come without risk. Think of how many times you wanted to do something different but first you had to get the approval of others. Why do we think we have to get approval? What do we think someone will say?

What if you were a successful lawyer and you said: I would like to go out to New Mexico and spend time with nature. To do what? Nothing. You are a three-hundred-dollars-an-hour lawyer! I know, but I want some hours to do nothing, to charge nothing, just to commune with nature.

This step will be so radical that you are going to think you need help from others. First ask yourself which you are more afraid of: the change itself or the oppositions and confrontations that arise when you are seeking another’s approval.

The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called this the look of the other — the way we internalize the judgment of the people around us until their expectations become our prison. We do not fear change. We fear what other people will think of us for changing. We fear the conversation. We fear the raised eyebrow. We fear the silence on the other end of the phone. And that fear — the fear of other people’s reactions — keeps more people stuck than any lack of resources, any lack of talent, any lack of opportunity ever could.

When it comes to change, the risks have to be faced. We need to see a situation for what it is. Only then are we ready for true healthy change. If we keep looking and distorting and repackaging and reframing because the change is not acceptable, then all we are doing is playing the game of manipulating illusions. Hopefully, one day we will wake up and say: Why am I doing this?

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
— Anaïs Nin

Step 7. Learn the Lessons of Your Crises

Every crisis carries its lesson. Let me give you an example. I know a woman approaching forty — let us call her Cynthia — who invited a troubled friend, Joe, to stay with her. Cynthia is an activist in the peace movement. The situation with Joe is stressful, and she frequently blows up: This guy gives me no privacy and is very jealous. He wants to know every place I go. But I cannot ask him to leave — where would he go? What would he do?

I suggested she ask Joe what he intended to do with his life, which had nothing to do with her life. Then I asked her what she intended to do with her own life. She was not having a relationship with Joe. He was the man who came to dinner and never left. She said: I know, but —

Then I started to realize that Cynthia was getting much of her sense of self from taking people home so she could rescue them. She needed to be needed. Why? Because she believed that her value as a human being lay in saving people. But was Joe growing and changing? If you have someone staying with you for a year and you are taking him to yoga and meditation and nature outings and he is no different, then it is time to reassess. He had not changed. He had just gotten a year of free room and board. Cynthia was caught between two worlds: anger at her loss of freedom and the need to show that she is caring and nurturing.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. The universe will keep presenting you with the same lesson, in different costumes, until you learn it. If you keep rescuing people who do not change, the lesson is not about them. It is about you. If you keep choosing the same kind of relationship, the same kind of job, the same kind of crisis, the lesson is not about the relationship or the job. It is about the pattern. And the pattern will not change until you see it clearly, name it honestly, and choose differently.

When we learn the lessons contained in our crises, then we can grow. Any lesson you do not learn you will repeat over and over again. Sometimes divorce, bankruptcy, separation, or loss is the lesson we have been given. We get angry when these things happen, and we do not look for the how and the why. But along with the pain and suffering, we have something to learn. When we can pass the test because we have learned from a lesson, we probably will not have to experience the same pain again.

Step 8. Appreciate Your Life Now — Do Not Wait for Loss

I know people who start anticipating their losses as they approach certain decades. I am hitting fifty and I can never think of myself as young again. I am hitting forty and the gray hair is coming in. I just talked with a woman of forty-nine. She said that her libido had been nonexistent for the last year. I asked her why. She said: Because I am forty-nine, Gary. What man gets up in the morning and thinks, wow, I really am excited about an aging, out-of-shape forty-nine-year-old? No. They want young women. They want what I was when I was twenty-five and sexy and fun. I am accepting it.

Accepting what? Accepting that because you are forty-nine you should no longer have a libido? You should no longer be passionate? You should no longer allow that chi to flow? She said yes. I told her that by cutting off these energies she was going to manifest a limited life. She said she was not alone. I said, no, you are not, but what if I showed you a woman of forty-nine or fifty-nine or sixty-nine or seventy-nine still actively enjoying her sexuality? Still seeking ways to explore it and expand it? She said they were just being immature. Her belief system told her that at a certain decade she had to adapt to a preconceived social notion, act her age, and close down her sexuality.

We now live in a culture that has paradoxically made this worse. On one hand, the anti-aging industry is a four-hundred-billion-dollar global market selling the illusion that you can purchase youth through serums and procedures. On the other hand, the culture still enforces the same decade-based identity boxes it always has — now amplified by algorithms that show you content for your demographic, ads targeted to your age bracket, and AI-generated lifestyle suggestions based on actuarial tables. The technology that was supposed to liberate us from categories has only refined them.

The philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote that one is not born old; one becomes old. Aging is not a biological event alone. It is a social construction, a set of beliefs about what is permissible and what is not at certain points in the calendar. And like all social constructions, it can be questioned, challenged, and refused.

You do not have to accept the rules of this game. Break the rules. Just be a living human being who does not care what age you are.

Step 9. Consider What You Have in Abundance

Think of the things we all have in abundance. We have an abundance of people we can share positive energy with. We have an abundance of nature to enjoy, an abundance of love to give and receive from our companions. We have dogs, cats, birds, and fish for pets. We have an abundance of energy to focus on what we can bring into our lives — hobbies, skills, new tools. We have the wonderment of how many things we do not know. Even the knowledge of all the PhDs at a major university is like one grain of sand at the bottom of the ocean floor.

If all this abundance of things to learn and to experience is there for us, why do we act as if we are paupers — emotionally, intellectually, and physically? It is like a person saying: I am starving. You say: Here is a buffet of three thousand foods that are all healthy. But I am starving. Well, dig in. But I am starving. Pick it up. Try it. I cannot. Why? My belief system will not let me.

The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca observed this two thousand years ago with characteristic directness: It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. We are not poor in time or energy or possibility. We are profligate with all three. And the scarcity we feel is not a fact of our circumstances. It is a product of our attention.

Our belief system is our reality. We would rather starve emotionally and spiritually than connect with the abundance of energy around us. Change the belief, and the abundance that was always there becomes visible.

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.”
— Seneca

Step 10. How Can I Go from Here to There?

How can I go from where I am at to where I need to be? By realizing that you already have everything you need to take a step. If you are approaching or are sixty and you want to feel sixty, then you will feel old. You will feel less. You will feel loss. Or you can say: I do not care how old I am, and I do not care about the circumstances I have accepted. Today I am focusing my energy in this moment on what I want to experience, and I will seek out the tools. For every tool I seek out, I will surrender a tool that no longer works.

When you sacrifice to find meaning, the meaning will have purpose. The fear of sacrificing what you now have means that all you will have is what you have accumulated up to this point. Ask yourself whether the sum total of all you have accumulated represents the blissful peace of mind that you are seeking. Look at all you have accumulated and ask yourself what you would surrender to change the energy.

Do not allow your truth to be distorted by the bias of another. My truth works for me. Throughout my life I have never felt that I fit in anywhere. So instead of trying to remold myself to fit into the narrow confines of society, I have chosen instead to expand my consciousness to wherever it would take me. Although there were risks, sacrifices, and pain, I know what is possible because my freedom took me to the top of the mountain and I saw the future. People’s fear so often keeps them in the valley, and all they see is what is right in front of them.

Think of the difference. I know you want a fully realized life, and this is what you can say to yourself:

I am more than my beliefs. I am present for my own creation. Every day I choose to re-create myself over again in the eyes of myself and not the world. I do not get my view of life through the eyes of others. I can see myself for who I am and what I want to be. It is through my own eyes — my spiritual eyes — that I see my journey ahead. It is society that sees my journey from behind.

I am either going to look ahead or look behind. I am going to look with my eyes or theirs. If I choose to look at life as a medium to which I can surrender by emptying out the negative and filling it with the new and the positive, then I am taking a step that they are not going to take. They will hit forty, fifty, sixty, and seventy and be angry or depressed or look in a mirror and consider woefully what is no longer present.

I will look in the mirror and say: See the potential of what still is.

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
— Carl Jung

Photo by Jason Mavrommatis on Unsplash