Changing your life is scary. It’s hard. It’s painful. But it's so worth it.

Waking up one day and admitting that you don’t like where your life is at is a difficult thing to do. When you realize that your life isn’t leading you to finding joy, it can seem like suddenly everything comes crashing down at once. At that moment of realization, your eyes become opened in a way you never knew they could. You start to see every little thing that is stealing your joy. You begin to recognize that the people in your life that are not building you up. You notice that your daily habits are taking more out of your life than they are adding to it.

In the beginning, it can seem like all hope is lost because there is such an overwhelming amount of things you feel you must change in order to be happy.

The good news is that while there may be a lot of improvement that needs to be made in your life, you don’t have to do it all at once. Even more, you don’t even always have to be the initiator of every change. Once you start to make a few small changes, it's amazing how simple it is for big changes to follow naturally.

Changing your life isn’t a quick process, and it most certainly isn’t easy. But it’s definitely harder to live each day knowing that you don’t like the way your life is headed and to not do anything about it. That lack of action will lead to a far worse, more painful experience in the future than a relatively short transition in your life now.

Changing your life is going to involve pain. You’re going to see relationships crumble that you never expected to lose. You’re going to find out who your true friends are, most often the hard way when you realize certain friends no longer bring you any joy and instead bring you uneasiness and hurt. You’re going to sit alone in your room and cry because you don’t recognize anything around you anymore. You’re going to find yourself in the chapel late at night, begging God to help the pain go away faster. You’re going to feel all of this. But you’re also going to know a peace and joy that you never knew was possible. And this is going to outweigh every bit of pain you feel.

I woke up one February morning and realized that the life I was living was not how I wanted to be living for the rest of my life. I realized that boxing myself in, not giving new experiences and people a chance and living in a state of nostalgia and pain was not ever going to bring me joy.

So I took a chance. I starting putting more effort into certain friendships that helped me grow. I let go of constantly trying to improve relationships that had simply run their course. I let new people into my life and let them see the real me, which is something that used to be very difficult for me to do. The more and more I let go of the things that were not me and embraced the things that were me, the greater joy I felt and lived.