5 Steps Toward Creating the Life You Want

Reflecting on the time that has passed since I wrote “When a Leap of Faith is the Best Way Forward,” I happened to watch a video that helped me articulate the reasons I took the specific steps I’ve taken to begin creating a new, better life for myself. I think those steps can help you do the same.

Kevin Rempel is a Canadian Paralympian and mental resilience coach. He had to become resilient to recover and reclaim his life after a devastating motorbike accident left him paralyzed. Rempel offers practical advice for cultivating what he calls “The Hero Mindset.”

He explains that “to be the hero of your own movie” requires first and foremost accepting responsibility for yourself. “You may not be responsible for what happens in your life,” he says, “but you’re always responsible for what you do about it. Stop playing the victim role.”

Along with taking responsibility for your life, Rempel says, “Start owning your life, the decisions you make, and where you want to go. As soon as you do that, everything will change.”

Speaking firsthand

My willingness to take the leap of faith I took this year stemmed from my own “hero moment,” as Rempel puts it, when I rejected the victim role after my 2005 HIV diagnosis.

People likely would have understood if I’d wallowed in self-pity or blamed the person whose virus infected me. They definitely would have understood a choice to remain private and silent about having a virus still considered to be something shameful because of its association with sex and drugs.

But I would have none of the self-pity, and I rejected the shame. I had known too many courageous people living with HIV to stay silent or live in shame. So many had shared their personal stories with me in my many years of reporting on the HIV pandemic—beginning with the bereaved gay men who shared their stories with me of grief and loss after losing partners to AIDS in “The Survivors,” my first feature article on the subject 35 years ago.

Instead of “keeping it to myself,” I wrote a first-person “HIV coming out story” for The Washington Post and talked about my diagnosis on National Public Radio. After choosing to be “out” about living with HIV, learning to be honest about the great unhappiness and dissatisfaction I felt in my life was the next big thing I had to confront.

Taking the leap

I was able to reach the point of taking ownership of my life, and making the choice to uproot myself and relocate 1,000 miles south to Atlanta, by examining five main areas that encompassed the issues surrounding my desire to make a change. I offer them as life lessons that I hope you can use too:

1. Know yourself. Understand yourself and why you prefer and enjoy the things and people you choose to have around you. I had to admit that, although I’ve joked about whether I am a “city boy with a country heart” or a “country boy with a city heart,” the fact is that most of my adult life has been spent living and working in major cities. My résumé reflects a city-dweller’s career, as do my tastes and my expectations of the amenities I want in the place where I live. To live with authenticity requires us to know, and be fully comfortable with, being our genuine selves.
2. Be honest about your unhappiness and loneliness. While I loved the area where I lived, the truth is I wasn’t happy because there were no work opportunities for me there, and the friends I had didn’t satisfy my need for real connection and engagement. I felt major cognitive dissonance in knowing what I am capable of and what I enjoy in both professional and social terms, versus the life I was living.
3. Believe in the strength of your skills and other assets. I had enough feedback over the years to know that I produce high-quality work that adds value to the organizations and publications for whom I do it. I knew my skills would be of value to others who appreciated the years of effort it took to develop them. I also knew I had social skills that are of value in cultivating professional and personal relationships.
4. ‘Vision’ the better life you want. I use the noun ‘vision’ as a verb to make it clear that having a visual image in your mind of what you want will motivate you to take the actions needed to bring it to life.
5. Be aware of life’s brevity. A friend of mine used to have a sticker that said, “Don’t postpone joy.” We can never know when our life will end, or when a doctor’s phone call can deliver news that changes our life forever. I had that experience with my HIV diagnosis in 2005. I also witnessed far too many of my friends die from AIDS while we were in our twenties and thirties. Life is far too short and precious to waste any of it by staying in an unhappy place, whether that place is a physical location, a job, a relationship, or a state of mind.

By knowing yourself, you can get to a point where you are honest about what is and isn’t working in your life. Believing you have social and work skills that offer value to others, including employers, you can transfer them to a new place you might move to. That place can be a future residence, a new job, or new relationships. It can also be a state of mind that better suits you.

If you need a gentle shove or even a kick to get you moving toward your “hero moment” and the change you’d like to make in your life, just remind yourself that life really is short. None of us is promised tomorrow. Best to make today count by cultivating the “hero mindset,” and choosing to live like the hero of your own story.