Welcome to the Life Change Blog.

We publish an article every week about life, change and living in Thailand.

Changing Your Life (Things to Remember)

When I talk to guests at the beginning of their Change Holiday or Counselling Retreat I am aware there are a handful of things that people are always surprised by.... and no, it’s not the price of bargains in the Night Bazaar, or the variety of orchids in the local flower market.

There are a couple of surprising things, that no matter how hard they are tested and pulled apart by keen teams of researchers and practitioners, are proving to be important realities of how and why we make changes in our lives. If you are thinking of making changes in your life it might be useful to keep these 2 things in mind.

Change Can Happen Quickly

It used to be assumed, quite wrongly, that the bigger the change the longer it would take. Although this assumption feels like it should be true it bears no resemblance to reality. There seems to be an entrenched idea, that changing our lives takes a long time, that it needs weeks and weeks if not months or years to actually make the changes we want to.

Often during the course of a Change Holiday or Counselling Retreat people decide to make all kinds of far reaching changes. For example, Sarah was with us for one week and decided to give up her job in accountancy in London to run a Safari Park in Africa and Gemma who booked a Womens Holiday last year and has followed her dream and now runs a dance school.

Change is possible for everyone.... and it takes quicker than you think.

Change Is Not Dependant Upon Insight

Psychodynamic Counselling (the understanding of our sub-conscious and unconscious drives) has had an unfortunate strangle hold on change for nearly 100 years. Contrary to popular belief change is not dependant upon insight into our unconscious, our sub-conscious, our “childhood issues”, or as put forward in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, “Core Beliefs”. Although all of these things are undoubtedly helpful, interesting and for some people even important, they do not necessarily have any relationship with change.

I have met people that have a visionary like insight to their lives, have understood their childhood difficulties and sub-conscious drives that are as close to changing their lives and being happy as I am to playing for Arsenal Football Club.

In fact change is dependant upon far more immediate factors that thankfully do not take us ages to understand and make use of. Factors like how confident we are in changing or how important it is to us to change or even how we think and talk about the changes we want to make in our lives.

Whatever changes we want to make in our lives or are struggling to come to terms with there is a strong possibility that recent advances in understanding how and why people change will make it easier for you to lead the life you really want quicker than you think.

For more information about Change Holidays have a look at our Tailor Made Holiday in Thailand.

These really are.... “holidays that change your life”

Talk to you next week about life,change and living in Thailand, bye for now, Alex.