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Many people are unhappy with their circumstances at work or in the home and live in a quiet desperation of never being able to break free from the circumstances they believe are holding them back.

It may be that you feel that you were born into the wrong circumstances, or that bad decisions or other people got you into difficult circumstances which now have you in a tight grip.

You so long for your circumstances to change.

“If only I could get another job …” you might say to yourself, your family and your friends, hoping that someone or something will come along to change your circumstances. But you will most likely spend many years hoping for a change which never comes unless you come to realize an important truth and act on it.

It’s not your circumstances that need to change. It’s you that needs to change.

Few people realize that our circumstances are very often - not always, but very often - an outward manifestation of who and what we are. That’s why we can change jobs but our overall circumstances remain the same – because we, ourselves, failed to change. You see, you can put a cat in a garage but it won’t become a car.

If you’re in a management position, you’re probably one of those who are happy to say that you’re prepared to handle change. So long as that change doesn’t mean you have to change something in yourself.

Changing ourselves is one of the most difficult things to do in life. That’s because the things we need to change in ourselves are usually not good things. After all, why change something that is good and positive? It therefore requires courage to face a truth about yourself that you actually don’t like to admit to as being present in you.

One of the best ways to bring about a change in yourself is to use an event, a revelation or a circumstance as a catalyst for change. Allow that event or circumstance to be a turning point which changes the direction you were going in to take you in a new direction.

Be aware of the timing of the incident so that you can develop a very clear sense of a “before” and an “after” regarding the change. If you are not prepared to make a break from certain behaviours or thinking at some time, you will continue drifting on the sea of life, taken whichever way the winds, the currents and the tides of life take you. But when you know where the turning point happened, you’re more easily able to find the power to overcome the winds, currents and tides that pull at you.

You will require daily courage to resist the urge to return to your old self, and it will not be easy. Nothing in life worth achieving is easy, though. When you consciously think and behave in a different way, you will become stronger, through sheer practice, at living out the change.

And when you truly change yourself, you will one day look up to find that your circumstances have started to change for the better.

Before you are critical of the things that you believe others need to change in their lives, face the person you really are and take a step forward to change what you secretly know you need to change but were too afraid, reluctant, lazy, blind or arrogant to change.

If you believe you deserve better circumstances, you may be right. But you need to be the person you need to be to live in those better circumstances.