Need a Change? Go for It!

Posted by StephanieKopf on February 28th, 2012

We’re lucky if we have a place where we feel at home. It gives us a sense of security and we know what we are coming back to at the end of the day. We know our way around, we have favourite haunts and places only we know about. There are streets and buildings that remind us of special moments we experienced, traditional meeting places with friends, places that feel like they are “yours”. Familiarity is an important feeling, and in a way maybe all of us continuously strive to achieve it in our lives. It’s important to have roots.

But being in one place all the time can get plain old boring. It can make you antsy, frustrated, without you maybe even knowing at first why. The thing is, as well as familiarity, we also need variety. We need some change, we need to feel like things are moving forward. It’s good to have a base, but it’s also important to refresh your experiences, so you have a fresh outlook on life and don’t start feeling like you’re missing out on something.

When you feel like getting out, you should. This doesn’t necessarily mean packing a suitcase and hopping on the next plane to China (though that’s an exciting idea, have you seen these statistics about China?). It can happen in different ways. But so much is true: if you feel like a change of scene, whether big or small, do something about it!

There are a lot of ways to inject a little excitement in your everyday routine. Assuming you have one – it doesn’t have to be the case for everyone! Say that on your way to work you stop by the same bakery every morning. You get the same cup of coffee, the same pastry, and then you take the remaining steps to work. But maybe on your way you’ve always noticed, out of the corner of your eye, that there was another bakery tucked away in a side street a little out of your way. So why not go there one morning? See what they have to offer, have a look around. You might end up liking it. You might not. You might meet someone interesting. You might have an amusing conversation. Why not just do it? It will be something different. Same goes for your lunch hour. Suggest going somewhere else than where you usually go with your colleagues.

Or maybe you were walking up the steps to your apartment one morning after jogging and suddenly noticed that a new neighbour had moved in. Say hello, have a chat.

So that’s what you can do on the “home” level, though I’m sure there are many more ideas out there. There is, of course, another way for a break or some change, and that is travel. If you’re from Europe, you have a huge amount of opportunities before you, most of them probably within easy travel distance. Getting away even just for a weekend may freshen you up for quite a while. It doesn’t have to be far away. Maybe there are some pretty towns nearby that have cosy bed and breakfasts, perfect for a weekend retreat. Or possibly there’s even a beach not far from where you live that you’ve been dying to explore for ages, but somehow never gotten around to it? Now is the time!

Getting out of  the rut of the everyday is something many of us have to do once in a while. There are more ways of doing it then you think. But if you just don’t feel like going anywhere, getting a bunch of friends together for a movie night works just as well. Anything that makes you feel good.