“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” – Jim Rohn
Let me tell you a story.
A few years ago, I found myself staring at the blinking cursor on a half-finished novel. Again. Same cursor, same blinking, same doubt. It wasn’t just a writing rut—I was in a full-blown life rut. You know the kind: every day starts to feel like a photocopy of the last. Wake up, scroll on my phone longer than I should, eat the same breakfast (oatmeal with just enough cinnamon to pretend it’s interesting), and convince myself that tomorrow I’d finally get my act together.
Except tomorrow kept standing me up.
And then one morning, while mindlessly scrolling through a rabbit hole of “motivational” quotes—because that’s what you do when you don’t want to actually do anything—I came across this Jim Rohn quote: “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.”
Now normally, I roll my eyes at stuff like that. Too tidy. Too Pinterest. But that one? That one smacked me in the face like a cold wind through a broken window. Because it called me out. No cosmic lottery was coming to save me. No magical inspiration fairy was going to whisper the ending of my novel into my ear while I watched YouTube. I had to change something.
That Nagging Need for Comfort
Here’s the thing: change is awful. At least at first.
Comfort zones are like old sweatpants—fraying, stained, maybe a little smelly, but so familiar. I was clinging to habits that made me feel temporarily safe but were slowly smothering my long-term happiness. I told myself I was “waiting for the right time.” Spoiler alert: the right time is just code for “never.”
But I started small.
I got up thirty minutes earlier. Not to be one of those annoying “5AM Miracle Morning” people, but just to carve out time to write before the world could interrupt. I swapped doomscrolling for journaling. I even said “yes” to a Zumba class, which was both terrifying and weirdly fun. (Still can’t shimmy properly, but hey, points for effort.)
The Sneaky Power of Small Shifts
Something interesting happened once I started changing tiny things: I began to trust myself again.
When you keep breaking promises to yourself—like I’ll start the novel next week or I’ll finally leave that toxic job after the holidays—your self-confidence quietly erodes. You stop believing your own voice.
But when I stuck to a single promise, even something as basic as “I will write 200 words today,” I felt a tiny flicker of pride. I wasn’t waiting for inspiration. I was showing up for myself.
Those flickers grew. One small change led to another. It was less about overhauling my life and more about tweaking the dials. I didn’t need to burn everything down—I just needed to stop sleepwalking through it.
What This Quote Actually Means (To Me)
Jim Rohn’s quote isn’t telling us to hustle harder or become productivity cyborgs. It’s a wake-up call. It’s a reminder that hoping things will improve is not the same as choosing to improve them.
It’s not about chasing some glamorous ideal. For me, it was about reclaiming a little agency. About saying: Okay, I may not control everything, but I can control something.
If You’re Still Stuck…
If you’re reading this and thinking, Yeah, but I don’t even know where to start, I get it. Truly. That space between wanting to change and knowing how is foggy and frustrating.
Start messy. Start unsure. Start with something you’ve already been thinking about for way too long. Rearrange your furniture. Unfollow someone who drains your energy. Sign up for that class that scares you a little.
Just don’t sit there waiting for your life to magically glow up on its own. That’s not how it works. Or if it is, I’ve never seen the memo.
The part where I get all reflective…
When I think about that version of myself who felt stuck and tired and weirdly hollow, I don’t feel shame anymore. I feel gratitude. Because he finally did something. Not huge. Not dramatic. Just something.
And that’s when life started to feel better—not by chance, but by change.