Question: How to change negative karma in this life?
Answer: There are a lot of different purifying activities to burn off bad karma: different austerities and penances, etc. But that does not really solve any problems because you just create more, because we are still acting and still creating more karma. So that is also a teaching that people like to propagate and follow, “Burn off the karma, do this, do this, do this.” But it doesn’t purify the heart, this doesn’t purify desires. So we just do the same kind of things again. So we don’t get anywhere.
But the process of bhakti yoga not only removes previous karma but actually puts us in the realm of a karma free lifestyle because in pure bhakti one is only doing the will of the Supreme and there is no karma for that. And along the way he loses this desire to act independently. So this is the only real solution.