Another answer to Valda's general question: to use a verb after a preposition, you can theoretically use a construction with the neuter demonstrative pronoun то + чтобы + [infinitive] -- putting the то in whatever case the preposition requires. So, for example:

"I am striving towards changing my life."
я стремлюсь к тому, чтобы изменить свою жизнь.

(Here, the "towards" in English is unambiguously a preposition, and can't be confused with the infinitive-marker "to".)

In such Russian constructions, the то is basically functioning as a "dummy word" or "placeholder" -- it fulfills the requirement that к must be followed by a word in the dative case, since verbs can't be put into the dative or instrumental or whatever. Another example:

"Instead of reading the novel, I watched the film adaptation on YouTube."
Вместо того, чтобы читать роман, я смотрел экранизацию на YouTube.

The preposition вместо requires the genitive, so using "вместо того, чтобы читать" is an alternative to using a verbal-noun construction such as вместо чтения романа ("instead of the reading of the novel"). Some people may even like the того, чтобы construction better, because they might consider the double-genitive phrase "of the reading of the novel" to be unaesthetic, although there's nothing grammatically wrong with it.

But even when such то, чтобы constructions are possible, a lot of times it might sound better to reconstruct the sentence and not use a preposition (even if there is one in English). So in the above example you could paraphrase "I watched the movie instead of reading the novel" and express the same idea by saying, instead, "I haven't read this novel; I've only watched the movie based on it." Thus, you totally avoid a prepositional construction.

Or, you can use a verbal noun in Russian (like перемен or чтение) instead of an actual verb -- the best choice will depend on the context.