“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.” – Steve Jobs
Your life becomes a reflection of the things you think of. When you start noticing the correlation between everything you do, you will more easily find the balance in your life and focus on the things that really matter. Your habits and rituals directly affect everything that happens to you. Your health, financial situation, relations with people around you, and everything else depend on them. All these things influence one another too. As soon as you improve one thing, other things follow. Keeping a balanced life is a skill; the more you work on it, the better you become.
12 things that will change your life
- Focus on the things that really matter – As soon as you open your eyes in the morning, focus on the things that will improve your life, such as working out, meditation, planning, or education. Focusing on negative things will ruin your day, and if it becomes routine, it could easily ruin your whole life. If you choose stress for breakfast, that day is already ruined. Choose better.
- Regular planning – A meaningful and fullfilled life cannot be achieved without regular planning. Your time is your life, so don’t spend it on the wrong things. By planning, you will raise your motivation, come up with new ideas, and be much more effective with your time.
- Taking daily steps – Without this, nothing will change. Planning without taking steps is useless. Everyone has some kind of plan that they will “one day” put into action, but only a small percentage of people work on their goals every day. By taking daily steps, you encounter unexpected situations and look for ways to resolve them, making your experience and self-confidence grow.
- A proper rest – An exhausted person cannot be optimistic or motivated. A good rest is the first step to a healthy life and a good mood. A good night’s sleep is (apart from watching TV until late) usually disturbed by caffeine, alcohol, drugs, and bad food, which prevent the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase of sleep that is essential for a healthy sleep.
- Work out – “In a healthy body a healthy mind.” We take care of everything we need to live every day, but we forget about our own body. Very few people exercise regularly (look around). A healthy person has a thousand wishes, while a sick person has only one, but we don’t think about it until we finish at the doctor’s. Find some time for recreation on a daily basis. Everything is better than sitting in front of the TV. Put on your headphones, turn on the music, and take a walk.
Take the first step immediately. Download my (currently free) Kindle book from the link below, or start with free audiobook “Fulfilling Life: A Matter of Personal Choice”. Together with its accompanying checklists, it will help you start making changes.
- Food – The amount and the quality of the food we eat are the main causes of bad or good health. On average, in five years we consume around five thousand meals, together with a few more thousand other things that we eat or drink besides that. Your body is not a garbage bin – you choose what you will look like and how you will feel. A few years will fly by fast, so don’t let them catch you by surprise.
- Vices – Vices drain the energy you need to work on your goals. One solid hangover can easily knock out motivation for a week. A reckless life leads to frustration and bad health, which leads further to destroyed relationships and lousy jobs. All of these things leave scars on the people around you and on your kids, which can reflect on their own families later in life. By throwing out the vices, you will improve relations with people around you, increase your energy, and save a lot of money over time.
- Lifelong education – This is often neglected more than recreation. Most people after school completely forget about continuing education, believing that the level of formal education they have achieved through regular schooling is sufficient for them to survive. A formal education is the foundation that gives you the opportunity to find some kind of job, but if you want something more, you will have to work on it. If you want to achieve your own goals, you will need to make a plan and learn what you need to achieve those goals. Lifelong education will boost your self-confidence, create more options in life, and help you achieve your goals.
- Self-reflection – Observing how your actions affect your life and the people around you is the best way to get to know yourself better. By knowing yourself better, you will stay calm in different life situations, relations with people around you will be excellent, and you will choose life goals that are in line with your true desires.
- Meditation – This calms your mind and decreases stress. To start, find a quiet place and sit on a chair or cushion with your eyes closed. Try not to think about anything and focus only on your breathing. Breathe from your stomach, and not from your chest. You will see that it is not easy to stop your thoughts or observe them without interfering.
- Affirmation – I bet you have some negative things that you say to yourself when no one is looking, things that frustrate you. That is the biggest piece of nonsense. You can change most of what you don’t like about yourself. Find strong, motivating phrases that positively polarize you. When you see successful people or athletes shouting at themselves in front of a mirror just before an important event – that is what they do. You don’t have to shout to wake up the whole neighborhood, but you can find a couple of sentences that lift you up and you can start your day with them, every day.
- Visualization – Visualizing your own goals is key to long-term motivation and perseverance. The more you visualize what you really want to accomplish in life, the more you become convinced that you can actually accomplish it .
It’s no coincidence that the last three things (among others) are used by most successful people. Success in anything requires a lot of effort and responsibility, which entails a greater amount of stress. If you stick to some of these things on a regular basis, your quality of life will improve significantly over time.
Conclusion
Personal growth, once you start, never stops. You start enjoying it and it becomes your way of life. There are so many things you can work on. To start, choose one or two and go. You’ll see significant changes over time, and you’ll be looking for more.
Don’t forget to get your free audiobook, as well as the accompanying checklists that will help you get going. Set your goals, fill in the checklists, and take the first step. If you need support or just want to share your ideas with others, join the Long-Term Habits group. Everything is easier in a group of like-minded people.
Links:
- Free downloads: PDF and the audiobook Fulfilling Life: A matter of Personal Choice with all the accompanying checklists you need to get started
- Great Books for a Great Life – all the answers to your questions in one place
“In order to write about life, first you must live it.”– Ernest Hemingway
its good
Thank you. Happy New Year‼️