Let us look at some of the great ways you could change your life immediately:
1. Go Big
Think big and dream big. Do not think that your dreams are out of this world. However, your dreams need to be reasonable and achievable. When setting goals and writing them out think of the “CAM.” “CAM” is nothing but clear, achievable, and measurable. These are three elements your goals need to possess. The term “clear” means that your goals need to be well-written, obvious, and to the point. You need to know what you want to achieve and not be ambiguous.
The second term is “achievable”, where the goals you set need to be achievable, as in you are able to complete them. Finally, goals need to be measurable. Now, this is one of the important aspects of goals because you need to be able to measure your progress to have an idea if the way you are approaching the task is correct or needs adjustment. If a goal satisfies all these rules, do not be afraid to dream it.
2. Don’t Work Against Your Values
A person’s values is his set of beliefs about good and bad, right and wrong, as well as many other aspects. Some values are common between everyone such as love and compassion, yet other values are personal ones. It is thus important to have values and opinions regarding different concepts that you hold dear to yourself because this will define you as an individual. People create values regarding concepts like freedom, education, relations, and friendships. Since you are the one that set these values, agree, and believe them, sticking to your values and beliefs you set is vital because then you will be satisfied with your actions and will have no regrets.
3. Live With Positivity
Having a positive approach in life is something that is important to one’s being. A person that drives life with a positive approach is always full of life and has a smile embedded on his face. This translates to people liking that person and people feeling like this person is a treat to live with. Optimists always handle situations more effectively and do not create a big deal out of things.
Moreover, this also applies to living life and not worrying about the past. Having a positive attitude always yields good results and so this is a principle and way by which we should live life every day. Positivity can never attract negativity and so whatever your past is like, you will always find ways to correct your mistakes and move forward. This can only result in one thing, and that is having no regrets.
4. Examine Your Path
This concept applies whether you work, are in school, unemployed, volunteering, or go on vacation. We need to take a look at our lives and see if it complies with our values and principles. Ask yourself if you want to leave a legacy behind or not, and most importantly what type of legacy. This applies to work but also applies to relationships.
Would you like people to remember you or just be like a passing car on a crowded highway? Think of how you would like to be remembered by people. Most often when you examine whether your life is compatible with your personal values, you realize that there is some kind of conflict. The problem could be your lifestyle and may need some changing. Moreover, if you do not examine your life, you will not know there is something wrong and thus will not take the time to fix it.
5. Make Use Of Your Time
Sometimes we think we do not have enough time when in fact we are just not allocating our time properly. Managing time is such an important aspect of life that could be the difference between success and failure. Did you ever think of this? Time management is the ability to manage time as the name suggests, but even more than that it has a lot of sub-elements beneath it and a lot of ways to manage time. Time management is one of the simple changes we can all commit to in our daily lives to possibly double or increase our results and outcomes.
One simple thing we can do each day before going to bed is prepare for our next day. People who really want to be on top of the game could prepare for the coming few days or maybe week. Let us discuss the one day schedule preparation; before going to bed you can put the books you need for the next day in your back pack if you are a high-school or college student. One more thing you could do is plan out the various activities you have the next day and the timings that suit those activities.
6. Value Relationships
Relationships are such an important element that affects our lives profoundly. Whether you are rich or poor, you need to have loved ones around you to share the moments with you and support and encourage you. Always work on the relationships you already possess and build new ones. Ensure that you dedicate some time off to spend with the family, because this in turn comes back with positive effects on you. On the other hand, if you have been in conflict with a loved one, make sure you allocate time to amend the wounds. Do not be afraid to admit that you are wrong and make compromises.
7. Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone
Ever tried stepping out of your comfort zone, even just once? Some people are more likely to be stuck in their comfort zone and not being able to step out as if there is a huge shield blocking them from leaving. Some could explain this as being afraid of doing something different and experimenting with their life and future. However, we need change to be happy usually. A simple example is when you are at a certain position at work for two years. Would you be more excited if you get promoted or if you stay in the same spot.
The perfect way to apply this concept of change would be to experiment on small things each day, taking small steps every day, and then upon realizing its success apply it on a bigger scale. After deciding that you are willing to take action and change, do something different every day. Do not be afraid to fail as without failure there is no success. You never know when you will realize something that ends up changing your life forever.
Examples of changes you could try include finding a new hobby, playing a different sport or instrument, and taking a different road on your way to work.
8. Don’t Compare
Did your parents ever tell you something along the lines of being like your siblings and showing more respect and politeness as your neighbors? People tend to compare similar situations because curiosity is built in us and to get a better idea of how others are doing. However, is this the best way of getting a point across? Comparing one’s life to another is one of the things that make people feel unhappy with their own lives. If you think about, we often compare our low points of our life with the high points of other people’s lives. This is not really fair though, and we do not realize that other people have low points too that might be even worse than ours. The reason is that we often see other people in their best times.
9. Stay Healthy
Who does not want to be healthy and be able to do whatever activity they want to do? At first, you might think like “I do not want to work; work is very hard”. Half of this statement is right; that work is very hard. If work was not hard and everything came easy to us we would not feel this special feeling of accomplishment. However, given that work is hard, you still do not want to sit doing nothing at home, because what this brings about is just laziness and lack of value and contribution to the community. Health is a very vital thing that needs to be maintained in order to live life to the fullest.
Unhealthy individuals have difficulty doing certain activities and you don’t want to be that person. Now, this is something we need to put at the top of our priority list because it can affect our mood, the way we deal with people, and our focus too sometimes. We need to find some kind of way to maintain exercising and insert it somewhere in our schedules. Instead of working from 8am-4pm, try checking if you can work from 7am-3pm and take the hour from 3pm-4pm to walk or maybe run around the house a few times. This could be the start, and then once you maintain this you can move on to two or three hours of exercise.
10. First Things First
Another important concept that ties in with making use of our time and dividing up work is prioritization. Prioritizing is an important tool by which you put first things first. So, in the case where you had to choose between working those extra hours in work or exercising more, depending on how important each activity is, you would put one of them first on your list and the second would follow. The logical decision would be to prefer exercising over working overtime since overtime work is something above and beyond work hours and so could be postponed to the next day in a lot of cases. Thus, exercising on the top of the list and put working overtime next, since exercising is more significant in this case.
Putting first things first will not only ensure that you finish off the most important things first and then decide on the next important thing, but also could help organize your daily or weekly schedule. One creative yet simple way of prioritizing your day would be to mark activities of top importance with an “A,” followed with the less important activities with a “B,” and the least important activities with a “C”.
Organizing your schedule in such a way will definitely give you something that busy-ness and just completing tasks without organization will not. The way I see it is that each day one needs to make sure to complete the activities marked with an “A”, and maybe some of the ones from the “B” category, while moving or postponing any other unfinished activities to a more convenient day. This way you will be able to do other essentials like spending time with family and fishing.
11. Nutrition
Nutrition is something we just cannot stress the importance of and is usually something that is overlooked and taken for granted. Eating matters whether it is you want to look and feel good or actually need to lose weight. This could be the reason why you do not feel like you have enough energy for your day. Have you been in a situation where you are trying to figure out the problem behind your low energy and by coincidence end up realizing it was actually your diet? Your diet needs to be full of vegetables and fruits and have the correct portions of protein, whole grains, carbohydrate and healthy fats.
There are many ways we can start changing our lives to the better forever. The hardest step is to get started and break that restricting shell. We need to be the change we want to see around us.