Improve Your Life in 15 Minutes a Day
By creating a daily habit you can achieve anything.
Fifteen minutes isn’t a lot of time.
But that’s sort of the whole point.
Anyone can carve out fifteen minutes.
So, forget setting vague, unachievable new year’s goals and commit to a fifteen-minutes-a-day habit instead.
Success and failure are both choices.
Being successful depends on what you decide is a priority in your life. No one will hand you your success on a silver platter. You have to take action to get what you want. And this is where many people fail to make the most of a new year ahead of them.
Writing down what you want is a great first step, but it’s also where many people stop. Without action and follow-through, your goals will stay unachieved dreams.
You need to create a simple daily habit that will bring your goals to fruition.
Because there’s no progress toward your goals without action, it doesn’t matter how small you may think your progress is. The point is to build up momentum in the way of habits to achieve your goals.
Progress is progress. — Marjorie Thomson, my supportive grandmother and badass matrtiarch
Fifteen minutes every day of the year adds up to almost one hundred hours. Imagine all you could accomplish with a hundred hours focused on a specific goal.
The keyword here is specific. Because without specific intention your goals become too vague to accomplish.
Habits for Improvement
Choosing which habits you want to embrace is the easy part. Simply think about your daily routine and consider where you may be lacking in productivity, positivity, excitement, passion, achievement, or success.
What do you want to be better in your life?
Home
Many of us spend a lot of time in our homes, especially this past year in lockdown. I’m in no way a hoarder, but spending so much of 2020 at home I’ve realized how much clutter I’ve acquired over two decades in the same house.
Clutter is possibly my kryptonite. It affects my thoughts and mood every single day. An unorganized office, or bedroom, or entire house causes my mind to feel constantly distracted.
So I’m building up the daily habit of decluttering my home. It’s time for the unnecessary, no longer functional or practical, and uncherished items to go! I dedicate fifteen minutes every single day to rid my house of clutter and organize a small area.
Now, of course, that’s not long enough to organize an entire room. But tackling a whole room feels overwhelming compared to a section of my bookshelves.
Implementing this fifteen-minute habit into my daily routine over the next year will create the organized, easy-to-clean, happy home I desire.
Getting your house in order and reducing the confusion gives you more control over your life. Personal organization somehow releases or frees you to operate more effectively. — Larry King, award-winning television host and fashion-setter of suspenders
Health
Many of us could do better when it comes to our health. Whether it’s exercise or diet — or both — there are thousands of options out there to help us improve ourselves.
The problem though is staying fired-up about it. Sticking with it and making it a permanent practice rather than a temporary idea.
For me, it’s not even about living longer. It’s all about living better for however long I have left.
So I’ve added another habit to my day — YouTube yoga. Or whatever type of exercise I feel like trying on any particular day.
YouTube makes it easy. I can stick with the 15-minute habit because every video states its length in the description. It takes me an additional two seconds to scroll through, point, and click on which video looks the most interesting each day.
Exercise to stimulate, not to annihilate. The world wasn’t formed in a day, and neither were we. Set small goals and build upon them. — Lee Handy, American body-builder, and eight-time Mr. Olympia
Relationships
Due to the pandemic, most of us have been cooped up in our homes for the last year. Time spent with friends and family has diminished greatly. This is something I want to rectify — pandemic or not — this year.
So, again, I’m creating a new daily habit.
During my weekday lunches, I now call or video chat with a loved one. It’s important to me to let the people I care most about know how much I want them in my life. It’s far too easy to take those we love for granted.
When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it’s easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as luxuries, we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our well-being and survival. — Dean Ornish, American physician and nutrition expert extraordinaire
Fifteen Minutes
You can tolerate many things if you know it will only last for fifteen minutes.
Baby wailing next to you on a flight home? Ear-splitting and agonizing, but you power through knowing you land in less than fifteen minutes.
Eyes watering because your mother-in-law insists on a hug after she must have bathed in perfume? No complaints because you’ll be off to work in fifteen minutes and be able to breathe again.
Powering through negative experiences in short bursts of time isn’t that difficult.
If you can deal with unpleasantness for fifteen minutes because you have to, imagine how easy it will be if it’s something positive — something you want to do.
I’ve endured many inconvenient and even horrible things for more than fifteen minutes. So I know I can work on making my life better for that short amount of time. Especially knowing that it will direct me toward my goals.
Keeping a habit, in the smallest way, protects and strengthens it. — Gretchen Rubin, self-improvement guru and creator of The Happiness Project
The Takeaway:
Making improvements that last a lifetime can be accomplished by creating habits. Decide how you want to do better and choose a habit that will help you achieve your greatness. Then simply set the timer for fifteen minutes and begin today.
What habit will you start today?
