5 Habits That Will Fix 87% Of Your Problems
When you think about changing your life, a lot of times we get this image of this dude shirtless in the gym with the rope thing.
Someone like Zen reads a book with books all around them and headphones on. We think of challenges like going into monk mode, 75 hard, or all these things that are trendy. But I’ve had days where my life has shifted from one day to the next just by implementing some not-super-hard habits. So today I wanted to share five habits that can change your life within a day that are not all that hard to implement. If you’re anything like me and probably most of humanity, then you have a lot of stuff you have to do and it seems like the important things never really get done.
Habit #1
So I’ve been using this rule, habit, or idea called the Eisenhower Matrix or the Eisenhower Rule that helps me get the important stuff done and not do a lot of things, which I think is even more important. So how this works is that you kind of take all the tasks that you have to do and organize them into these four separate quadrants. Whether you do this in your head or just write it out doesn’t matter. It depends on what works best for you. You have this first quadrant, which is for urgent tasks that are important and you should do first. These are things that need to get done if you want to progress in your life, move forward in your career, or do any of that type of stuff.
Then there’s the second box, which is for scheduling things. These aren’t things that you need to do right now, but they’re pretty important, and you need to get them done eventually, so you don’t do them right away because they’re not as important, and you put them on the calendar. This can be anything from a schedule to go to the gym to whatever the next steps are for you and your business. Then there’s this third quadrant, delegating, which is something most of us have a really hard time doing. So these are important things that need to get done, but they’re not as important as the other two. And maybe you can spend your time better. So this is something that I’ve been practicing over the past couple of years after reading for our work week trying to find things in my life or my business, especially something I can delegate to somebody else to buy back some of my life.
The fourth box is that you put everything in when you’re looking at your overall life and seeing things that you don’t want to do anymore that aren’t adding things to your life. So if you’re spending a lot of time on social media if it lands in that box where you don’t want to do it right away, you don’t want to put it on a schedule, you can’t have somebody else do it, and it’s not adding anything to your life, then it goes in this box and you get rid of it. This is often the thing that keeps you from getting all the important stuff done. You know you have something important to do, but instead, you’re playing a game on your phone, you’re answering emails too many times, and you’re doing whatever it is that is not all that important, but it’s keeping you from success. Everything that you’re doing should fit into one of these boxes, and if it’s in here, it’s got to go.
Habit #2
If you want to do one thing that will make tomorrow better, try doing a digital detox. This right here is probably what is holding most people back from doing what they want to do, from being more productive, from being happier, from just getting stuff done, from starting that business—whatever it is, this is generally the problem. You can take this as extreme as you want to, from literally putting your phone into a cookie jar to setting timers for how much time you’re allowed on different apps. There are a few apps that I’ve been trying out that block you from using things like Instagram or whatever app has to have used your 37 minutes or whatever you pick, you literally can’t get into them anymore. So if you have a problem with spending too much time, like just wasting on your phone, this can be a cool idea. You can also create phone-free zones. So like when you’re in your office, when you’re in your bedroom or your kitchen, your phone is not allowed in that space. Maybe it has a charger or somewhere where it goes, a drawer where you can put it in and then have time to not be distracted, to not be scrolling Instagram, to not be listening to a podcast, not be doing anything but just be present at the moment. You can also do basic things like turn on grayscale mode, turning off all notifications, and using focus mode so people can’t get in touch with you. Or if you want to take it a little bit more extreme, you can do a seven-day or a 30-day social media detox where you just get rid of everything, including YouTube and Instagram and everything else off of your phone. Fine, you can keep youtube you can only watch educational stuff. For real though, whatever you got to do to like reset yourself to get out of this loop so that you can really start to make progress in your life and everything that comes into your life is hopefully like this and encouraging and making you feel better and helping you feel more motivated and you get out all of that toxic crap that is on like Instagram and everywhere else and you can focus on living in the real world and doing things that matter.
Phones really eat up most of our lives. The average person spends three hours and 15 minutes on their phone every day and they check their phone 58 times per day, which I honestly think it’s way higher than that. for a lot of people there’s actually a quote that i really like from the book the art of focus there doesn’t seem to be a more worthwhile endeavor to dedicate your life to than to see what you are capable of so i have a question that i’d like you to answer in the comments do you think you were doing everything you were capable of are you living up to your potential i don’t think i am and to be honest including right now i don’t think i’m living up to my potential i don’t think i’m giving life my best shot and so i’m actively working to change that.
Habit #3
Consistency and starting strong. Consistency is really the key in any progress in your life. It all comes from these small, tiny changes done over a long period of time that really leads to a lot of success.
When it comes to getting in shape, you could spend an entire week hitting the gym five hours a day and you’re not really gonna see that much progress, but if you go consistently three times a week for a year or two, you’re gonna see a ton of progress. It’s really small, consistent habits like voting for yourself to be that person that you wanna be, done over a long period of time that will just transform your life without actually a ton of effort. So if you wanna start this, pick one habit that you think you should be doing, you know would improve your life, you could do it if you set your mind to it, and just start that with the smallest possible step.
Do it tomorrow. If you’ve been wanting to get in shape forever, put it into your schedule tomorrow. Go to the gym for 15 minutes. to work out, to do 100 pushups, whatever it is, something that’s attainable, it’s not too hard, it’s not gonna trash you. And if you can have this be something that you could do first thing in the morning, that really helps. Like I love having in the morning, I read one page of a book, I have coffee, I have this little morning routine that I do. And I know that right from the get go, I am starting my day off with a win. So what can that be for you?
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Habit #4
Make a financial plan. I know you can’t change your finances like overnight and doing this in a day doesn’t always make tomorrow better.
But for me, if I know what I’m doing with my finances, it makes it so much easier for me to follow through and then also be like encouraged in everything that I do. Because I know that when I make coffee at home and you know, I don’t waste that that $5 on a latte, the classic saving money thing or don’t online shop or I’m studying to learn a skill that will make you know me be able to earn more money in the future when I add you know, a little bit into my investment fund. If I know exactly why I am doing this, because if I follow these steps, I will reach financial freedom in 12 years or 15 years or 17 or six years.
If you don’t know how the decisions that you’re making are impacting your financial future, you are guaranteeing yourself to never be that success story who got to retire early and do whatever they wanted and start that business and have freedom and travel and do all that stuff. It will almost guarantee never happen to you. If you aren’t trying for it, if you’re not going in the right direction, if you don’t have a plan of like, if I do this, this and this, then I will be able to do this because I took time to actually build financial plans for myself. You know, last year we were able to travel for a month through Europe, something I never would have dreamed of being able to do.
We’re actually able to take multiple vacations. I’ve really taken time to set up my life and my business to the point that I can work just a few hours a day. Right now, I could take a couple of months or even a couple of years off and it wouldn’t really affect my financial life. And that is such a stress reliever. It makes every day so much easier.
Habit #5
Go ahead and exercise so this is not the clearest one but i just wanted to tell you a little bit about how this has literally changed my life i’ve been prone to like spells where i get depressed, it’s probably not clinical depression, but like everybody gets these times where you’re just like in a rut, you’re feeling down on yourself, you’re not liking a lot of things you’re doing, you just get gloomy, you don’t have energy and you’re like, you know, you’re kind of depressed.
And the one habit that has kind of kept me from going too deep down the rabbit hole over the past 10 plus years that I’ve struggled with this is exercise, staying in shape. When I’m angry, when I’m stressed out, when I’ve got too much going on with work, whatever it is, even when I don’t feel like I have time to do more, I go to the gym consistently. I’ve been to the gym at least three times a week for the past, how old am I? 11 years? Like honestly, this has been the best thing I’ve ever done for my mental health. I feel more confident. I feel more healthy. I have more energy. And it’s even like immediate where if I’m stressed out, if I’m not feeling great about today, if I go to the gym, especially if I do it first thing in the morning, then I already did something hard right off the get go.
I already worked on improving my life just for myself, not for anybody else. And I can push myself into doing something hard because if I do something really hard, right in the beginning of the day. It makes everything else in my day just feel easier. I don’t know if that’s just like a mental thing. It probably is. But when you continuously do hard things out of your own choice, nobody’s making you do it. It makes all the other stuff which seemed hard before not really as hard. Those habits have changed my life. Hopefully they will help you as well. Subscribe to email list and all that. And see you next next one.
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