100 Simple Ways to Change Your Life for the Better
May 10, 2008
No matter how perfect you may think you are, the fact this there’s always some small way you can improve upon yourself. Whether it’s broadening your knowledge or reducing your impact on the earth, there are seemingly endless little things you can do to make a change for the better. Here, we’ll discuss 100 of these steps, and how you can go about doing them.
Health
Good health is the foundation of a good life, so make these improvements, and they’ll resonate out to the rest of your life.
- Eat breakfast every morning: Eating breakfast is important for your health and mental power, supplying essential vitamins, minerals, and energy for your day.
- Get a good night’s rest: You just can’t have a happy and productive life if you’re tired all of the time, so get some quality shut eye.
- Drink water: Step up your water intake to lose weight, feel better, and improve your skin.
- Eat slowly: Slow down when you eat, and you’ll find that you consume less while still feeling satisfied.
- Cut down on junk food: Junk food has a nasty way of bringing your health down, so avoid it whenever possible, opting instead for healthy food like fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Practice good dental hygiene: Researchers have found that dental hygiene is important for more than cosmetic reasons-it can help you chew food and even avoid heart disease.
- Drink tea: Be sure to check out the powerhouse of benefits that tea can deliver, which includes improved memory and prevention of ills such as cavities, cancer, and heart disease.
- Get some exercise: Whether you need to lose weight or not, exercise will have a positive effect on your overall health and quality of life.
- Improve your energy: If you’re feeling sluggish all day, chances are you’re just not going to feel good about yourself. So take a few steps to boost your energy, and you’ll be better in your daily life.
- Intensify your workouts: Researchers have found that by doing more intense workouts, you can enjoy similar benefits that you would with a more relaxed workout for a longer period of time.
- Enjoy fish a few times a week: Eat fish, and you’ll get a serving of Omega-3 fatty acids, which can help reduce heart disease.
- Wear better shoes: Don’t torture your toes with restrictive shoes all the time-limit the amount of time you spend in uncomfortable shoes.
- Protect your skin: Stay out of the sun to avoid skin damage, or use sunblock to help.
- Eat at home: It’s easier and cheaper to prepare healthy foods on your own at home, and skillfully cooking a meal is sure to impress just about anyone.
- Get tested for prediabetes: Diabetes is a disease that many Americans are susceptible to, and by discovering it early on you can prevent it or lessen its impact.
- Take a daily walk: Get a little bit of movement and clear your mind with a walk every day.
- Lose weight: One of the best things you can do for your health and overall quality of life is to shed a few pounds.
Mental
Improve your mind by taking these simple steps.
- Go back to school: Continuing your education does not have to be a complicated endeavor. Take an online class, or just a weekend seminar.
- Read classic books: Improve your mind by finally picking up all those books you were supposed to read in school.
- Plan: Always have a plan for your life, so you’ll know what you’re working toward.
- Quit procrastinating: Resolve to get moving, and you’ll find that you have much more time than you originally realized.
- Get inspired by a book: Read a book that will help you spark positive changes in your life.
- Learn from your mistakes: Don’t let mistakes get you down. Instead, consider what you did wrong, and how you can avoid doing so again in the future.
- Stop worrying: Let go of worry, and know that the future will come no matter what you do about it.
- Learn to play a musical instrument: Pick up a guitar, or even a harp, to improve your mental capacity and have something fun to do.
- Work to your own advantage: Improve upon what you can, and let the rest fall away.
- Think slowly: Instead of jumping to conclusions, carefully calculate what a situation means. Doing so can help you save relationships that might be damaged by rash thinking
- Participate in a debate: Have a rational discussion with someone of similar intellect to improve your knowledge.
- Learn a new language: Broaden your horizons by learning how to speak a new language.
- Visit Wikipedia: Spend some time on Wikipedia learning lots of interesting facts you’ve never realized before.
7 Easy Ways to Make More Money, Working Less
April 20, 2008
Are you living the Internet marketing lifestyle? You know, laying on the beach sipping Mai Tais, occasionally tapping away on your laptop. (Just to see how much money you’ve made this hour.) Or do you feel like you’re chained to your computer? Are you working longer hours than ever before… and not getting any closer to the dream lifestyle?
Either way, it’s your fault.
Your daily actions are either moving you towards the lifestyle you want, or dragging you further away. There’s no in between.
Look, it’s easy to fall into the “busy being busy” trap. That’s why it’s so important to design the lifestyle you want. Don’t let life just happen to you. Choose how you want to live it and make it happen.
Here are 7 easy ways to make more money working less and get you closer to living the lifestyle you want…
1. Work Less
Parkinson’s law says work expands to fill the time allocated to it. If you choose to work 7 days, you’ll magically find 7 days worth of work to do. The flip side is that work must also contract in a similar fashion. If you choose to work 5 days you’ll make sure you get all your work done in 5 days.
So the quickest and easiest way to make more money is simply to work less!
However many days you work now, choose to work one less. You’ll find it amazing how much you get done when you cut out all the busy work.
2. Outsource
Our school system teaches us a dangerous lesson: you must be good at a wide range of subjects. The only place this applies is in school! In the real world specialists get paid more than generalists.
Focus on your strengths and outsource everything else.
Don’t waste time working on your weaknesses when you can outsource those things to someone else that specializes in them. (Often for pennies on the dollar!)
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20 Things I’m Glad Life Taught Me
March 13, 2008
How many times have you heard someone say, “Hindsight is always 20/20″? If you are like me, you hear it a lot and think it a lot more. Last year Jay wrote an article listing things he wished he’d known earlier. It got me thinking that the most crucial lessons in life and success aren’t taught in books or written on blogs, but they are found by living life itself.
Sure, there may be nuggets of wisdom that we pick up from Dumb Little Man, Zen Habits, or Life Remix, but it is up to us individually to act upon them and learn the lessons. If it takes a failure for us to learn something important, so be it.
Here are 20 things that I personally came to understand and believe in. Your 20 could be totally different. Perhaps you only have 5, it doesn’t matter. The key is that you learn from your life, your failures and your successes. Neglect any one of those and you are taking a rocky road to learning and personal development.
1. You must create and look for opportunities: Opportunities rarely ever come knocking on the door of someone who’s not seeking them. You have to create and seek opportunities for yourself. You have to take the initiative to get the ball rolling and the doors opening.
2. Negativity will only bring more of it: When you focus only on negativity, obviously that’s all you will see. You will not seek out positivity, and even when positivity comes into your life, you’ll look for the negative part of it.
3. Where you are does not determine where you can go: It doesn’t matter if you’re homeless or living in a mansion, poor or rich, or if you have a 4.0 grade point average or “failing”, it won’t make any difference in the future. There are countless rags to riches stories to back this point up. If you have the drive and talents, you can go anywhere. You create your own limitations and horizon.
4. If you can’t help others, you can’t help yourself: Even if it’s just to hold the door for someone or some other simple gesture, it will do wonders for your life. You’ll feel great and you’ll eventually be returned the favor sometime during your life, whether you realize it or not. If you don’t want to help others, then others won’t want to help you, and nor should they.
5. Follow your passion, money will follow: If you have passion and have fun doing your job, then I wouldn’t consider it a job. You can focus on creating even more passion for that subject and money will eventually follow you. If you focus only on the money, it won’t come because you’re focused on the quantity of your work and not the quality.
6. Enjoy yourself: Have fun as much as possible, don’t take everything so seriously. Push your worries aside and bring enjoyment closer.
7. If it were easy everyone would do it: This is why get rich quick schemes will never be true. If it was so quick and easy then everyone would be millionaires. Making money and accomplishing tasks is hard work, but well worth it.
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Consciously Flowing Appreciation: Developing Your “Gratitude Muscle!”
March 8, 2008
We’ve all had days when, for whatever reason, we seem to find ourselves living unconsciously, guided by outworn beliefs and feeling stuck in lower-energy vibrations. When these times occur, you can help yourself to shift into higher alignment by remembering the power of appreciation.
Gratitude, thankfulness, appreciation, blessing – these are all states of being that open the garden gate to abundance, prosperity, synchronicity… namely, Serendipity! Begin by paying appreciative attention to what truly matters: the things of your heart, your creative life and sense of self, your family and friends, your community.
Open yourself to engagement, and most especially enchantment. Here are six fun ways to re-connect with your power of appreciation:
1. Reduce your wants and needs to their most basic level. In other words, what is the feeling or quality that you most desire to expand? Beauty, joy, freedom, time, security? Allow yourself to take one small action today to increase that appreciated quality in your life.
2. Spend time alone in play with your inner artistic child. Do something you remember taking pleasure in as a kid. For me it’s things like glitter, iridescent paints, beads, or baking chocolate chip cookies. Ask yourself: “What did I have fun doing at the age of ten or so – what made the hours fly?” Connect with those inspired ideas that whisper “Oh, this might be fun!”
3. Take a healthy break from routine. Research indicates that we are actually more productive and efficient when we give ourselves regular “rest and relaxation” periods. Even a few moments of quiet contemplation in the midst of an activity-filled day can help to regenerate your spirit and your sense of gratitude.
4. Visualize the best possible outcome of an aspect of your life. Give it as much detail as you possibly can: color, texture, scent, temperature, touch, sound, and most especially the wonderful, ecstatic, positive feelings associated with your beautiful picture. Then let go of your attachment to “how” it’s all supposed to work out, and let the Divine take care of the details. Meanwhile, you’re listening for the gentle nudges of your intuition and bravely taking small steps every day on the path to your heart’s desire.
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