If you don’t think you need to improve your life, skip this post and go sit back down on your throne and consider all your perfections.
For those of us who are human and are realistic about our failings, read on.
I must, however, preface this post by highlighting one key disclaimer. If you do not action any of these 5 Simple Steps, your life will not improve.
That’s as clear as I can be. This is one of those posts that require action.
This isn’t a post that you should casually read and move on. I’ve written this to inspire you. Moreover, I need you to take an active approach when reading this.
In order for you to improve your life, you need to be proactive and action-oriented. Approach the following with an open mind and open heart and ensure you put some, if not all of this, into practice.
The following is my ultimate guide to help you improve your life. Follow these simple 5 steps to see some dramatic improvement and start living an extraordinary and fulfilled life.
The 5 Simple Steps to Drastically Improve Your Life.
1. Get Honest With Yourself
This sounds pretty simple, right? Ah.. nope. It’s the most difficult of the 5 steps. That’s why I’ve put it at No. 1.
I figure, if you can’t be honest with yourself, then realistically, all is lost. That might seem like an exaggeration, but it’s not.
If you want to seriously and drastically improve your life, honesty is the foundation.
I recently went through a review of my life in as much as I wanted to understand what direction I was heading in.
It was important to me to identify what areas of my life I was ‘drifting’ or simply heading in a direction that could eventually be problematic. What I found was, to a degree, alarming.
There were certain habits that I certainly didn’t like, directions that if not halted, would cause me some significant issues in the future, and many relatively insignificant actions and reactions that were certainly not healthy.
I had to be honest about how these were affecting my life and not put my head in the sand and ignore them.
Ignorance is what causes some serious problems if left unchallenged.
“Knowing yourself, if the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle
Without honesty, you can’t really get an accurate picture of where you’re at.
Being self-reflective is the key attribute of those who have a successful and fulfilling life, however, what is at the core of self-reflection is honesty.
Start reflecting on yourself through a lens of honesty and you’ll be guaranteed to see some enormous gains.
2. Ask Yourself The Right Questions
Ok, so being honest with yourself is the key to drastically changing the direction of your life. But what do you be honest about and how?
This is where asking yourself the right questions comes in to play. If you don’t ask the right questions, you aren’t going to get the right answers.
“It’s not that we don’t know the right answers, it is just that we don’t ask the right questions” – Tony Robbins
Let me give you some examples. Some of the questions I’ve been asking myself recently are these;
Do I really value my health? if so, why?
Is my life in balance with work, family, spirituality, health, friendships, recreation, financial?
Am I being the best influence on my children?
What areas of my relationship with my wife need to be improved on?
Is my relationship with God where I think it needs to be?
Ok, so it’s these types of questions that can be really uncomfortable. You need to be able to be brave enough to ask them and honest with your answers.
Your questions need to be specific. I do however ask myself some general or broad questions semi-regularly like ‘how is my life traveling at the moment?’ or ‘what can I do better at?’. Generally, though, the more specificity around your questions, the more accurately you can answer them.
Asking yourself the right questions enables you to reflect on the answers which in turn, can provide you an accurate picture of what areas of your life you need to improve on.
3. Always Try And Improve On The Previous Day
The next step to improve your life is always to improve on yesterday.
I’ve personally found this to be very powerful in assisting me to change the direction of my life.
When you look to improve on your previous day, you are constantly reviewing your behaviour and actions.
This is a very simple and powerful approach that ensures you have a mindset of continuous improvement and is a guaranteed life-changing approach.
If you want to improve your life, you need to do nothing more than compare today with yesterday. It’s that simple.
Making slight and incremental improvements will deliver you extraordinary gains over a short period and unimaginable changes over a lifetime.
It will also provide you with some momentum.
The importance of momentum cannot be overstated. It really does provide you with rhythm. You’ll be encouraged to seeing the gains accumulating and will be motivated to continue making improvements due to your consistent approach.
This process is extremely beneficial. Let’s say that yesterday you were lacking in the understanding stakes when your partner told you that they had a bad day at work, or you got a bit too reactive to your child’s disobedience, or your exercise lacked a bit of an edge or you felt like you feel like your effort at work has waned?
If you start to review your previous day and make an effort to improve on it, albeit just a bit and do this on a consistent basis, you’ll not only soon find you are extremely conscious of everything you do, but you’ll find you’re getting better at those niggly life issues that keep you frustrated.
I’ve implemented this into my life and can say that most days my approach or underlying motivation, is to not replay what I see as the ‘failures’ of yesterday. It keeps me focused on continual improvement.
Let me say, this is a paradigm shift that will truly help you improve your life.
4. Have The End In Mind
For many people, the end of their life doesn’t rate a mention, they’re all about the ‘now’.
Whilst living in the moment is really powerful and is extremely beneficial, there needs to be a balance.
For me, I constantly look forward and imagine where I’ll be. It’s less imagining, more tracking my current trajectory and calculating where I’ll be when I’m 50, 60, 70, and at the end of my life.
I do this both holistically and for specific areas of my life, i.e with my health, my spiritual journey, as a leader, as a father and husband, etc.
When you have the end in mind, you have a goal or target that you are tracking to. This gives you the edge over those around you.
In my opinion, those of us that have made bad decisions in our lives, don’t have the end in mind. We’re making decisions, often without thinking, and almost always not considering the potential consequences of our actions.
In everything you do, consider the outcome.
Keeping your eye on the goal re-frames your actions, thought processes and feelings to align them with the ultimate outcome you want for your life, thereby allowing you to ‘question’ why you’re doing what you’re doing.
This is such a powerful overarching philosophy that will constantly keep you grounded and allow you to refrain from making the wrong decisions that will change the outcome of your life.
5. Make The Most Out Of The Limited Time You Have
It’s a sobering thought that for some of us, today might be our last day on earth.
It might be when you’re 93, but equally, it might be in 10 years, 8 months, or in just 3 weeks. It could be today.
Just imagine if you knew when your time is up.
What would you do?
What would you stop doing?
What would you change?
Most of us know people who have passed away and in a lot of cases, we feel like they left this world too early and didn’t fully live the life they could have lived.
In some cases, sadly, they just didn’t get their shit together.
We’re all human and have a limited time here on earth. For those of you that share my Christian belief, we can be comforted that there is an everlasting life post this one, where all our pain, sickness, and misery will be taken away. But until that time comes we need to stewards of this body we’re in and take responsibility for the skills and gifts been given.
Live with the urgency that today will be your last. This way, you’ll ensure that you make your life count.
I strongly believe that we’re all here for a reason. That it’s not about us.
We’ve all got a calling and a responsibility to add to society and help those who are less fortunate than us.
If you believe this, you need to start to make the most out of the time you have.
Be bold, be resourceful, be caring and considerate but most of all, be responsible with your life.
Make it count!
Hopefully, these 5 simple steps to improve your life were helpful.
Love and blessings peeps.
Paul
Tell me below in the comments which of these 5 ways to improve your life resonated with you and how you’re going to implement them. Or jump over to the Facebook page and let me know what you thought of this post.
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