TAKE BACK YOUR DAY

H OW S IMPLE D AILY A CTIONS C AN C HANGE Y OUR

L IFE
B Y : D ANIEL W ALTER
 TAKE BACK YOUR DAY: How Simple Daily Actions Can Change Your
Life
by Daniel Walter

© Copyright 2019 by Daniel Walter

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted

in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of
the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews
and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Disclaimer: This book is designed to provide accurate and authoritative
information in regard to the subject matter covered. By its sale, neither the
publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering psychological or other
professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the
services of a competent professional should be sought.
ISBN: 978-1070851587
CONTENTS
Introduction
Your Free Gift
Chapter 1: Know Yourself
Chapter 2: Set the Right Goals
Chapter 3: Find Some Free Time
Chapter 4: Change Your Mindset
Chapter 5: Build New Habits
Chapter 6: Find Your Positivity
Chapter 7: Getting Started with Mindfulness
Chapter 8: Expanding Your Mindful Practice
Chapter 9: Improving Your Emotional Intelligence
Chapter 10: Improve Your Confidence
Chapter 11: Consider Minimalism
Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
The time has come to stop convincing yourself that external issues, be they
endless distractions, annoying coworkers, or anything else that makes a
convenient scapegoat, are the problem and start looking inside and taking
responsibility for the issues with creativity, focus, or productivity that you
find there. While there will never be a perfect time to move forward with
your personal goals, there are likely a number of personal issues you can
nullify upfront to make the entire process that much easier in the long-run.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ROUTINE
While everyone is likely weighed down by a few of these issues, most
people rarely ever face them head on because they don’t have a way to
anticipate when the particular issue is going to raise its ugly head and start
causing issues. This is why it is so important to build a positive routine
around reaching the goals designed to help you deal with the issues that
matter to you most.
Building routines into your day makes it possible for you to take an
analytical, rational, and, most importantly, regular look at not just what you
are doing but why you are doing each individual part of it. The best part is
that this time to analyze your processes comes naturally. Your mind will
have time to focus on the specifics of what you are doing because it doesn’t
need to worry about what it is going to do in the midst of something
unexpected already taking place.
That is, of course, assuming you do things in a mindful way. Mindfulness is
discussed in great detail later on. For now, suffice it to say that remaining
mindful will allow you to engage with your created routines in such a way
that you remain vigilant against bad habits seeping in overtime and turning
your finely tuned personal machine into something less than what it was.
The always on problem: Unfortunately, when it comes to building a routine,
most people are too caught up with staying on top of a host of different
inboxes to think about creating anything that will benefit them in the long-
term. While unfortunate, it is understandable, as dealing with so many
notifications on a constant basis forces the brain into a reactionary state
where it is always looking for new external feedback as opposed to turning
inward when it comes time to decide what happens next.
If you find yourself with this mindset it, in turn, makes it far more difficult
to be proactive when it comes to being proactive about the things that
matter most to you. Being always connected and informed about something
new ultimately becomes a disadvantage when it creates a deluge of
information in danger of sweeping you away. The fact of the matter is that
your senses are always providing you with far more information than you
could ever process at once, which is why your mind filters out anything that
it doesn’t consider relevant. It does this for a reason. Analysis paralysis is a
very real condition whereby a person faced with too many options often
ends up doing nothing at all.
Unfortunately, notifications are designed in such a way that they trigger a
desire to interact with them, making it difficult for the brain to filter out
their power without practice. Creating a routine that maximizes your
personal goals while ensuring that distractions like these notifications come
second is a surefire way to retrain your brain and free up time for more
productive, focused, and creative pursuits.
Rethink the process: As most people won’t have the luxury of ignoring
many of these notifications indefinitely, the trick is to reconsider the way
you work for maximum success. While it might be hard to believe, if you
are having issues then you also have the tools you need to minimize the
issue, if not mitigate it completely. While the mundane drudgery of the day
to day may make it difficult to remember from time to time, the simple truth
is that your mental and physical energy are ultimately yours and yours alone
to use as you see fit. You can give in to reactionary thinking or you can take
a real look at your daily routines and see what can be done to improve those
that exist and create them in areas of your life that are lacking.
To do so, the following chapters will provide you with a guide to analyze
the things you do throughout your day, with an eye towards trimming the
fat in hopes of freeing up the time you need to reach for whatever it is that
matters most. The first five chapters will walk you through a step-by-step
process designed to help you see just where the flaws in your current
routines are, where they can be fixed, and where you would be better off
just scrapping them entirely. It is also important to keep in mind that you
may find some aspects of certain steps difficult to work through, but you
must power through. That difficulty is often a sign of the types of restricted
thinking the steps are designed to break through.
The second portion of the book is comprised of a number of chapters
dedicated to different ways to help you maximize the new habits that you
are creating. You will first learn to improve your positivity and bolster your
creativity and productivity at the same time. You will then find two chapters
dedicated to helping you understand the importance of mindfulness as well
as a bevy of ways you can practice it in your own life to ensure that you are
never too busy for its many benefits.
From there you will find tips and tricks for improving your emotional
intelligence, which is sure to naturally boost your creativity and help you
understand any personal roadblocks that may be in your way. Next, you will
learn easy ways to improve your confidence, which is sure to help you cut
through the red tape in certain aspects of your life that are separating you
from true happiness. Finally, you will find a discussion of minimalism and
how the things you surround yourself with may actually be holding you
back from reaching your full potential by making it more difficult than it
needs to be to keep your routines intact.
With so many choices out there when it comes to consuming this type of
content, it is appreciated that you’ve chosen this one. Plenty of care and
effort went into ensuring it contains as many interesting and useful tidbits as
possible, please enjoy!
JOIN OUR PRODUCTIVITY GROUP
In order to maximize the value you receive from this book, I highly
encourage you to join our tight-knit community on Facebook. Here you will
be able to connect and share productivity strategies in order to continue
your growth.
It would be great to connect with you there,
Daniel Walter
>> Click Here to Join Our Productivity Group <<
YOUR FREE GIFT
As a way of saying thanks for downloading this book, I’m offering the book
Minimalist: A Minimalist Guide to Do More with Less to Simplify Your Life
for FREE to my readers. It was written by a close friend of mine named
Olivia Telford, who has kindly allowed me to share it with you.
With the Minimalist Guide, you’ll discover how to be happier with less,
declutter, and simplify your life. People who practice minimalism
experience clarity, peace of mind, stronger relationships, and true lasting
happiness. You too can experience the amazing benefits of becoming a
minimalist by getting this FREE book now!

>> Tap Here to Learn the Secrets of Minimalism <<

 ALSO BY DANIEL WALTER
The Power of Discipline: How to Use Self Control and Mental Toughness to
Achieve Your Goals
10-Minute Focus: 25 Habits for Mastering Your Concentration and
Eliminating Distractions
CHAPTER 1: KNOW YOURSELF
If you ever hope to build a successful routine, improve your focus, expand
your creativity, or meet any goal you set your mind to, the first step towards
success is to understand just what you are currently working with. While
self-reflection can be difficult for some people, it is a non-negotiable part of
the process, as it will ultimately help you set the type of realistic goals that
lead to positive long-term personal change.

Look yourself in the mirror: This exercise is particularly useful, especially

for those with preexisting body image issues, though it does require a full-
length mirror to perform properly. To begin this exercise, start by disrobing
completely and standing in front of the mirror without the benefit of soft
lighting or any other visual filters. Many people are uncomfortable looking
at specific parts of their body, which is relatively common and doesn’t
affect overall levels of self-confidence directly. Where it does affect self-
confidence, however, is if you let a specific part of your appearance linger
in a negative light for so long that it loses realistic perspective and instead
takes on a far greater importance than it ultimately deserves.
If you find a part of your body particularly difficult to face, take the time,
while facing the mirror, to really look at the trouble area. Not as you see it
when you think of a mental image of yourself, but as it exists in the real
world. You still don’t have to like every facet of yourself, but you should
have a more realistic idea of what the flaw entails. You can also use this
time to begin forming a plan for improvement moving forward. Few things
will improve your self-confidence more than conquering a lingering doubt
about yourself once and for all.
If you feel a lack of confidence in yourself specifically related to your
appearance, then one of the most important steps you can take is improving
your appearance. The old saying, clothes make the person, is an
exaggeration, but only just. While others are likely to never notice the way
you look as much as you do, the importance of wearing clothes that fit well
and that you think look good on you cannot be overstated. The right clothes
can be thought of as armor; put yours on and you will feel invincible. This
feeling will then naturally present itself to others as self-confidence.
Know the reason you’re doing something: It’s easy to break a habit if you
don’t have a personal reason to keep doing it. It’s imperative that you make
a habit of doing things with a purpose in mind to keep you motivated and
enthusiastic.
To keep your spirits high, consider what got you interested in the activity in
the first place. If you want to run in the morning, understand what that
means for you: you’ll be in better shape, you’ll wake up earlier, and you’ll
have more energy throughout the day. Those are specifically biological side
effects of running every day and work to inspire you to keep doing it. Your
specific reason doesn’t have to be so based in science, though. Maybe you
want to eat healthier because a friend needs to eat better for their health, or
maybe you just want to be able to fit into the tuxedo or dress of your
dreams for your wedding. Whatever your reason, keep it in mind as you
work on your habit to keep you working toward your goal.
Here’s a fun tip that a lot of people tend to shy away from: your reason is
yours alone, so make it as selfish as you want. You don’t need an altruistic
reason to start being healthier, so find your reason for becoming healthier
and stick to it. (It’s also not a sin to want to be healthier for the sake of
being healthier. It’s as good a reason as any.)
Don’t make excuses: On the flip side to having a reason for sticking to a
habit, bad habits often have an excuse attached to keep you doing it. You
may tell yourself, “Picking up fast food on the way home from work or
school is easier and I’m too tired to cook.” That’s a fair point. It is easier to
pick up fast food when you’re driving home, but that doesn’t make it a good
reason.
Often times bad habits form from a lack of a good habit. If you make it a
habit to come home from work or school every day and make a meal for
yourself, it will seem less and less like a chore and more and more like a
fun part of your daily routine.
The tricky part of the reason-excuse dynamic is that sometimes it can be
difficult to decide if your habit is backed by a good reason or a silly excuse.
That’s why it’s important to always stay mindful of your decisions. Really
consider your habits and think about why you’re doing them rather than
something else. You can easily rationalize fast food’s ease and lack of time
commitment, but that doesn’t make it a good reason. In this case, the health
detriments outweigh the benefits of saving half an hour to make dinner.
Decide on which habits to keep and keep them: Once you’ve thought long
and hard about your habit and decided it was worth continuing, you then
need to do just that: continue with it. There will be days you want to skip a
habit (no running on rainy days is probably a decent excuse), but that
shouldn’t mean you get to sleep in.
What most people don’t consider is that oftentimes healthy habits tend to
overlap. If one of your habits is running in the morning, then chances are
another habit is waking up early. If one day, you decide to not run for
whatever reason and sleep in, you’re breaking two of your habits with one
fell swoop. While this isn’t the worst thing to do every once in a while,
doing this continually will lead to both of these habits falling out at the
same time.
If you must skip one habit every now and again, make sure to keep up with
your other habits to prevent yourself from breaking multiple healthy habits.
If you do decide that today is not the day to wake up early and run, wake up
at your normal time and consciously decide on another activity to fill that
space (read, clean, spend extra time cooking a nice breakfast, etc.).
UNDERSTANDING PERSONAL PATTERNS
Before you can begin making positive life changes, you need to understand
the patterns that you are regularly repeating and how they affect your day-
to-day experiences. The best way to do this is to practice. Pattern
recognition is a skill, which means practicing is the only way you will ever
find it easier to manage. If you aren’t sure how to start, consider the
following tips.
Start by seeing the patterns around you: If you find you have a hard time
seeing your own personal patterns, instead turn your attention to the world
around you and look for the patterns in everything you see. The more
patterns you identify, the easier it will be to identify additional patterns in
the future. You will eventually be able to start noticing patterns in the
people around you as well. Once you are proficient in seeing the patterns in
the world at large, identifying your own patterns should seem much more
manageable.
Once you have found the correct pattern identifying mindset, you will find
that it is easier for you to determine how each of these patterns contributes
to the success or failure of the person or thing exhibiting them. Turn this
intuition inward and think about your daily trials and tribulations and how
your patterns affect them. While it can be difficult to look at your life from
an analytical perspective, it is a crucial skill to develop as it is the only way
you will ever encounter real change.
Consider your personal patterns: When you take note of a new pattern, you
should also get in the habit of asking yourself if it is likely to help you in
your goal towards empowerment or if it is more likely to hurt you. If it is a
positive pattern, you might want to consider integrating it into your daily
life. If it is negative, you will need to consider how you can successfully
avoid it so that it does not cause you any hardship in the future. Thinking
about the deeper connection and purpose to the patterns you see will make
it easier to understand even more complex patterns in the future, eventually
allowing you to see what patterns are preventing your empowerment.
If you feel as though you aren’t seeing too many patterns at first, you may
find it helpful to start by thinking about all of the things that happen like
clockwork in your daily experience. From there you will want to consider
why each happens in the way that it does. You will want to think about the
cause and effect for each, and if you find that you don’t have all the
information to accurately determine both, you are going to want to puzzle
things through until you have all the relevant details. You don’t need to
worry about making sense of everything right away, simply noticing that
these patterns are occurring is already a huge step in the right direction.
Organizing the patterns you have perceived: Once you begin to notice your
personal patterns and how they relate to the patterns of the world at large,
start looking at the patterns and determine how they fit together in a logical
fashion. You may find it helpful to group related patterns together. Although
you should avoid grouping things together purely for simplicities sake, as
relating unrelated patterns could easily skew your data. Additionally, when
looking at the big picture it is completely normal to realize that you missed
something the first time around and feel the need to go back and do
additional research.
CHAPTER 2: SET THE RIGHT GOALS
Now that you have an idea of what you are working towards, it is time to
set the right goals to help you get to where you need to be. When it comes
to getting started, biting off more than you can chew can be a surefire recipe
for disaster. Likewise, starting off too slowly will only ensure that you
never really accomplish much of anything. Instead, you should set firm
goals that you are fairly confident you can meet as long as you give it your
all. In order to set the right type of goals, make sure the ones you choose are
SMART.

SMART, in this case, stands for Straightforward, Measurable, Attainable,

Relevant, and Timely. The first SMART goal that you set should be one that
is straightforward enough to more or less ensure your success while at the
same time be relevant enough to your day-to-day life that actually
succeeding will be a moment that you can easily recall in the future when
success on a future goal is not nearly so assured. You will start forming the
right type of neural pathways as soon as possible, which will then form into
patterns that will eventually become habits. With this in mind, start off with
a goal that is at least tangentially connected to the negative pattern that you
are the most anxious to start to change. You don’t need to have an exact
goal in mind at this point, just the start of an idea that you can build into
something larger later on. Consider the following to ensure that you are on
the right track.
SMART goals are specific: The best goals are the ones that you will always
be able to clearly determine where you stand in relation to the goal. The
goal should then have a clearly defined fail state as well as state that will
clearly let you know when you have crossed the finish line. Specific goals
are also going to be much easier to chart out over time, as their specificity
will lend to clear sub-goals that can be linked to their success or failure.
When you choose a specific goal, you want to have a clear idea of the
following details to ensure your goal is truly specific enough for your
needs.
Who you will need to work with in order to make the goal a reality
What you will need to do to get started on completing the goal
Where you will need to go to see the goal through to completion
Why you wanted to get started completing the goal in the first place
When you can realistically expect the goal to be completed
How you will go about completing the goal in various steps
Measurable: A measurable goal makes it easy to determine precise metrics
for success, progress or failure. Keeping goals measurable will help you
work through them at a steady pace rather than in fits and starts. If you are
having a hard time making your goals measurable, try considering how
many or how much of something might indicate success or failure.
Likewise, starting from the end and working backward may be easier.
Consider how you will know the goal has been successfully completed, and
then work towards the beginning to make measuring goals easier.
Attainable: SMART goals are those that are attainable given a realistic
amount of effort. When it comes to social anxiety, your goal shouldn’t be to
put yourself in a situation where a large group is going to be focused
exclusively on you at first, as that is asking too much of yourself. A better
choice would be to set a goal such as having a conversation with five
strangers in a week. In addition to not picking something too difficult, it is
important that you don’t lean too far in the other direction. Don’t pick
something that you can do without any real effort. Goals that are too easily
attainable won’t do anything to improve your social anxiety overall.
Relevant to your current situation: It is important that the goal you choose
is relevant to your current situation as well as being simply something that
is attainable with only a reasonable amount of effort. Relevance is key to
turning the SMART goal system from a one-time thing into a pattern, and
eventually a life-long habit, that you can rely on to help you meet the
challenges of life no matter what they may be. Remember, you want these
early goals to be as meaningful as possible so that you think back on them
regularly and fortify the neural pathways as quickly as possible so they
become your brain’s default way of acting.
For example, if you set a goal of going to the gym four times each week and
then manage to lose twenty pounds with that goal in mind, your brain will
make that connection and form new neural pathways. If your level of
athleticism or your general weight weren’t the issues you were addressing,
then no new neural pathways will be formed and you risk falling back on
negative habits. When it comes to completing your first goal successfully,
you may find it helpful to break it down into more manageable chunks to
start before adding a piece of each chunk to the list of things you need to do
each day.
Timely: Every good goal has a specific timetable that ensures it will be
completed at a reasonable rate. This timetable is important, as without it the
goal will never have the urgency it needs to get you up off the couch and
working towards success. An end date makes a goal tangible and ensures
you can count on your team to make it a priority when it matters most.
GET ORGANIZED
Once you have your goals in mind, take stock of where you are in relation
to where you want to be and getting organized will help set you on the right
path to making your goals a reality.
Create a to-do list: When adding things to the list, the most important thing
to remember is to be realistic—there are only so many hours in the day. An
overflowing to-do list is a good way to create artificial stress, and it can
lead to analysis paralysis, the feeling of being unable to choose one option
after being presented with too many options. Effectively efficient
individuals know that trying to fit too many items onto a single day’s to-do
list is a recipe for disaster.
Avoid multitasking: With so many interactive devices at your fingertips at
all times, it is not surprising that your first instinct is always to multitask. In
fact, the odds are better than average that you are doing at least one other
thing right now while reading this book. In order to be as productive as
possible, you need to break this habit, or at least control it.
The word multitasking as it is commonly used is actually a misnomer.
Multitasking really amounts to no more than rapidly switching back and
forth between tasks until one is finished. While this is fine for passive
activities, like watching television or browsing the internet, you will find
you finish many tasks much more quickly by focusing all your attention on
the task at hand. It turns out that multitasking actually makes it more
difficult for your brain to focus on any one task, and it can take 30 minutes
or more to recover full focus on a single task after switching. Building a
continual rhythm allows the brain to build stronger connections between
concepts, which means topics will be easier to recall when you need to
remember what it is you were just doing.
If you find yourself unable to resist the siren call of your favorite websites,
don’t despair just yet. While building up your willpower will help you be
more productive in the future, there are a number of apps that temporarily
block a set list of sites based on your specifications. Think of them as a
safety net and have them ready in case of emergencies.
Order your tasks big to small: You might feel more accomplished if you
finish several small tasks first, but it’s best to save the easiest work for last.
Large projects can be daunting to begin, but they are even more imposing
when you are already partially drained from your previous endeavors.
While having several smaller tasks still looming after you have finished a
large project is certainly no fun either, at least they are individually more
manageable. What’s more, finishing the larger task will instill you with a
boost of motivation from the reward centers of the brain, which will help
you coast through your remaining work.
Work in chunks: For extremely unpleasant tasks, those that make you want
to pull your hair out in frustration, it can be helpful to work in 30-minute
chunks. While the thought of tackling the full task head-on can be
discouraging enough to encourage putting it off indefinitely, working in
small increments tricks the brain into seeing the task as more manageable.
However, if you feel as though you have hit your stride on the task, it can
be more beneficial to power through rather than having to work to get back
into the proper mindset after a break.
Find an organizational system that works for you: The most important thing
about any organizational system is that it should always be thought of as a
work in progress. What works wonderfully for you at the beginning of the
year could well become a useless slog halfway through. It is important to
not fall back into disorganization, as it is much more difficult to start
completely fresh than it is to transition from one organizational system to
another.
Keep an up-to-date calendar: Keep a calendar and a place where you
record upcoming events (not physical ones). It is important to get in the
habit of keeping a calendar and checking it every day at least twice, once in
the morning and again in the evening. Keep a list of new events to add to
the calendar and add them to the calendar the next time you check it. This is
a simple suggestion, but it will save you immeasurable headaches if
followed regularly. Getting into the habit of always being aware of your
calendar will ensure that you never have to worry about due dates or missed
activities.
BE CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO BURN YOUR SHIP
If the time of your first goal’s completion is at hand and you aren’t quite
sure if you will have the guts to go through with it, just remember Cortez
and what he did to his ships in the 1500s on the shores of South America.
Cortez and his men had just made landfall after months at sea, and instead
of finding a land free of inhabitants, or at least inhabitants willing to accept
Spanish rule, they found a land full of those willing to fight to keep what
belonged to them. Cortez knew that his men were not looking forward to
the coming conflict, so he did the only thing he could do to get their morale
to where it needed to be. He burned their only way home.
Cortez ordered all of his men ashore before lighting their ships on fire and
swimming to meet his men while they watched the show. Now
understanding that they had no choice but to succeed, his men fought as
hard as they could to subjugate the locals. Despite his extreme methods,
Cortez had one thing right: if you take the time to put yourself into a
situation where you have no choice to succeed, then you will have no
choice but to go for it. Take a chance on yourself, burn your ships.
CHAPTER 3: FIND SOME FREE TIME
Setting new goals is a great step towards improving yourself for the better.
However, if you are like most people, you don’t exactly have a ton of extra
time just lying around. As such, this chapter will look at things you can do
to give yourself the time you need to work on improving yourself once and
for all.
CONSIDER MEAL PREP
Planning and preparing your meals ahead of time is the key to success when
it comes to freeing up as much time in your week as possible for more
productive pursuits. Simply put, meal prepping helps you save time, money,
and makes knowing what to eat and eating it a lot easier.
When do you typically eat unhealthy foods? For most people, the unhealthy
choices come when you are super busy and just want to pick something up
quickly and without much thought. Meal prep takes the question of what to
eat and the need to have something quick out of the equation. What you’re
left with is a healthy meal that is ready to eat. It doesn’t require much
thought—just to grab a container from the fridge, heat it up, and eat it.
When you meal plan and prep, you never have to think about what to eat or
worry about impulse buying food, and you’ll always have food on hand
when you’re hungry. These things make sticking to an otherwise tricky diet
a lot easier. It also reinforces the age-old idea that food is fuel and we
should eat to live instead of live to eat.
Meal prep on the surface seems like it will take a lot of time, but in reality,
it saves time. When you pre-cook everything, the only work you need to do
during the week is re-heating. It should only take you 1-2 hours one day per
week to have food for the entire week. Compare that to a regular night of
cooking—about an hour, so seven hours of cooking a week—and you’ll see
that you’re saving a ton of time.
By meal planning, you can ensure that you find all sorts of delicious recipes
that fit your specific dietary needs. This keeps you from needing to rely on
the same old breakfasts, lunches, and dinners week after week. You can
always change up your meal plan or completely revamp it if you want
something new. With meal planning, the sky is the limit!
Here are several different ways to meal prep:
You can make full meals. There are two ways to do this. You can cook the
full meal and put it together in one container, or you can separate them out.
It's your choice.
Batch cooking for freezing. This one is perfect if you really don't enjoy
cooking and want to have as little hassle as possible. You can freeze things
like meats, soups, and veggies. Just make sure you understand how to
properly thaw these things.
Ingredient prep. This is good for someone who doesn't mind a little extra
work and wants a bit more variety. It involves prepping and cooking a lot of
different ingredients such as zucchini noodles, hard boiled eggs, roasted
veggies, and such and making different combinations of them over the
week.
Or, you can do a mix of all three. It will really depend on your lifestyle. For
some people, it will just be easier to throw everything in the freezer. For
people who work a lot, it will be a lot easier to have their meals portioned
out into separate containers so they can just grab and go. It's really just up
to you.
You also have to remember how long your food is going to last in the
fridge. This depends on a variety of things including the quality of your
fridge, how you package your food, and of course, how old your food is.
Keep in mind, some foods just don't age as well as others. For example,
cooked meat, roasted vegetables, raw vegetables, sauces, nuts, and soups
generally age well in the fridge. But, soft veggies, not so much. Just
remember to use your common sense. If you really want to check, the FDA
guidelines is a good place to start.
Most food lasts about 3 to 5 days, so you should probably schedule one or
two days that will be yours for meal prepping. Scheduling it in advance will
hold you accountable week to week. It may take a couple tries to really get
the hang of it and feel as if you're doing this right.
Store food properly: Many recipes are able to be stored either on the
counter, fridge, or freezer to be easily eaten when the hunger pangs strike.
You will need to acquire some stock in Ziplock bags and lidded tubs to
make sure you are able to store your leftovers and make-ahead meals
properly.
Also, if you are really serious and do not have a lot of storage space,
consider purchasing a FoodSaver. It is a small expense up front, but you
will be able to pack more food into the space you have, your meals and
snacks will stay fresher longer, and it minimizes the risk of freezer burn.
The FoodSaver works by simply sucking out all the air in your Ziplock
bags, creating the space that you need.
As for any meats or vegetables that you store in the refrigerator or freezer,
make sure that you label with the item name and date that you packed the
leftovers. This will eliminate any guesswork as to when they actually were
stored so you do not thaw out food that has gone bad.
If you are going to store your snacks on the counter, keep them in an air-
tight container, as they will keep longer. Storing your meals in the freezer or
the refrigerator is just as easy. Simply put them in a sealed container or a
zip lock plastic bag. If you are storing them in the freezer, be sure to put
them in a freezer safe container or Ziplock bag. Also, remove any excess air
before you seal the bag. Ensure your meals and snacks are cooled
completely beforehand. This will prevent moisture from creating
condensation in your storage containers and bags, keeping your meals
fresher.
Make it a party: Meal prep doesn’t have to be a solo affair. Invite a friend
over and double your recipes and you’ll both have food for the week.
Choose your recipes beforehand to make sure you’re cooking food you both
like. If you’re cooking for your family, include your partner or children.
Cooking with kids teaches them a valuable skill and will have the added
benefit of familiarizing them with new ingredients, which can make them
more likely to eat their vegetables!
Many food preparation activities are child-friendly or can be made child-
friendly. For example, peeling vegetables and forming meatballs are fun and
easy tasks. Consider setting up a chopping station for your younger children
and give them a butter knife for cutting soft vegetables like potatoes and
zucchini, or safety scissors for snipping herbs.
Another idea to make meal prep a social event is to have a food exchange.
Send your friends and family this eBook and set a date for your frozen
potluck. Perhaps you might also email the group in advance and ask them
what their favorite meals are, to make sure the individual recipes have wide
appeal. You might also choose a theme, like a winter soup or casserole
exchange. Everyone should prepare a family-sized portion of the chosen
recipe in a quantity equaling the size of the group.
Keep it visible: To make sure that all the time and money you’ve put into
shopping and preparing your food doesn’t go to waste. It helps to catalog
what’s in your kitchen. Index both your fridge and your freezer, and,
optimally, your pantry as well. Keep a list posted on the fridge door, on the
wall, or in a notebook, inventorying the food you’ve so lovingly prepared.
Another tip is to keep your ingredients out when you get back from the
store. This tip is for the procrastinators in particular. If you have a couple of
days or hours in between your shop and prep time, seeing your cans of
beans and bag of rice on the counter is a visual reminder and motivator for
your meal prep. Having some of your ingredients out helps remove one
small step from the task of cooking and gets you a little closer to starting
your task.
CONSIDER A PASSIVE INCOME STREAM
These days many people have accepted the 40-hour work week as a way of
life until they die. In reality, active income simply isn’t enough for many
people to cover their bills, let alone generate a level of wealth that actually
leaves them comfortable. If this sounds like you, then the sooner you start
multitasking your income streams, the better.
While setting up an income stream will require you to put in extra hours up
front, with very little (if any) compensation, the amount that it ultimately
brings in over time can more than make up for the amount of unpaid effort
that goes into setting it up. Once you have 4 or 5 different passive streams
set up, you will one day find that you don’t even need to worry about your
day job anymore. Utilizing passive income streams will never mean that
you are free from any and all work, but it will mean that you will have to
work much less on average than a person who makes as much as you do but
generates it via active income.
Even better, in these increasingly uncertain economic times, knowing that
you always have some passive income coming in can grant you the true
security that comes from knowing you are financially sound, no matter
what. While you may not be able to say goodbye to your current job right
away, you will soon be amazed at how much less of a headache it is once
you don’t have to worry about it as your sole source of income. What’s
more, having your passive income backing you up might just be the push
you need to get out there and find an active income stream you actually
enjoy. Regardless of what it leads to, there is no doubt that having a passive
income stream up and running is the first step to being the arbiter of your
financial destiny.
CONSIDER PASSIVE INCOME
Create an online course: Did you know that you can create a digital product
and sell it at a great price? Online courses have become very popular in the
last couple of years. Many people are seeking ways to learn a course
without spending years at university or college.
You will need some tools to get started. Check out websites such as
www.google.com.slides/about/ for slide presentation software,
www.screencast-o-matic.com for software that records your screen, and
www.pixabay.com for completely free images to get you started. All these
tools are very important if you are to prepare a good quality course that
people will want to invest in.
Once your course is ready, review it to see how it is. You may also request a
close friend or family member to help with the review and give you an
honest opinion. If it has no errors that need fixing, then you can offer it to
the public.
One of the most popular platforms for selling courses is Udemy. You can
choose this platform to place your course and then let others know about it.
Potential customers need to learn about the availability of the course.
Udemy has an entire database of students who frequently purchase courses
they need. However, their database of students is not free, so any revenue
that you generate will have to be shared. Even then, Udemy will let you
take the lion’s share of the revenue.
Udemy has plenty of other helpful resources that will make your course
visible to more willing buyers. For instance, they have an affiliate
marketing program that can help highlight your course to the general
public. They also allow you to offer coupons and discounts to your
customers.
You can also create your own website or blog and sell the course from
there. This way, you get to keep 100% of any revenues you generate.
However, there will be a very small number of interested buyers compared
to www.udemy.com.
One of the best places to acquire your own blog is www.BlueHost.com.
They have plenty of themes to choose from. If you are selling a course, you
should choose a course theme and then acquire some plug-ins to assist
visitors with the course download.
Another website where you can sell your course to students and other
interested learners is www.sellfy.com. It is another popular site where
people sign up to sell digital products online. Signing up is free, and you get
access to hundreds of potential buyers.
You must promote and market your course to potential buyers. Remember
that you just created a course and the world is unaware of it. Letting people
know about it is very important.
You can also market the course through a blogging website. Simply create a
blog and use SEO marketing to market the course. Blogging is a great
marketing tactic that will bring more readers and interested people to your
blog. You can then direct them to where your course is so they can purchase
and download it.
You may also want to consider using search engines such as Google and ad
banners. There are plenty of digital marketing tools available including PPC
or pay per click and so on. Make use of these tools to help people find your
course.
Sell stock photos: If you are a passionate photographer and have good
quality photos, then you can sell these online. There are thousands upon
thousands of customers looking to purchase your photos and are willing to
pay good money for them.
Stock photos are used for many different purposes, including personal and
business websites, for promotional, marketing, and advertising purposes,
and as background images in many different applications.
Stock photography is offering quality photos that can be registered and
licensed, and then sold for a profit. A person wishing to deal in stock
photography sales needs to have a portfolio of photographs in a given niche.
These photos are then posted on an online platform where they can be
viewed. Interested buyers will then view the photos and purchase the ones
they want.
Customers can locate the stock photos that they need by using keywords
and categories. They then get to browse through the photos and pick the
ones they like. This has many advantages—they do not have to pay a
photographer to take the photos or have to travel to specific locations to
take the photos themselves.
The stock photography industry, on the other hand, provides photographers,
both amateur and professional, a platform to display their photos and make
some money in the process. But first, you need to have the photos.
The starting point of your stock photography career or side gig is a good
camera. There are plenty of good quality cameras on the market, and you
need to find an affordable one that takes great photos. One that is highly
recommended is the digital SLR.
A high-end digital compact camera such as Panasonic Lumix is a great
camera. You can use others as well, including Canon and Nikon SLR
cameras. You can check them out online. Some of the most popular digital
cameras can also be found on any stock photography website.
You will also require good quality photo editing software—one of the best
on the market is Adobe Photoshop, a powerful application program that can
help you edit, adjust, and otherwise alter the photos to improve appearance.
You are now ready to start taking photographs of whatever it is you like.
The best scenario is focusing on a preferred niche. Try to get as many good
quality images as you can. You can set a goal for yourself, such as taking
100 images each week. These are good quality images that can be used in
different applications.
Remember that your final images must be clear, colorful, and unique. Also,
try to ensure that your images are high-key, meaning they are the main
subject and the background is predominantly white. This ensures that
whoever buys the photos is easily able to use them for any purposes they
want without the need to edit the background.
You are now ready to sell your photos on stock photography websites. Each
stock photography website has its own rules, and anyone hoping to sell their
photos must subscribe to. Most of the time, the images will be examined for
things such as copyright violation, which may mean some of your photos
will not get accepted on some of the sites.
In the event that your sample photos and images are not approved, do not
despair. You can follow any changes recommended and possibly try again
after 30 days. Most editors will critic your photos, so follow their
suggestions.
Once customers love your images and wish to purchase the rights to use
them, then you will get paid. Different stock photography websites have
different requirements. Most of them offer their subscribers multiple ways
of getting paid, including by check, bank draft, or wire transfer.
CHAPTER 4: CHANGE YOUR MINDSET
Why are some people able to excel at anything they put their minds to while
others can’t ever seem to get off the ground despite obviously possessing
equal or greater skill? The answer is simple. Studies have shown that it is at
least as important, if not more so, to believe you have the ability to do
something as it is to actually have that ability.

In fact, there are two distinct ways to view the idea of intelligence or ability.
They can be seen as things that are innate, which means what we are born
with is all we ever get, or they can be seen as skills that can be gained
through effort and lots of hard work. These two different viewpoints, in
turn, lead to drastically different behaviors, which over time lead to
drastically different results. If you head out into the world each day with the
idea that you can improve and succeed at whatever you attempt, then you
will find that success starts coming easier to you over time. This is what is
referred to as a growth mindset and it is one of the main distinguishing
characteristics of successful people.
As children, some people are told they excel in certain subjects while others
are told that they succeeded because they tried hard and that effort leads to
success. The first group of children can be expected to develop a fixed
mindset, whereby their brains become more active when they are being told
how well they have done. The second group of children can be said to have
a growth mindset, wherein their minds are the most active when they are
learning what they could do better next time. Those with a fixed mindset
tend to worry more about how they are seen by others than what they are
actually learning, which is why those with a growth mindset tend to be
more successful in the long run.
An easy way to understand the differences in motivation between the two
mindsets is through the parable of the tortoise and the hare. Everyone
always told the hare how amazingly quick he was, which lead him to
develop a fixed mindset that reinforced the idea that he was the fastest no
matter what. This, in turn, led him to believe that he could nap during the
race and still win easily. The tortoise, meanwhile, had a growth mindset,
which allowed him to understand that perseverance leads to true success.
This belief allowed him to power through and come out the victor in the
race.
The two mindsets diverge the most when it comes to the way they allow
people to deal with setbacks in their lives. Fixed mindset individuals tend to
suffer more from setbacks as they shake the foundational belief they have in
their talents. This then leads them to give up more easily because they can
tell themselves that whatever the task at hand is, it is simply not something
they are naturally good at. On the contrary, every obstacle that a growth
mindset individual has is simply seen as an opportunity for further growth,
allowing them to try new ways to solve the crisis at hand while
simultaneously learning and growing from the process.
Fixed Mindset
• Wants to look smart or competent regardless of the reality
• Quick to avoid challenges
• Easily thwarted by obstacles
• Thinks effort is “pointless”
• Ignores feedback
• Can feel threatened by the success of others
Growth Mindset
• More interested in long-term results
• Enjoys a challenge
• Learns from obstacles
• Equates effort with success
• Appreciates criticism
• Finds inspiration in the success of others
MAXIMIZE YOUR NEUROPLASTICITY
With the consequences of having a fixed mindset so potentially disastrous,
especially if you are striving to find the inner strength to empower yourself
to improve your lot in life, it is important to do what you can to break these
negative mental habits as quickly as possible. Luckily, the human brain has
the ability to constantly reshape itself throughout the course of its lifetime,
which means that it is never too late to shift into a growth mindset, no
matter how deeply rooted the fixed mindset principles might be. New
neural pathways in the brain can be formed as new thoughts are repeated
time and again, and once they become well-worn paths, then new habits are
formed.
This means that it will be much more difficult to change the habits that are
already deeply ingrained, such as those that involve mentally keeping
yourself from reaching an empowered state. While changing from a fixed to
a growth mindset will be difficult, the tips outlined below will make the
process more manageable than it might otherwise be.
In order to go from a fixed to a growth mindset, the first thing that you
should do is take an analytical look at your life and see which habits you
currently take for granted are enabling this destructive mindset to
perpetuate itself. Once you have really looked at how you act on a daily
basis, it will be much easier to determine how you can counteract them for
the better. The easiest way to get started is through a dedicated diet of
repetition.
There is a reason repetition is so commonly used in advertising and political
messages—it is known to have a measurable influence on those who hear it.
In fact, studies have shown that something as simple as hearing a phrase
once every 20 seconds for 1 minute can directly influence the way you feel
about a specific topic. While it may seem too easy to be true, the fact of the
matter is, your brain factors in the number of repetitions when it comes to
deciding if the information is valid or not.
After your brain takes in new information that it believes might be true, it
goes to work assessing the overall level of truth of the statement in
question. If it has nothing else to go on, the number of times it has heard the
information and how easy the information is to understand go a long way
towards convincing it the information is true. While the fact that your
neural programming is so simplistic might seem disconcerting at first, the
truth is you can use these basics to your advantage by essentially tricking
your brain into adopting a new and improved mindset.
While you are struggling to switch your mindset filter from fixed to growth,
it may be difficult to try to change certain negative habits that you have
identified as a major hindrance in your goal of self-improvement. Repeating
a mantra or affirmation regularly can allow it to penetrate the filter without
having to wait for it to change on its own. An affirmation is any positive
sentence that you take the time to write down multiple times per day, and a
mantra is essentially the same thing, but the sentence is repeated aloud or
mentally multiple times each day.
You have the power to create your reality and improve your situation today.
You can’t doubt what you want. When you doubt, you are creating
resistance. Any resistance will prevent you from achieving what you desire.
You cannot have doubt or fear in your life. This will help you break the
resistance. Your conscious and unconscious mind will work together to stop
the resistance and fear. You will attract what you need to attract so you may
reach your goals.
It is important to use some affirmations daily to reach your goals. Positive
vibration feels much stronger than negative vibrations. Your affirmations
must make you feel better. The most important rule is that your vibrations
have to make you feel good and you state them with emotion. It is
important to always state I AM!
1. I am strong.
2. I am confident.
3. I am acting on inspiration.
4. I am giving good things to people.
5. I am receiving abundance.
6. I am improving my belief system.
7. I am striving to raise my vibrations.
8. I am contributing to the world.
9. I am the creator of my days, months, and years.
10. I am worthy of success and love.
Commit yourself to the task in front of you: Your mindset is one of the most
deeply rooted patterns that your brain has gotten used to following through
on over the years. If you ever want to empower yourself and improve, you
need to dedicate yourself to the process. It is important to keep in mind that
this will be a marathon, not a sprint, and to set your expectations
accordingly.
Don’t forget, it takes about a month to form a new habit and looking at
things with a growth mindset can be seen as a habit just like any other.
Keep up the good work and you will break through your resistance before
you know it. While it will be hard in the moment, always remember that
any internal resistance you feel is just your mind resisting the change,
which is it essentially telling you to keep up the good work.
Begin with something simple: When it comes to creating new neural
pathways, one of the best ways to do so is by seeing a noticeable result
from an action that you consciously took in an effort to change your
mindset. While a single positive choice or two a day won’t generate
noticeable results on their own, their cumulative effect can be substantial,
and that tipping point can occur sooner than you might think.
Take a mental inventory at the end of each day: If you find that you are
having difficulty keeping up a steady stream of growth mindset choices
throughout the day, you may want to start keeping a log of the events that
happen to you each day as well as the various things that go through your
head at each juncture. Once your day is broken down in this way, it will be
much easier to make note of any fixed mindset thoughts that stick out to
you so that you can more effectively guard against them when you hear
from them again.
CHAPTER 5: BUILD NEW HABITS
Habits aren’t formed after only one or two days. For the first few weeks,
you’re going to have to force yourself to do whatever you want to make
into a habit. On most of those days, you probably will hate it, but it gets
easier after that first struggle.

On average, it takes about 21 days for an individual task to become a habit.

That’s three weeks of doing something that, honestly, you probably won’t
enjoy too much to reach a point where you can stand it. It’s hard and can
suck, but if you remind yourself of your reasons for doing it and stick to the
schedule, you’ll get to the point where you can’t live without your habit.
Once you form a habit over those three weeks of pushing yourself, you may
not fully appreciate how easy the task becomes. You may still hate running
in the morning because of how hard it can be to wake up early. But once
you get a habit locked in place, you won’t be able to go a day or two
without it without feeling the negative effects of not doing it.
It comes down to one thing to form a habit: tenacity. It’s all about pushing
yourself to continue a task even when it’s difficult to make it a habit in your
everyday life. The following tips and tricks are designed specifically to
make being tenacious easier and, therefore, making forming and keeping
habits easier.
EAT BETTER
While exercise is a great way to stay fit and keep your weight down, your
eating habits dictate how much weight you gain or lose over long periods of
time. Similar to your exercising habits, healthy eating habits won’t affect
you or your health immediately. Rather, they will take time to show any
lasting results. Like all habits, these take time to develop as a part of your
normal routine.
Eating habits are similar to exercising habits in many ways, but they must
be approached differently because how you interact with food and eating
said food is inherently different than how you interact with exercise on a
day-to-day basis.
Know how to change your habits safely: Dieting or even minor changes to
your eating habits on a daily basis have the chance to be problematic in the
long run if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why it’s essential you
consider your lifestyle before changing your habits.
Eating too little (especially while adjusting your exercise routine) can cause
you to suffer from a lack of daily calorie intake, while eating too much or
not enough variety can lead to health issues later on.
Keep a log of foods you’ve eaten: A big mistake people often make is not
keeping track of what they put in their bodies. It’s easy to say, “I’ll have just
one burger,” when you aren’t sure the last time you had one. Keeping track
of your daily intake of food allows you to monitor how healthy or unhealthy
your food choices are over time as well as keeping track of variety, or a lack
thereof, in your meal choices.
Like exercising, there are tons of apps and services out there that will keep
track of your daily food intake… kind of. If you’re willing to put in the
food you eat day-to-day (and where you got the food if it’s fast food), then
many apps and services will fill in the rest for you.
Plan meals in advance: It’s easy to make an excuse for fast food when you
don’t have dinner planned at home. If you begin each week planning the
meals you want to eat each day or, if you want to go above and beyond by
preparing some of said meals, you’ll have less of an excuse to swing by
McDonald’s on the way home.
Planning meals in advance also allows you to note what foods you eat, or
plan on eating, regularly so you can make changes before you even begin
buying the ingredients.
Finding fun and tasty recipes (that are also easy) can be tricky. Sure, there’s
the internet and cookbooks, which are both great sources, but those can take
time and, like picking out a movie on Netflix, offer too many options to
choose from.
In the back of this book, for your pleasure and ease of access, we’ve
provided you five simple recipes that taste delicious. Whether you’re
making a meal for yourself or a group of friends, each recipe is worth trying
out once (even if it’s just to hone your skills in the kitchen).
Make a list and stick to it: When you’re ready to stock up on your food for
the following week, it’s important to plan out every ingredient you’ll need.
Making a shopping list is an easy way to have all the ingredients in one
place (whether it be on a post-it note or your cell phone). It also prevents
you from picking up any unnecessary sweets while preparing your healthier
meals.
Making a list goes perfectly with planning your meals. If you only give
yourself time to visit the grocery store once a week, you better go in with a
week of meals planned and a strict list of what you need for each meal.
Each trip to the grocery store is filled with temptation (sweets, ice cream,
extra pasta, easy frozen meals, etc.). Don’t let these unnecessary foods get
to you. Go to the grocery store when you need to and stick to your list.
Change it up: Eat a variety of foods to keep your body balanced and
healthy. While many people enjoy meat enough to have it at every meal,
make sure to mix in fruits and vegetables to add balance and variety.
That doesn’t mean you can’t eat the same kind of food for every meal. Say
you like tacos but don’t want to eat the same old tacos day after day. Mix it
up with turkey tacos one day and vegan tacos the next. Have fun with your
variation of food and spend time experimenting with the foods you’re
familiar with.
Know suitable substitutions: Because variety is so important to keeping
meals balanced and healthy, it’s important to know other sources for key
nutrients outside of the norm. For example, rather than relying on red meat
to give you that boost of protein, look to beans for a different approach to
receive the same nutrients. Beans, in this case, offer fiber as an added bonus
to the protein you would be receiving from meat.
Know the benefits of food groups: Most people are familiar with the Food
Pyramid, or what is now called “MyPlate.” Keeping the five basic food
types in mind (fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, and dairy—as well as fats
and oils), you should learn what each food type has to offer in general
nutrients and health benefits. Of course, not all fruits offer exactly the same
thing, but each food group has general rules to guide your eating habits.
EXERCISE MORE
Most people attempt to fit in a few hours at the gym a few times a week to
make sure they’re getting the most for their time (and the most for their
money, seeing as most gyms come with a pretty hefty fee). Obviously, this
is a decent method for losing some weight and putting on some muscle, but
that’s a big commitment and simply isn’t for everyone.
Another option is to simply follow a few daily habits to keep you healthier
in general. Sure, you may not get to the point where you will be able to
bench press several hundred pounds, but with these habits, you’ll look and
feel a lot healthier.
Small workouts will go a long way: Start your day with a dozen or so
pushups or sit-ups, or a jog around the block. Each of these should take you
less than ten minutes and will force your tired and achy body to kick into
gear right away. Just exerting some effort in the wee hours of the morning
(something as small as walking to your car, even) will get your body going
and make the rest of your morning easier than you could ever imagine.
Don’t limit exercise to a specific time of the day: Having an exercise
schedule is important, but if you find yourself with a few minutes here or
there, use the time to exercise. This doesn’t mean running a marathon or
lifting weights in your office. If you have 10 minutes left in your lunch
hour, why not take a walk around the building? It might not be the most
exciting activity, but just moving your body will help get rid of that post-
lunch need for a nap as well as give you a chance to enjoy some fresh air.
Be conscious of your exercise: Many people simply count their steps
throughout the day. Fitbits, Smartwatches, and a ton of phone apps can do
this for you. Keeping track of your steps is a great way to get an overview
of how much you’re doing throughout the day. Most apps or products give
you a nice little graph to show your progress over time so you can adjust
accordingly.
Have a group to exercise with: Sure, setting goals for yourself to meet is fun
and can keep you motivated, but five people all trying to meet the same
goal can be even more so. The more people you exercise with, the more
flexible you can make your goals. You can make exercise competitive or
cooperative to push the members in your group to exercise more and more.
The more people participating, the more motivating it will be for each
member to do their best.
Walk: That’s it. Walk. Do you need to go to the store for a can of soup you
forgot to pick up? Walk the mile to grab it. Sure, it may take longer, but
you’ll be getting in some nice exercise while enjoying some time outside. If
you need to run errands or go to the store to pick up a few things, park a
block away or at the back of the parking lot. Sure, it may not be a lot of
extra exercise, but that extra two hundred steps can add up if you park
farther away for many different errands.
Move more: Throughout the day, we do countless small tasks that are
oftentimes boring and require very little thought. During these activities,
make it a point to move your body more. Dance while you sweep the
kitchen or jog instead of walking somewhere. You don’t need to take longer
with the task if you swing your hips in time with a song while you clean.
Find natural breaks in activities: You can work out so easily while
watching TV or playing video games without missing a beat. During
commercial breaks or loading screens for video games, fit in a few pushups,
sit-ups, or jumping jacks. Your show or game won’t be interrupted, and
you’ll be getting in a nice little workout here and there.
This also helps if you put in extra thought to what channel you want to
watch or what video game you want to play. Some have longer commercial
breaks or loading screens, meaning you can get in slightly longer workouts
each time, which does add up.
SLEEP BETTER
Wake up early: The concept of someone being a natural morning person is a
myth. All your friends and coworkers you hate before 10 am because of
how chipper they are aren’t naturally that happy in the morning. They’ve
allowed their body to adjust to waking up earlier, which makes it easier for
them to get up earlier.
The biggest key to changing your sleep schedule is not when you go to bed.
You can go to bed at 7 pm to try to wake up earlier, but if your body is used
to waking up at 9 am, it’s going to try to wake up at 9 am. The most
important variable is when you force yourself to wake up. If you set your
alarm for 5:30 am in the morning, force yourself to get out of bed at 5:30
am, and you’ll find that in no time, you’ll wake up around that time
naturally.
Do not rely on coffee or caffeine: Too many people rely on caffeine to wake
up in the morning. You know the types: “I haven’t had my coffee yet, so I
might yell at you.” While some of them may be exaggerating a bit, many
people have trained their body to not properly function without their daily
dose (or five) of coffee.
While coffee and energy drinks are inherently negative, if you drink
something with caffeine in it to start every single morning, your body loses
its ability to create the proper chemicals to wake you up. Drinking coffee
means the drink is doing the work for your body so it doesn’t need to do it
any longer. That means it won’t even try to wake you up if the coffee will
do it instead.
Get rid of daily naps: Naps feel great, but if they’re longer than about half
an hour, they can really mess up your sleep schedule for that night. Instead
of crawling into bed right after work, try doing a light exercise to get your
blood flowing again. You won’t want to work out when you feel tired in the
afternoon, but if you pull the strength to walk around the block, you’ll feel
wide awake and ready to take on the rest of the day.
Monitor your sleep habits: If you work out more, you’ll notice better sleep
at night with fewer interruptions throughout the night. It also works the
opposite way. If you notice that you may not have gotten great sleep over
the last few nights, you should analyze your days and find a reason.
Get enough sleep: Sleep helps your mind recharge. You’ll notice a huge
difference in your day if you make sure to get enough sleep each night. The
amount of sleep you need is based on your age, sex, and other variables that
your doctor can tell you about. On the opposite side of the spectrum, getting
too much sleep is almost as bad for you. If you sleep too much, too often,
your body will adjust and assume it needs that much sleep to function.
When that happens, you’ll need that amount of sleep, meaning getting the
proper amount of sleep will be too little for your body.
DESTRESS
There are two main kinds of stress: acute stress and chronic stress. Acute
stress is our bodies’ short-term reaction to dangerous things, such as
running into a bear in the woods. This type of stress is not the type that gets
such a bad rap today, as it is actually a very useful response that gives us
that surge of energy and strength that we need to protect ourselves in
dangerous situations. Chronic stress, however, is where the problem lies.
Chronic stress is when we experience that fight or flight response and the
rush of hormones associated with it, but they do not turn themselves off
after the stressors have passed.
Plan more: What makes a habit a habit is the fact that you do it constantly
without thinking having to force yourself into starting it. The only way to
do this is to create a daily (or weekly) schedule and to force yourself to
stick to it. The more you stick to your schedule, the easier it will be for you
to stick to your schedule.
With technology today, creating and sticking to a schedule has never been
easier. Smartphones are perfect for creating a calendar with alarms to go off
up to a day before your activity is planned, so you can have plenty of time
to pump yourself up.
Some of the best advice I’ve ever been given is also the simplest in theory:
Set an alarm for when you need to do something. When the alarm goes off,
do the task without hesitation.
If you have an alarm set for your daily tasks (waking up, going to work,
cleaning the kitchen, mowing the lawn, homework, the list is limitless) and
do that task as soon as the alarm goes off, you’ll have a much easier time
creating habits and keeping them. Like all things, it’s easy to make an
excuse for not doing it at the time, but if you force yourself to get up and do
whatever your alarm says to do, you won’t have time to consider all of the
countless excuses not to do it.
Tune out social media: In today's fast-paced society, we are constantly
trying to achieve things and complete tasks on time, all the while
questioning whether or not we will be accepted or adhere to the status quo
of our peers and coworkers. This type of lifestyle places a heavy toll on our
bodies and induces chronic stress. When our stress response is perpetually
turned on and our body is constantly releasing cortisol, epinephrine, and
norepinephrine, the usefulness of this response becomes extremely
detrimental to our overall health and well-being and is actually the
underlying cause of many diseases and disorders that so many of us
succumb to today. We were not made to function this way and have actually
tricked our own biology in such a way that it is working against us, which is
obviously unnatural. Keep the following lifestyle changes in mind to keep
your chronic stress to a minimum.
One lifestyle change you can implement to cut down on your stress and
worry is to take a break from social media. You can do this by literally
ceasing to use social media for a predetermined number of days, or just set
aside a time period of non-use each day. In today’s society, we are
constantly checking our smartphones and computers for the latest Facebook
post or Instagram picture upload. There are several issues with this.
First of all, it is easy to become so zoned out on what is going on online that
we lose focus on the task at hand as well as the plans we have for the day.
You know as well as I do that a quick login to update your status can easily
turn into an hour of mind-numbing scrolling. This will without a doubt
cause you to fall behind on the things you need to accomplish and, you
guessed it, increase stress. Second and most importantly, social media is
basically a worldwide network of people comparing their lives to someone
else’s.
Take a break from this madness, stop trying to compare your life to the
people you observe online. I can promise you, they are dealing with their
own stressors and things they worry about, no one is immune. The only life
you have control over is your own and that is more than enough. Whatever
your situation is and whatever you are going through, use your time to
reflect, improve on, and be thankful for the life you are given.
Be present: The next lifestyle change that anyone dealing with chronic
stress and worry should implement is something that sounds so cliché
because we hear it all the time, yet no one really grasps the concept, and
that is to “be present.” This is such a simple piece of advice that carries so
much weight when it comes to being stressed out and worried. In the times
we live in, life comes at us so fast. Remember being a child, when the
world seemed so small and each day felt like it lasted forever?
Then we grow up, and the responsibilities pile on, a career, a family, taking
care of our parents and grandparents, etc. It becomes so easy to get into a
routine in which we just go through the motions of getting through each
day, never taking any time to consider the actual tasks we are completing.
I’ll tell you straightforward that this is no way to go through your life.
Consider this quote, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a
gift, that is why it is called the present.”
Moving forward, you should encourage yourself to dwell on that for a
moment and think about what it is telling you. If you live your life in such a
way that you are constantly dwelling on the past, wishing you could go
back and change things that you have done or things that have happened to
you, or you are constantly worrying about what is to come, then, of course,
you are going to be stressed out!
You have zero control over things that have already happened to you.
Would you like to know how you can ease your worry and stress about the
future? Make the most out of the situation you are in right now, giving it
everything you have and making sure you are doing it to the best of your
ability. It makes sense that if you put forth your best every single day,
completing all these small pieces of your life with grace and excellence that
the big picture itself will be composed of all of these beautifully crafted
small pictures.
Try yoga: The last lifestyle change that should be in anyone’s stress and
worry-fighting regimen is yoga. When most people think of yoga, they
visualize bald men in flowing robes sitting Indian-style on a mountaintop,
monotonously chanting. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with that
if you prefer it, this extremity is not what we will discuss in this section.
Yoga can be an extremely potent tool in your journey to reduce stress and
eliminate unneeded worry from your life.
While yoga and meditation do share some common ground, yoga is more
focused on maneuvering the body in certain poses that encourage tension
release in various muscle groups, as well as increased blood flow
throughout the body. This results in the similar euphoric feeling associated
with any form of exercise. Yoga is also proven to increase the amount of
serotonin, the feel-good hormone we previously discussed, thereby boosting
our overall mood and outlook on life.
As with meditation and exercise, yoga comes with a long list of health
benefits aside from just reducing levels of stress and worry. In a yoga pose,
the practitioner moves the various joints in the body through a full range of
motion. This improves overall flexibility and reduces the risks of injury.
Another benefit of moving the joints through their full range of motion in a
yoga pose is that this brings a rush of blood and synovial fluid to all of the
cartilage in the joint. With this comes the fresh nutrients required to repair,
maintain, and strengthen the joint, thereby reducing the incidence of joint
deterioration such as arthritis and osteoporosis.
Yoga is also known to increase the overall health of the cells by upping the
amount of hemoglobin present in the blood, bringing more oxygen to each
cell and improving their productivity. While implementing yoga into your
schedule may require slightly more time than meditation or an exercise
routine, there are indeed many stress fighting qualities associated with it if
you can find the time.
If you are wondering just where you can find a yoga routine to begin, as
most of us probably don’t have the crouching lotus pose in the back our
minds, there is an abundance of information available online to assist you.
Focus on eating better: Let's discuss the most obvious method to reduce
stress and worry that results from maintaining a balanced, quality diet. This
is your physical appearance. I would venture to say that a huge percentage
of the stress experienced in today’s society comes from the way we look. If
you do not feel like you are physically appealing to the people you come in
contact with every day, your self-confidence is going to suffer because of it.
However, if you are conscientious about your dietary choices, you are far
more likely to look and feel in such a way that allows you to exude self-
confidence and that vibrant personality that will give you an edge in
whatever you are doing in life.
What if I told you that if you wanted to improve your overall mental health,
reduce stress, and calm thoughts of worry that you needed to eat more
chocolate? I am happy to report that you can actually benefit from
including it in your diet, dark chocolate in particular. Dark chocolate is
bursting with antioxidants just like avocados and blueberries. However, it
actually contains an even higher concentration of them. Eating chocolate is
scientifically proven to increase mood-elevating neurotransmitters such as
serotonin and endorphins in the brain. There are two ways in which this
takes place, the first being the chemicals in chocolate actually signal the
brain to release these neurotransmitters.
Likewise, eating chocolate is without a doubt a pleasant task for most
people, and therefore the brain releases serotonin naturally. Studies show
that consuming dark chocolate in moderation as a regular part of your diet
is related to decreased cortisol levels. Chocolate is such a powerful stress
reducer that even pregnant women who regularly eat dark chocolate during
their pregnancies are proven to give birth to more stress-free babies!
Consuming dark chocolate on a regular basis is a good idea for your heart
health as well. The nutrients found in chocolate actually decrease levels of
LDL (the bad cholesterol) in the blood; this causes decreased the buildup of
plaque in the veins and arteries and less obstructed blood flow. In addition
to decreasing plaque buildup, eating dark chocolate can help your heart out
in several other ways as well.
First, it contains chemicals that cause the blood to take longer to clot and
also causes the veins to become more elastic. These heart-helping benefits
present in chocolate will without a doubt help to lower your blood pressure,
which is just what you need when chronically stressed and on the go.
You have probably already been utilizing the next dietary method of
decreasing your stress and worry without even realizing it. When most
people are sick, tired, or cold, one of the first things they turn to is a hot
beverage. While it is true that many of the beverages we consume hot do
contain chemicals and nutrients that alleviate stress from a physical
standpoint, the effect I am talking about is strictly mental.
Since a cup of something hot such as tea, coffee, or cocoa is already
associated with feelings of peace and comfort when we consume them, the
brain notices this and responds similarly. A nice warm cup of your favorite
drink will actually encourage your brain to release those feel good
hormones such as dopamine and serotonin. There is a reason we are geared
toward these beverages during stressful events; as it turns out, your brain
knows you even better than you do!
In conclusion, your diet is one of the most important thing to take in
consideration when discussing stress reduction, decreasing worry, as well as
physical and mental health in general. No matter how organized you
become with your schedule, how often you make it a point to get the
adequate amount of exercise and physical activity, if you chronically deny
your body the proper nutrients that it needs to support you, you will not
reap the majority and stress fighting and health benefits that come with
everything else we have talked about.
CHAPTER 6: FIND YOUR POSITIVITY
Have you ever wondered what differentiates most happy, successful, and
seemingly fortunate people from the struggling, unhappy, and so-called low
on luck folks? The answer is quite obvious yet eludes us. Positive thinking
is the key. It has the power to transform your entire life if you recognize its
virtues and apply them in your day-to-day life. When you keep thinking and
focusing on exactly what you want or how your life should be, you are in
complete control of creating the life of your dreams. When we think good,
constructive, and “can-do” thoughts, our brain releases endorphins, which
leads to a greater feeling of well-being. This encourages us to be even more
positive and driven.

You’ve heard a million times about seeing your glass as half full. Let us go
a step ahead and add that the glass is refillable. The power to fill your glass
is in your hands. You determine your destiny through the power of your
thoughts and subconscious mind. Successful and happy people know how
to harness the power of their thoughts to create a desired reality. They do
not rely excessively on factors such as luck, circumstances, and other
people. They know that the power to manifest a life of their dreams lies
within their thoughts.
There are truckloads of benefits for those willing to give positive thinking
an honest chance. It may not be easy initially, especially if you haven’t
exactly had smooth sailing in life. However, once you make a sincere
attempt to include positive thinking as a way of life, it becomes second
nature. You will find yourself attracting more positivity, happiness, success,
and gratifying relationships.
Positive thinking reduces stress and awards you glowing physical health.
When you are happy and positive inside, it automatically reflects in your
outer health. Positive thinking allows you to live a longer, healthier life.
People will like you more when you display an encouraging, constructive,
and optimistic demeanor. Positive thinking gives you a confident aura and
sharper decision-making skills. There’s just no end to the value a healthy
dose of positive thinking can add to your life.
Consider how you speak to yourself: Everyone talks to themselves. Even if
most people don’t consider their inner monologue to be a back and forth
conversation, the fact that for many people this self-talk has negative
connotations cannot be ignored. The first step to understanding the effect
that negative self-talk can have on your self-confidence levels is to take the
time to notice when you are guilty of practicing it yourself.
To become more aware of when your thoughts take a negative turn, you will
need to learn a little about mindfulness meditation. A core tenant of this
type of meditation is interacting with thoughts while at the same time not
engaging with them directly. What this means is that you need to get into
the habit of taking stock of thoughts you are having so you can determine if
they are positive or negative. Dismiss the negative thoughts and entertain
the positive thoughts. While this process might seem difficult at first, you
will find that it gets easier with time.
If you find yourself unknowingly interacting with negative thoughts without
fully realizing it, there are a few ways you can try to make negative
thoughts more noticeable. The first is to simply think of a happy memory as
soon as you realize you are having a negative thought. This will get your
mind in the habit of disrupting counterproductive thoughts that may appear
while you are working to be more self-confident.
If this method is not severe enough to break you out of your negative
thoughts, consider wearing a rubber band around your wrist and snapping it
each time you notice yourself entertaining a negative thought. The added
stimuli required to connect the mental activity to a physical one should be
enough to snap you out of the negative thought habit.
Focus on having fun: Life gets busy. When we spend most of the day at
work to pay the bills and then have to hurry home to get chores done, run
errands, make other appointments, pick up the kids and take care of them,
and do the million other things that need to get done, it is sometimes hard to
have fun.
In addition, most of us have some kind of expectation that we set for
ourselves. This can be different for each person involved, but we often
become wrapped up in these to the point of distraction. We will focus on all
the details of what we need to get done during the day and all of the to-do
lists rather than what is most important to us and we forget to have fun.
It is possible to have fun no matter what you are working on in life. And
without fun, life becomes dreary and it is hard to have a positive outlook on
life and think rationally when we are dealing with other people. So, no
matter what task you are working on today, find a way to make it fun.
While you are working, take some time to get up during lunch to go on a
walk and see something new. When you are driving the kids to another
appointment, make up a silly song and laugh with them. While you are
cleaning the house, turn it into a game.
Life is boring when you just focus on all the details and the things that you
have to get done, and often this can make you bitter about all the things that
you are missing out on. But when you learn how to focus on all the fun, life
can be so much better.
QUICK TIPS FOR SUCCESS
Congratulate yourself: As you complete your goals and do well in your
everyday life, congratulate yourself. When you earn a pat on the back, who
better to give it to you than yourself?
Treat yourself first: There will be times that you need to put yourself first to
stay stable. If you need a personal day to stay sane, take one. It’s always
good to put others’ emotions first, but there will be times that that can’t be
the case for your own health.
Go outside: If you’re not going outside to exercise, go out to get a breath of
fresh air and some sun. Sun helps with your daily vitamins as well as
reduces depression.
Talk to people: Humans are social creatures. That’s cliché, but it’s very true.
Every day make it a point to talk to someone, anyone, to get your fill. Even
if you just say hello to your neighbor or mail-carrier, it can turn a day
around instantly.
Spend time with yourself: Learn to be happy spending time with yourself. If
you don’t like hanging out by yourself, others will pick up on it.
Reflect: Every day, find time to reflect on your day. Consider what you did
well and what you can improve on, your mistakes and victories, if you
overcame a challenge or if you couldn’t figure out a problem. Spend time
considering what you did well and what you can do in the future to better
how you handled a situation.
Be flexible: Life never goes according to plan. You can plan out weeks in
advance and, chances are, something will mess up those plans. Remain
flexible and willing to alter your schedule to make life easier on yourself. If
you prepare yourself mentally for changes that may occur, when plans do
go awry, you won’t be as stressed.
Laugh: Whether something legitimately makes you laugh or not, find a
reason to. Laughter releases endorphins in your brain, which make you
happier. If you can’t find anything to laugh about, fake it. Fake laughter has
the potential to lead to real laughter.
Don’t compare yourself to you: Too many times, people have distorted
views of themselves. Understand that every flaw you see in yourself, every
minor little error in your face, is most likely invisible to those around you.
Everyone has flaws they don’t like about themselves and focusing on them
will drive you to depression.
Be nice to people: This one may seem pretty obvious, but it’s something
people forget to do more often than not. Being nice to other people for the
sake of being nice makes you feel better as well. Sure, this can be seen as a
selfish reason to be nice, but if making someone else feel better it’s ok to
feel good about it. Remember, even a small compliment to someone you’ve
never talked to has the potential to put them in a happy mood for the rest of
the day.
CHAPTER 7: GETTING STARTED WITH
MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness meditation is a type of meditation that focuses on being as
aware of each moment as possible, thereby helping the consciousness to
expand by forming a stronger connection with the present. Mindfulness
meditation has a long history of practice as part of the Buddhist faith, where
it is revered for its ability to improve both mental happiness and physical
well-being. This has been corroborated by research that shows that
mindfulness meditation is a beneficial treatment for a variety of mental
conditions. What’s more, it has also been shown to be effective when
treating conditions such as anxiety, stress, and drug addiction.

Practicing mindfulness is a skill and like all skills can be improved with
practice. To practice mindful meditation, you simply try to retain as much
focus on the current moment as possible with the help of repetitive
breathing and the information being relayed by the senses. Studies have
shown that practicing mindfulness for just 15 minutes per day can lead to
measurable results when it comes to reducing stress and improving a sense
of self. This is caused in no small part by the positive effects mindfulness
has on emotional regulation, attention span, and body awareness. What’s
more, neuroimaging results show that practicing mindfulness also helps the
mind process information more effectively.
While mindfulness can be practiced almost anywhere at nearly any time,
the concept began as a structured meditation technique practiced by
Buddhists known as vipassana. Roughly translated this means to live in the
moment while understanding that sometimes you must be aware of the
future as well. The general idea is that achieving vipassana will allow you
to come to understand the universe as a whole and comes through the
knowledge of a few key principals.
Generally known as the three marks of existence, non-self, dissatisfaction,
and impermanence are thought of as the three factors that unite all living
things. The idea behind non-self is that you must know where the world
ends and you begin and that by focusing on this definition you may better
understand both sides of it. The idea of dissatisfaction comes from the fact
that striving to find satisfaction in temporary things is inherently a flawed
notion because all living things are impermanent, and you must come to
terms with that fact if you wish to find peace.
The idea of practicing mindfulness first caught on in the Western world in
the early part of the 1970s. Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn is credited with
creating a mindfulness-based method of stress reduction that paired
mindfulness with yoga to great result. While Zinn didn’t do anything
particularly new, the fact that his techniques led to measurable
improvements for a wide variety of ailments both mental and physical led
to additional studies on the topic. These studies have shown time and again
how effective practicing mindfulness can be, which has led to a steady
increase in the practice. It is now regularly practiced in schools, veteran
treatment facilities, hospitals, and even prisons.
Research shows that practicing mindfulness regularly can improve brain
health as well as function, and starting young will ensure your brain retains
more volume as you age. Those who regularly practice mindfulness will
also find they have a thicker hippocampus and, as a result, have an easier
time learning and retaining more information. They will also notice that the
part of the amygdala that controls fear, anxiety, and stress is less active.
Beyond the physical changes, regularly practicing mindfulness has been
shown to decrease instances of participants’ minds getting stuck in negative
thought patterns while at the same time increasing focus. This should not
come as a surprise given the fact that a recent Johns Hopkins study found
that regularly practicing mindfulness meditation is equally effective at
treating depression, ADD, and anxiety. It also improves verbal reasoning
skills as shown in a study that found that GRE students who practiced
mindfulness performed up to 16 points better than their peers.
GETTING STARTED WITH MINDFULNESS MEDITATION
While more fully connecting with every moment might sound like
something that is beyond your ken, the fact of the matter is that once you
commit the practice of mindfulness meditation to habit, the improved state
will come to you quite quickly. What’s more, once you understand the
basics you will likely find that you can practice mindfulness meditation
virtually anywhere as long as you can commit to being fully in the present
and listening to the things your body is telling you.
While mindfulness meditation is exceedingly malleable, when you are first
starting out you should set aside at least 15 minutes a day in a place that is
free of distractions in order to start seeing benefits as quickly as possible.
The space you choose should be somewhere you can feel truly relaxed and
not have to worry about anything. As mindfulness meditation is all about
getting in touch with yourself and the signals your body is sending you,
starting with the fewest number of external stimuli is the preferable choice.
Form a routine: The easiest way to transition the act of mindfulness
meditation into a habit is to start by making it part of your daily routine. As
with any of the new habits discussed in these pages, letting your mind and
body get used to the practice and expect it at the same time every day is
crucial to keeping it around long enough for it to become a habit. Practicing
mindfulness meditation requires nothing special and the benefits will not be
immediately apparent, so many people find it easy to make excuses to not
practice regularly.
If you find that you are constantly coming up with excuses not to meditate
then you will want to remember the ancient mindfulness saying that goes
something like, “Practice mindfulness meditation for 15 minutes per day;
unless, of course, your schedule is very full in which case you will want to
practice for 30 minutes.” Don’t use the outside world to make excuses that
affect your potential for inner peace, find a few spare minutes each day and
commit to doing so for 30 days, at the end of this time you will be glad you
stuck with it.
Get started by focusing on the moment: While the ultimate goal of
mindfulness meditation is to quiet the mind in an effort to find a state of
internal calm despite the hustle and bustle of the outside world, many
people find it difficult to achieve this state right out of the gate. Instead, you
will likely find it easier to start to supplant any thoughts you might have by
focusing all of your attention on the signals that your senses are relaying to
you to the exclusion of everything else. While you might not feel as though
you are receiving much data on the physical world, especially if you are
practicing in a quiet, temperate space, the truth of the matter is that your
brain naturally filters out approximately eighty percent of everything it
receives, you just need to get in the habit of tapping into it.
With practice, you will learn to tune out your more common thoughts and to
instead tune into what is going on around you. When you do this, it is
important to simply take in the information your senses are providing
without thinking about it too deeply or passing judgment on what you
perceive. Judging tends to lead to additional thoughts or, even worse,
comparison of the present group of situations to those of the past. This is
more likely to pull you out of the moment and make finding the state of
calm you are looking for even more difficult, especially when you are just
getting started.
Remember, the goal with mindfulness meditation is to get as close to
existing in the moment as possible and ignoring everything outside of your
current surroundings as much as possible. To reach the required state you
need to focus on your breathing, the feel of the air slowly entering and
exiting your lungs as well as any smells or tastes that go along with this
practice. From there you can then expand the sphere of observation to any
other sensations that your body might be experiencing, all the while going
deeper into yourself in search of the point where your mind ceases to form
new thoughts and simply exists in a state of peaceful relaxation.
Don’t judge: Let your senses expand outward and take in everything that is
going on around you. When taking in the information around you, it is
important to make a conscious effort not to judge the information that you
are taking in, only to experience it. Judging the things that you are
experiencing can easily lead to additional related thoughts or a comparison
of multiple different situations, and by then your mind will be running a
mile a minute as normal.
If you find that you are having a hard time diverging yourself from your
errant thoughts, you may find it helpful to picture each thought that enters
your mind as being encased in a bubble. Visualize standing outside this
stream of bubbles and looking in at them, take note of them but do not
engage. If you find a specific thought catching your attention, all you need
to do is gently prod your mind into letting it go. When it comes to letting go
of these thoughts, it is important to not dwell on the fact that you are having
a hard time and instead simply move on and keep trying.
Keep it up: It is important to begin your mindfulness meditation with the
right mindset, which means going into the process with the right mindset.
Specifically, it is important to not expect to be able to keep up the process
indefinitely, right away. Holding back the torrent of thoughts that are
naturally running through your head can be a serious project and it is likely
something that you will have trouble doing for more than a few minutes at a
time, at least at first. With practice, however, you should easily be able to
get that number to 15 minutes, if not higher.
CHAPTER 8: EXPANDING YOUR MINDFUL
PRACTICE
Once you get the hang of the basics of mindfulness meditation, you will
find that there is practically nothing you can’t do that doesn’t lend itself to
being mindful. The following are some of the easiest ways to get into the
habit of practicing mindfulness meditation around your home, but you can
also practice at work, on public transportation, or even while driving. With
a little extra practice, the wide variety of times you can easily slip into a
mindful state are sure to surprise you.

Start the day the right way: It doesn’t matter what routines you use to start
your day, odds are good you use at least one hot drink to get you started.
Adding a few steps of ritual to that enjoyment can help you face the day
knowing you have already taken steps to keep depression at bay. As with
any other type of mindfulness, it is important to push any and all of your
cares aside and focus on the here, the now, and your favorite hot beverage.
 Start the day by considering the thoughts that greet you as you wake.
Why are these thoughts with you on this fine morning? Consider the
specifics as you go through your morning routine, taking special care
to stop when you get to preparing your morning beverage.
Take the time to really focus on the task of preparing the beverage.
Think about how great it is going to be and hope it will help you start
your day off on the best foot possible.
Continue this anticipation as you take the drink with you and find a
quiet spot to take a few minutes to yourself while you make the most
of that which you are excited for.
Gather your attention and direct it completely towards the cup in your
hands, consider the feel of the cup, the sight of the liquid, and the
smell of it ready to meet your lips
Take the first sip. Let the taste of the drink wash over you as it flows
over your tongue and down your throat. Consider the benefits of the
drink and the many ways it is helping you start your day.
Finish the drink and take one more moment to be grateful for the day
ahead.Be mindful while driving: By practicing mindfulness meditation on
the road, you will find that you arrive at work ready to meet the challenges
of the day without being angry about them and arrive home at the end of the
day with a clear head and heart, with the cares of the day left somewhere on
the turnpike. Practicing mindfulness meditation on the go will allow you to
reach your destination in a calm and focused state, which allows the stresses
of rush hour traffic to fade into the background. What’s more, practicing
mindfulness meditation will also ensure you drive as safely as possible
because you will be completely focused on the moment and the traffic that
surrounds you.
In order to make the most of your commute, practice mindfulness from the
very first moment that you enter your vehicle. As such, the first thing that
you do is announce your intention aloud to the universe to help you get into
the right mindset from the start. With your intentions made plain, the next
thing that you do (even before starting your vehicle) is take several deep
breaths.
During this period, take special care to focus on your body and the way it
feels as you sit in your seat, the way your hands feel on the steering wheel,
and the way the world around you looks as you stare out at it from behind
the windshield. From there, let the sensations of feeling expand outward
and downward so that you feel your feet and the pressure you exert on the
pedals before starting your vehicle.
As you begin your commute, pay special attention to everything that is
going on around you, both to the vehicles that you are directly interacting
with as well as the people on the sidewalk and the buildings and signs that
you previously passed without giving them a second thought. While this is
going on, be sure to also give some attention to your eyes as they are taking
everything in and your ears as they convey the sounds of hundreds, if not
thousands, of other people all moving together in relative harmony.
Being mindful on public transit: Start by ensuring you feel comfortable in
your current space. You won’t be able to meditate effectively if you have to
keep one eye on your things for fear of someone stealing them. Unless you
are listening to a guided meditation exercise, you should turn off any music
or podcasts to ensure you are able to fully focus on the present. Keeping
your headphones in is a good way to ensure that you are not disturbed
during your meditation.
Assume a relaxed, inconspicuous position with your feet on the ground and
your legs planted with only a little space between them. Continue this
proper, relaxed position up your body with your spine stretched but still
curved naturally. If you don’t find that your current situation allows for this
position, aim to sit or stand with a proper posture and you will be fine.
Choose a point a few feet in front of you on the ground and stare at it while
at the same time ensuring that it is only your gaze and not your head that is
drifting towards the ground. Start by feeling all of the sensations that your
body is providing you before working your gaze up slowly, taking in new
stimuli as you go.
Focus on breathing regularly; don’t let the hustle and bustle of the commute
distract you. Early on, if you are anxious about missing your stop, here are a
few places to direct your attention to ensure you don’t get too caught up in
the exercise.
Focus on the movement of the bus/train/subway and how that movement
reacts to your body and vice versa. Start at one end of your body and work
your way up before switching directions. If you find yourself changing
position, try again with the goal of spotting all of the differences.
Concentrate on the number of stops. For example, if you have 6 stops to go,
focus on repeating the number 6 over and over again, before switching to 5,
to 4, etc. This decreasing number can be seen as a mantra, and focusing on
the number over and over again can help you stay in the moment.
Being mindful at work: The best way to go about being mindful in the
workplace is to utilize what is known as micro meditations. Shorter than
even a mindfulness minute, micro meditations can be done any time you
find a gap in your workflow, regardless of how long that gap may
ultimately be. The more frequently you use micro meditations, the shorter
you can ultimately make them. Ideally, you should be able to gain all the
benefits of a micro meditation in just 10 seconds, without even breaking
stride in your work.
Clearing your mind in the middle of the workday can be tricky, but like
with all types of mindfulness, each time you do so will make the next time
that much easier. Don’t push yourself unreasonably, however, starting with
just a few micro mediations each day is still a great effort in the right
direction. If you work in an office, any time you need a moment to catch
your breath, and you want that moment to last as long as possible, consider
the following. Otherwise, alter it for your situation as needed.
1. As you breathe in and out normally, be aware of the breath in your
lungs before expanding that awareness outward.
2. Become aware of your fingers as they glide across the keyboard in
front of you; listen to the sound of the keys pressing as you go about
your business. Focus on the decision to press each key and the
resulting actions that come into play because of it.
3. Focus on your body, straightening your posture to its ideal limits and
taking in the sensations being given off by the lower half of your
body.
 4. Take one more breath and let the rest of the world back in to continue
on about your day as normal.
Additionally, any time you find yourself in a meeting or a particularly long
conversation with a coworker, you can use the opportunity to slip into a
mindful mindset by simply focusing on what the other person is saying to
the exclusion of everything else that is going on around you. Remember,
being mindful isn’t about being choosy when it comes to which moments
you are fully present in; it is about embracing the now in all its many forms.
Exercising mindfully: As previously noted, any activity that doesn’t require
your full, active attention is a great candidate for mindfulness, and exercise
is no exception. In fact, exercise and mindfulness is an extremely effective
match as exercise naturally pushes the sensations the body is providing to
the forefront of the mind, making mindfulness only an additional step away.
As such, it doesn’t require much more to move into a true mindful state and
strengthen your body and mind all at once. What’s more, those who make a
habit of exercising while practicing mindfulness report a noticeable increase
in their overall level of endurance as well as a general performance boost as
well.
Being mindful while doing chores: While no one really enjoys doing
household chores, looking at them as a way to practice mindfulness
meditation makes them feel much less like meaningless drudgery. What’s
more, they will often provide you with a way to practice mindfulness while
still being outwardly productive as well. When it comes to practicing
mindfulness meditation in a wide variety of scenarios successfully, it is
important to keep in mind that it can be done during any physical activity
that doesn’t require a lot of complicated mental activity.
When it is time to tackle your chores, the first thing you do is clear your
mind and get in touch with the signals that your body is putting out. Once
you have primed your mind, you will then commit yourself to the moment-
to-moment nature of the activity you are currently taking part in and ensure
that your mind doesn’t just tune out the way most people allow it to while
doing chores or other relatively mindless tasks. Rather, you should start by
focusing on the way your hands feel as they are going through the motions
of the task at hand.
Likewise, take in all of the information that your eyes are providing you as
you go through the task and watch as what you are doing alters the state of
the physical world around you. Additionally, take in the smells of the task
and consider what they signify. Finally, when you complete one task, take a
few moments to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that comes along with
a job well done.
CHAPTER 9: IMPROVING YOUR EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENCE
When it comes to finding your focus and unleashing your inner creativity,
improving your emotional intelligence (EQ) is a great way to determine any
personal blocks that might keep you from finding the success you are
looking for. While it is not nearly as well publicized as IQ, EQ is just as
important, as it is what helps create action out of positive intentions,
connect with other people in productive ways, and make important life
decisions.
EQ is the ability to utilize emotion to identify, understand, use, and manage
your emotions as effectively as possible to ensure you always communicate
clearly, reduce stress, connect empathically to those around you, minimize
conflict, and maximize success. Your level of EQ also makes it easier to
understand what others are feeling and put yourself more successfully in
their shoes. This understanding comes from picking up on body language
and other nonverbal cues and is essential to getting ahead in the business
world and forming long-lasting and meaningful relationships.
Those who have high levels of EQ embody four primary attributes.
Self-awareness: Those with a high EQ understand the emotions they are
feeling as they occur and understand how they may affect their actions. By
more clearly understanding their weaknesses, as well as their strengths, they
can be more confident overall regardless of the situation.
Self-control: Those who understand their emotions can control them more
easily when required, leading to fewer impulsive reactions. They don’t just
close their feelings off, however, they manage them in healthy ways and are
also known to take initiative, honor commitments, and handle change
easily.
Social awareness: Those with enough EQ are able to easily understand the
emotions that others are feeling as well as the roots of those emotions. They
can understand emotional tells and cues, are comfortable in social
situations, and understand power dynamics and their importance in the
social structure.
Relationship management: Those who understand their emotions also
understand how to maintain healthy relationships while still developing new
ones. They can influence and inspire others with their clear communication
and ability to diffuse conflict. It is for these reasons that they often make
good team leaders.
IMPROVING YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Though our capacity to recognize and handle your and other’s emotions is
largely determined by childhood experiences, heredity, and other factors, it
isn’t rigid. We can alter our ability to comprehend and manage emotions
over the long term with the right coaching and dedication. You can change,
of course, but the question is do you want to change? Are you willing to put
in the effort required to be more emotionally intelligent? Sometimes, while
you may successfully be able to manage your external emotions, you may
still grapple with emotions you do not manage to display on the outside.
While some folks are naturally positive, calm, and social, others can be
plain grumpy, egoistic, shy, or insecure. However, no trait is unchangeable.
If you truly want to change an aspect of your personality, you can.
Emotional intelligence naturally increases with age, without any
intervention. This is the rationale behind the popular belief that people gain
more maturity as they grow older. Overall, yes, it is possible to improve
your emotional quotient over the long-term with intervention, guidance, and
regular practice.
Take a closer look at your feelings: If you are like most people these days
then you are likely to find it difficult to sort your day from the hectic mess
of appointments and deadlines that you have to muddle through. As such, it
can be difficult to correctly monitor your thoughts, much less your
emotional state. This issue can then frequently be compounded even more
by other stressors and distractions that can make it easy for poorly thought
out actions to slip through, which never does any good for anybody. This is
why it is crucial that you get in the habit of practicing proper
communication when possible, which means prioritizing communications
with others when they do occur.
Emotions are often tied to events that take place in your immediate vicinity,
but this doesn’t automatically mean that they are valid. It is actually
common for the emotion you are feeling right now, to be tied to something
you have felt in the past that this situation is simply reminding you of. If
you find yourself dealing with this type of scenario, then regardless of how
you feel in the moment, it is likely that you are dealing with an incorrect
response, which means you will need to work on limiting that association in
your mind ASAP.
Being aware of your feelings is a skill, which means that it can be improved
if you are willing to practice doing so. To that end, you should pick a set
time each day to practice this skill, once in the morning and then again in
the evening. When practicing, check in with all of the emotions you have
felt since your last check-in and determine if the emotion you felt was an
accurate response to the stimuli that was taking place at the time. When
thinking back to these emotions, consider the physical response that it
brought out in you as well as the mental response. Do your best to connect
the feelings you have to a specific emotion so that you can become aware of
what is going on when you feel it again in the future.
Respond rather than react: Reacting is a more unconscious and
uncontrolled process that is a result of an emotional trigger. For instance,
you snap when someone annoys you or you are already stressed due to
another reason. Responding, on the other hand, is more controlled and
something you choose to do. You decide exactly how you behave in a given
situation. For example, you could explain to someone that you are not
feeling too good and that this isn’t the best time to interrupt you, and that
later you’d be in a much better position to listen to them. You’ve simply
chosen to deal with the situation in a more productive and less impulsive
manner by taking control of your emotions.
Evaluate how your actions will impact others before acting. If your
behavior will affect others, try to place yourself in their shoes. How are they
bound to feel if you say or do something? Would you like to go through the
experience yourself? If you have to take a particular action, can you help
people in coping with its effects?
Be aware of those around you: Once you have a better understanding of
your own emotions and how they affect your behavior, you will find it
much easier to register the emotions that others are feeling and relate them
to their actions as well. In this phase, focus more on noticing and
deciphering the cues and tells that others put off in relation to specific
emotions in your own social group. It is important to also consider power
dynamics and how they affect any social group.
In order to effectively begin improving your general level of social
awareness, you will need to try and improve your overall level of empathy
and relate what you have already learned to those around you as well as
making it clear you are actively participating in any conversation. While
this second part seems simple, it is often easier said than done, which is
why it is important to convey the message that you value the other person’s
time and input in each and every conversation.
First, picture the last few conversations you had with those outside your
immediate social circle. Do you typically take the time to put away
distractions while other people are speaking to you? How much eye contact
do you use when speaking? How about when listening? Are you an active
listener, and is that reflected in your body language?
In general, you should make a point to always use body language that is
open including not touching your face, not creating artificial barriers,
laughing or smiling regularly, using lots of eye contact, not crossing your
arms or legs, and slightly leaning towards the other person. Even if the
things you say are pleasant and friendly, the only thing other people will
hear is your closed body language. Make the extra effort and others will
respond in kind.
It is equally important to ensure you are communicating effectively with
what you say as well as your body language. It is always important to finish
up any important conversation with a recap to ensure that both parties are
on the same page at every juncture. While some people might think this
indicates they weren’t listening, it actually shows you value the other
person’s time as well as your own by not wasting it over simple
miscommunication.
Consider your values: As you go throughout your day, make an effort to
consciously monitor the things you are doing and consider why exactly you
are doing them. Consider the purpose behind why you are doing the things
you are doing as well as if they are the best use of your time at the moment.
If you don’t think what you are doing is the most important thing you could
be doing, dig a little deeper and consider why you felt the need to move
forward with it regardless.
Making a list of everything that you do in a given day will help you to
identify the things that are most important to you and if you are spending
your time actively furthering these goals. This will help you focus on your
feelings more accurately and know yourself more completely. If you
discover that you are doing lots of things for what you perceive are the
wrong reasons, then you may need to look more closely at your values as
something that is definitely out of sorts. Look at your list and see what has
changed recently; this will help you determine just what has changed to
alter your reasons for doing things.
With all of the information at your fingertips, you should be able to work
through what has been going on in your life that would change your
emotions in such a way that they would alter your actions to align with the
things that you have been doing lately. Don’t get discouraged if you can’t
draw a direct line between cause and effect right away. The things you
could be doing now might not relate to any of your emotional changes, at
least on the surface. With enough hard work and dedication to the task at
hand, however, you should be able to determine just what is going on and
what emotional changes need to be made in order to get things back on
track.
Bedtime reflection: Reflect not on what is going to happen, but instead look
at the things that have already taken place. Mentally go through the things
that happened in your day and ask yourself:
• Did you behave according to your principles?
• Did you treat the people with whom you interacted with in a
friendly and considerate manner?
• What vices did you fight?
• Did you make yourself a better person by cultivating your virtues?
You may even want to write down your reflections and plan the next day
too. Write down your notes and what you want to reflect on in the morning.
What you do today will link up with tomorrow morning’s reflection. In your
journal, write down what you want to improve the next day. It doesn’t have
to be a big thing. Write it down no matter how small the improvement may
be. If you keep this up for 21 days, you’ll be surprised how much you can
and will be able to change.
Along with your notes, also remind yourself that this day has ended and
there is no way you can change anything about it unless you time travel.
What has happened, has happened. The sun will rise tomorrow.
CHAPTER 10: IMPROVE YOUR CONFIDENCE
Being more confident is something that many people dream of, but few
have a good idea of how to go about making it a reality. If you ask a
confident person why they are so confident, they most likely won’t have an
answer; it is just a part of who they are, a mindset they adopt without
thinking about it.

It is easy to sit back and think about being more confident in the future, but
it is much more difficult to take the first few steps that will lead to
noticeable results further down the line. If you are having trouble putting
your thoughts into actions, know that stepping out of your comfort zone is
difficult, maybe even scary, for everyone. If you still aren’t convinced, try
the following to get you started.
Think about how much you want it: The next time you find yourself
hesitating when it comes to taking a more confident approach to a
situation, give yourself an extra moment to think it through. Consider
how much being confident in this situation would improve your
current circumstances, and how much better your life would be if you
approached every situation that way. With this little boost of
persuasion, you will be surprised how much easier it will be to make
confident choices.
Want it less: While counterintuitive, thinking less about the
consequences of following through on the current set of
circumstances may also make taking the confident step easier. Stop
thinking and act already, the more you consider the right course of
action the more monumental it will seem. Identify the best course of
action and don’t think any more about it, simply follow through.
Try to be in the moment: Perhaps the best way to be more confident is
to simply exist more fully in the moment. Also known as
mindfulness, attempting to reach a state where you are fully
engrossed in the moment to the point where you forget about both the
past and the future will ensure that you are more confident simply
because you are not worried about mistakes that you made in the past
or those that you might make. Consider the moment and you can’t go
wrong.
GET IN YOUR HEAD
Social confidence is a skill, which means that like any other skill the only
way that it is ever going to improve is with practice. One of the first
mistakes that many people make when it comes to improving their social
confidence is they stop trying. Improving from scratch can be a very
arduous process and when they don’t see immediate results they give up
easily. To avoid this reductive cycle, consider the following mental
exercises to get you pointed in the right direction.
Consider the source of your fears: When it comes time to practice being
confident in social situations, many people find that they are gripped with a
sudden bought of nearly insurmountable fear that makes it impossible for
them to move forward in a confident fashion. If this sounds like you, the
best way to conquer your fear is to consider where it is coming from and
what it really means. If you find that anxiety is at the root of your fear, the
first thing that you do is consider what about the situation is causing you to
be anxious. If nothing pertinent comes to mind, there is a good chance that
what has instead happened is that you have gotten yourself trapped in a
pattern of anxiety when it comes to social situations.
The human brain loves patterns, so much so, that it frequently creates
patterns out of abstract stimuli, even where no true correlations exist. If
upon closer inspection, it turns out that there really isn’t all that much to
worry about at the moment, then you may find it useful to try to cognitively
reframe that anxiety into another, more positive emotion. For example,
instead of being anxious about the current situation you could focus on all
of the unknown variables until you become curious about the outcome
instead of nervous as to the results. This process is known as cognitive
reframing, and while it likely won’t cause your anxiety to disappear
completely, it can at least help take the edge off in a very real way.
Imagine yourself being successful in social situations: As hard as it may be
to believe, imagining yourself getting better at social interactions can
actually have a measurable effect on your performance in the real world,
but only if you go about doing it in the right way.
To get started, imagine yourself in a place that you are very familiar with,
where you are likely to run into individuals that you do not know terribly
well, if at all. When you are imagining this place, visualize it as completely
as possible.
Once you have a setting in mind, put yourself into the space. However, you
are not going to want to inhabit the space in your body as you would if you
were really there. Put yourself into the space as though you are viewing
yourself in the third person.
Once you are in the imaginary space and settled in a location you would be
likely to inhabit in real life, the next thing you do is bring in someone you
would like to have a conversation with. The specifics don’t matter as long
as you tend to be anxious when trying to speak with them in real life.
Now, imagine having a conversation with that person. Think through both
sides of the conversation and make all the responses, both yours and the
other person’s as natural and realistic as possible. At first, you don’t need to
do anything more than play out the conversation as it would naturally occur
and try to get a real flow going.
Once you have successfully made it through an entire imagined dialogue,
odds are you have now spent upwards of 30 minutes practicing genuine
conversation, regardless of the fact that you were providing both sides of it.
This exercise primes your brain to continue working on these types of
problems in the background so that your brain will be more primed to
utilize these types of neural pathways in the future.
Stop to think about the worst-case scenario: When it comes to practicing
self-confidence, especially when you are still getting the hang of it, it is
perfectly natural for your mind to throw up roadblocks to your success.
These typically manifest themselves in a wide variety of scenarios that may
occur if you take the more assertive course of action. While convincing at
the moment, these scenarios typically are only loosely based in reality,
which is why it is best to ignore them and push forward.
While this may be easier said than done, understanding that everyone is the
center of their own universe can make the idea of trying and failing much
easier to handle. Just keep telling yourself that what feels like major,
embarrassing events to you, may very well be completely glossed over by
those around you. Failure by itself is nothing to be ashamed of, trying and
failing once may even make trying a second time that much easier. If these
facts aren’t quite enough to make failure more palatable, consider the
following:
Ask yourself what you can learn from the current situation: If you can’t
convince yourself that you aren’t going to fail, do yourself a favor and stop
focusing on it. If you instead take the idea that you are going to fail as a
fact, you can stop dreading it so much and instead think of everything that
follows as an opportunity for learning. If you learn as much as you can
about the situation in question, then you improve your odds of doing things
better the next time. What’s more, without the added pressure of worrying
about failing, you may just find that you exceed your own expectations.
Think about the odds: If you never try, you’ll never succeed. If instead of
running from every opportunity to display self-confidence, you seek out as
many of them as you can find, statistically speaking, you can’t fail every
single time. Until you make it more of a daily habit, being self-confident is
a numbers game. The more you play the odds, the more you’re likely to
come up a winner.
FAKE IT
Specifically, you may find that faking a degree of confidence that you don’t
yet feel can be an extremely effective way to improve social interactions of
all types, without having to have fully deal with the issues that may be at
the root of your lack of confidence. While this might sound ridiculous, take
a moment and consider a scenario where you were interacting with a person
who you identify as being supremely confident. Now consider all the things
about this person that made you believe they were confident and ask
yourself how would you have known if they were faking it?
The truth of the matter is that if you act confidently in a given situation then
those around you will have no reason to assume you feel otherwise. As
such, pretending to have confidence and actually being confident are two
sides of the same coin. Having success when pretending to have confidence
once will make it much easier to do a second time, and what’s more, each
additional time you pretend to have confidence you will have to pretend
less and less until you won’t be pretending at all.
Acting confident: In order to act the way a confident person would act in a
given situation, all you need to do is to visualize someone you know who is
confident and then ask yourself what they would do if they were in your
position. From there, it is just a matter of following their lead. Think about
the way they would present themselves, what type of gestures they would
use, what type of body language they would utilize, and how they would
speak. With a good role model to follow you will be surprised at how easy
playing pretend can be.
Be aware of your body language: It is important to keep your body
language in mind when it comes to faking confidence, as it is one of the
easiest ways to give yourself away without even thinking about it. Those
who are confident typically walk with their shoulders squared and don’t
fidget or move around much while they are speaking. When you are talking,
focus on making eye contact and make a conscious effort to relax your
muscles as well. When you are meeting someone new, always offer your
hand and shake in a firm, decisive manner. If necessary, simply imagine that
you are in a more relaxing situation and your body will respond in kind. If
you mentally remove yourself from the situation, even to just a slight
degree, you will often see dramatic improvements in your body language.
CONSIDER IF YOU ARE PROACTIVE OR REACTIVE
The confident person does not wait for something to happen (and when
someone does, usually nothing happens) but makes something happen in
every area of his life. With it comes the realization of self-responsibility and
not blaming anyone else for their disadvantages and shortcomings.
Proactivity is the concept of taking control over your own life
circumstances, claiming responsibility for who you are and your situations,
and taking the necessary actions needed to master life. The choice is a
principle that is behind proactivity since we all have a choice in how to
react to the events we experience. The way we react then determines the
way those things will affect us. People who are not proactive are usually
quicker to react to negative events, believe that they are victims who cannot
change the way they respond, and then end up feeling a lot less empowered
and confident in themselves.
People who are always trying to “one-up” others are not being proactive;
they are being reactive. Instead of taking a rational and grounded approach
where they are responsible for their own feelings, they react. People who
say that someone “made them” feel a certain way is living out this type of
victim mentality.
There are two different ways to think of your life circumstances: in terms of
“having” or “being.” For instance, some may think, “If I just had this, I
would be happier,” while other, more confident and proactive people would
think, “I can learn to be proactive and resourceful, then I will be happier.”
In other words, they are focusing on what they can change instead of what
they can’t. Here are some lessons to keep in mind about proactivity and
confidence:
If you feel as though you’re being tossed about by the waves in your
life, remember that you are the captain and can steer yourself in
another direction.
Come up with a plan of action, whether it’s a chart, schedule, or
checklist, to reward yourself whenever you achieve a goal or take a
proactive approach.
CHAPTER 11: CONSIDER MINIMALISM
Why minimalism? The truth is the reason is different for everyone. What
works for you may not work for someone else, and what works for someone
else, may not work for you. However, everyone can benefit from this
lifestyle. Whether you go big or go small, there are so many benefits, that
there is something for everyone. Even if it is just getting rid of some junk
and managing your collection of stuff before you become a hoarder. Don't
laugh; it is a serious problem for some people. The less stuff you have to
begin with, the harder it is to become a hoarder. You want to make sure that
you are keeping your level of stuff down before you go too far.

Minimalism can give you back your life. If you feel like you are weighed
down by a ball and chain, then you will find that you are not very happy,
and you will feel like your life is not your own. You have to be able to
regain your life to get any semblance of happiness again. Minimalism will
teach you to live for you, and not to live for anyone else because you will
be in competition with no one. You will have your few possessions, and
your neighbor can have all the stuff he wants, working his life away to pay
for the flashy things he has. Meanwhile, you are racking up savings by not
buying all those fancy toys.
There is a lot of joy knowing that if a new cell phone comes out you do not
have to have it. Because lately when a new phone comes out, it is priced at
around $1,000 dollars brand new. What?! That is a month's rent right there.
Possibly more in some areas. If you live in the Midwest, that is a month's
rent in a nice house with the gas and electric bill. If you are content with
what you have, you will never have to worry about what others have,
because you simply won't care. Watch their faces as they drone on and on
about their newest television, and they realize that they can rub it in your
face all they want, and you still won't care.
They will try everything in their power to make you jealous. To make you
ooh and ahh. If you don’t, they will feel like their purchase was all for
naught, which in reality, it really is. You only buy fancy gadgets to impress
others. Why else would you throw out a completely functional television
just to get something that does the same thing but is bigger? When you feel
like you don't have to impress anyone, material items will seem useless.
That is what minimalism is. Realizing that you are in competition with no
one but yourself, and material items are not going to help you achieve your
goals.
The benefits of this lifestyle have been mentioned throughout the chapter,
but let's consolidate them here. You know that this is not the easiest life to
live, and there are a lot of hard parts. That is why it is nice to be able to see
all of the benefits nicely laid out in front of you, so you can aptly weigh the
pros and cons. This is a lifestyle that many can benefit from, but it is hard to
follow, so you have to be motivated. Read on to find said motivation.
Less stuff: When was the last time you climbed up in the attic to do
something other than clean it so that you can put more stuff up there? With
minimalism, you can come home and breathe easily, knowing that you do
not have to worry about having a hard time finding what you are looking
for because it won't be buried under a mound of junk.
You won't have to dread spring cleaning because it won't take near as long.
You won't dread going up into the attic, because there will be hardly
anything there, and you can finally turn it into the master suite you have
been dreaming of for years. Having less stuff may seem a little scary,
because what if one day you need that potato launcher that you found at a
garage sale four years ago and never used?
However, chances are, you won't ever need most of the stuff you are
clinging so tightly to. Most of the time, once people let stuff go, they never
think of it again. They live a happier life because they can walk through any
room of their house with ease and not have a care in the world about
opening the closet in the hall to grab their coat. That is a great benefit to
have in life.
More free time: This goes hand in hand with less stuff. You free up your life
when you free yourself of all of the junk that is weighing you down. When
was the last time you were able to go to your kid's ball game and sit through
the entire thing without worrying about all of the stuff you need to do at
home? When was the last time you told your kid that you would come
home on time from work and play catch out in the yard?
When was the last time you were not so swamped with work that you felt so
dead you came home and were a zombie? When did you last have actual
free time? In today's world, a lot of times, it is less than you realize. With
minimalism, you learn how to balance work and home life. It is not just
about stuff. It is about needing less stuff so that you do not have to work as
much, and you have more time for your family.
With minimalism, you will be able to find yourself loaded with free time,
time to spend with your family. You will not be so caught up in your work
that you have to give up doing things with those that matter. Instead, you
will be able to actually go have fun. You can come home from work excited
about the evening ahead of you because you are not coming home to a
cluttered mess that has to be taken care of. Instead, you are coming home to
a house that doesn't really get messy, so you can relax and watch your kids
grow up. You can spend time with your spouse and really get to fall in love
with them again. You will have time to just be.
Think back to the last time you took a vacation. It was wonderful, wasn't it?
The last time you really did not have to worry about a thing other than
enjoying yourself. Imagine if your life was like that pretty much all of the
time. With this lifestyle that is possible. You will find that it is much easier
to relax when you know that you do not have to deal with clutter in the
attic, when you do not have to go through and re-organize the storage room
at the back of the house.
One of the best benefits of this lifestyle is that you have free time. When
you know that once you get home you have free time. Time to enjoy
yourself, rather than put it off for weeks on end and not be able to enjoy
yourself, because you know that there are things that you should be doing.
A lot of other New Age lifestyles take away your free time and are just one
more thing you have to add to your to-do list. This lifestyle gives you your
life back, and that is a wonderful feeling.
Brings you closer to life: When was the last time you got to enjoy nature?
When was the last time you talked to your neighbor? Do you know your
neighbors at all? Most people do not know their neighbors, or thought they
did, but don't realize that those neighbors moved out and they have new
ones. Most people do not remember when the last time they got out and
enjoyed nature was. Chances are, you are one of those people.
That is okay, it is nothing to be ashamed of because there are a lot of people
in the world just like you who do not want to change. They don't care to
know who their neighbors are. They do not want to get out and enjoy
nature; they would rather stay inside with their stuff and watch nature on
television. You have noticed that you need a change in life. This lifestyle
will bring you this change in life.
Minimalism will bring you that change that you need and will help you see
exactly what it is that you need. You will find that you are closer to life than
you ever were before. You will be closer to your family, your neighbors,
nature. You will enjoy life so much more, and you will be a lot happier than
you ever were. You will find that the simple things bring you joy, and it
truly is the little things in life that we must hold on to.
As you can tell, there are a lot of benefits to being a minimalist. On top of
all of these, you will be happier with life. You will find that life is easier to
handle, and you will not be filled with existential dread. You will find that
you greet each day with excitement and that you are ready to face the world
with a strong head on your shoulders.
You will want to do everything in your power to keep feeling this way, so as
time wears on, this lifestyle will get a lot easier to handle, and you may
even want to take it a step further. There is so much going for this life. You
can make it however you want it. There is no set amount of minimalism that
you have to achieve, and there are no strict guidelines either. You can live
by the ideals that if you don't use it, lose it, and get along just fine.
However, you will find that sometimes, the more you get rid of, the happier
you are and you’ll live a richer life with less stuff. May seem like a
paradox, but it is true. There are people who have stuff, and there are people
who have done stuff. The people who have stuff often have not done stuff,
and the people who have done stuff, often do not have a lot of stuff. That is
because it is so much easier to go travel the world if you don't have to
worry about a break in.
GETTING STARTED
The four-box methodology: This tactic regarding how to declutter any space
is truly a minimalistic strategy and less of an organizational one that should
be completed after the decluttering process has already been completed. To
implement the four-box method, you should obtain four boxes (you may
have anticipated the fact that you would need four boxes. It is, after all,
called the four-box method). After you’ve acquired your four boxes, the
next step is to designate the four boxes into four different categories. These
categories should be labeled as the following:
1. Keep
2. Donate
3. Storage
4. Discard
A good idea would be to write on these boxes with a big black Sharpie
marker, or even print out labels from your computer and stick them on the
boxes. Regardless of how you do it, make sure that you don’t confuse the
boxes as you move through this process. Next, choose a room in the house
that you’re going to target. It’s a good idea to only focus on one room at a
time so that you stay focused on the stuff that’s in one room. One item at a
time, separate all of the stuff in the room to determine what you’re going to
keep, donate, put into storage, and throw away.
A common mistake that people make when they’re using the four-box
method is that they skip over items in the pre-specified room. Everything,
and I mean everything, needs to have a place in one of the four boxes. If
you skip over certain items because you can’t decide on whether or not you
should keep them, then you are missing the point of this entire exercise. No
one said that it was going to be easy to choose what to keep and what to
discard. Another common mistake that people make as they move through
this exercise is that they put too much of their stuff in storage. If you find
that you simply cannot separate yourself from a majority of the items in one
room, then you may want to perform this exercise once and then visit it
again in a few months’ time. This way, you get rid of your stuff
incrementally instead of all at once.
Learn healthy new habits: Many people own a lot of things because it stops
them from having to do as much work, in their mind. For example, they
might own five plates if they live alone as one person because it means they
don’t have to do the dishes as often. However, if you are living by yourself,
you might consider just having two plates. One for you, and one for
company. Or, if you tend to have a few people over for company, you may
have more but only keep two in your main cupboard. Then, when you are
done using your dishes, you can wash and dry them right away so they’re
ready for next time. This is actually a lot less work than using several and
then having to fill and unload your dishwasher each day or every other day.
The same goes for clothes and laundry, makeup brushes, and other things
that you might own several of without actually needing them all!
Consider every single purchase: Before you spend money, really consider
it. You should do this any time you’re spending money. Just because you’re
buying something necessary, like groceries, doesn’t mean you aren’t
overindulging. It is not uncommon for people to go to the grocery store and
come home with more than they need, and then throw away several items at
the end of the week because they turned in the fridge after not being used.
Ideally, you could meal plan and then purchase just what you need. The
same goes for frivolous shopping, like clothes and furniture. Of course, we
all need clothes and certain furniture items, but it doesn’t mean we need
excessive amounts. If you don’t truly need it, then don’t invest in it. The
only exception to this rule is if it makes you truly happy and it will continue
making you truly happy for a long time to come. Do not spend money for
an impulsive need to feel good if the item is later going to make you feel
guilty for spending money when you didn’t need to.
CONCLUSION
Thanks for making it through to the end of Take Back Your Day: How
Simple Daily Actions Can Change Your Life, let’s hope it was informative
and able to provide you with all of the tools you need to achieve your goals,
whatever they may be. Just because you’ve finished this book doesn’t mean
there is nothing left to learn on the topic, and expanding your horizons is
the only way to find the mastery you seek.

Hopefully, you have an understanding of how to get started breaking down

old habits and building up new and improved ones, as well as a strategy or
two or three that you are anxious to try for the first time. Before you start
giving it your all, however, it is important that you have realistic
expectations as to the level of success you should expect in the near future.
While it is perfectly true that some people experience serious success right
out of the gate, it is an unfortunate fact of life that they are the exception
rather than the rule. What this means is that you should expect to
experience something of a learning curve, especially when you are first
figuring out what works for you. This is perfectly normal, however, and if
you persevere, you will come out the other side better because of it. Instead
of getting your hopes up to an unrealistic degree, you should think of your
time spent on self-improvement as a marathon rather than a sprint, which
means that slow and steady will win the race every single time.
THANKS FOR READING!
I really hope you enjoyed this book, and most of all – got more value from
it than you had to give.
It would mean a lot to me if you left an Amazon review – I will reply to all
questions asked!
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Kindest regards,
ALSO BY
Daniel Walter

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