What have you got? Have you stopped to take stock? Is it your health? Wealth? Relationships? Is it a particular skill, career, or lifestyle?
Sometimes it is good to stop for 5 minutes and remind ourselves how good we have it. This is especially important if we’re ploughing through some really difficult moments.
What do you want your life to be like? Where do you want to be? Physically? Financially? Relationships? Work? Career? Hobbies? Family? Health? Fitness?
Take your current age and add 20 years. If you’re 43, add 20 and visualise your life at 63. List out what your life is like. Write it down. Note the clothes you’re wearing, your fitness, how relaxed you are, where you live (sea, mountain, warm, cool), how you spend your days and how delighted you are with life.
Think about your future. Visualise the dream. Add in all the detail. Make it very real and clear to see, not just the idle, transitory thought.
If you want that life in 20 years, what will you need to adjust to get there? Save and invest more of your income? Change some habits? Learn to delegate better and feel good about it? Outsource?
Make these changes now and work on the changes through till Christmas. Then sacrifice and discipline into 2023 so that by the end of that year, you are well on your way to that dream life. Then keep improving every year for 19 more years. I know you’ll make. You can achieve anything that you want bad enough. Especially in 20 years. Go!
Do you charge straight in? Or do you reflect a little before, create a strategy and consider outcomes? Will you expect to win or just see how it goes?
Prepare your mind to win. Think like a winner. Believe like a champion. Expect the best result. Imagine all the events that need to happen for your ultimate success. Practice in your mind. Train your brain.
Smile. You’re prepared.
The brain is quite incredible. While watching my son play field hockey Saturday morning, I was struck by how incredible brain-body coordination is.
The players were taking shots on the keeper and it was a sight to see. There were a series of passes, players changing places and then the final player would take their big shot on the net.
Think of what the brain is doing and what the body is doing! There is eye movement, strategy assessment, angle, velocity and height calculations and all while the body is bending, moving forward, aligning for the shot and finally shooting with the occasional precision they were attempting.
That in itself is wildly incredible. If they get it where they wanted to, it is even more spectacular. The complexity of calculating a target probability, assessing the situation, moving into the best position and making it all happen in a second or two is something we should marvel at more often than most of us probably do.
Take an evening and go to bed by 9pm. Stop getting more things done. Turn off the entertainment (tv, phone, etc). Just go get yourself to bed and have a great nights sleep. You’ll feel great in the morning: Refreshed and pleased with your self discipline.
This one thing will win you more friends, interviews, promotions, sales and romantic relationships than just about anything else you could think of.
Smiling is fun, contagious, exciting, uplifting and joyful. Is hard not to smile if someone smiles at you. So if you train yourself to be the first to smile, you’ll get people smiling back.
Since our body state helps inform our mental state, if your body is holding a smile, you are more likely to be happy inside too.
So remember to smile, all the time, every day. Not just in photos.
Every now and then we need a few minutes or hours to recharge our mind, body and soul. Be sure to plan them in and take them. Doing absolutely nothing can be quite therapeutic.
Laugh, smile, wonder, delight and play like a child. Be innocent and fully present. Enjoy the moment to the extreme. Let your soul soar. Give yourself permission and make it happen.
Are you 100% delighted with every part of your life? Or have you simply settled with where you are at? This is a tricky mental game.
If you say you are fine – you have probably settled. Fine is just that – fine. It is not amazing, delighted or “filled with joy”. And yet you can move much closer to those if you would just admit you wanted more or better in different parts of your life.
But that is where the tricky is. You might be afraid to admit you want more. This can be, in part, because if you admit you want better, you would feel silly not aiming for better. The reasons for this could be many but I would suggest it is mainly because it would involve some change in your life. Changing would be uncomfortable. And what if you failed?
Wanting something better is an admission things aren’t as you wish they were. And it would involve doing things differently. So you squash down your dreams, desires and goals. You say things are fine and hope no one presses you on it. How many years do you want to live like that? One? Five? 26?
Stop settling from today. Start aiming for brilliant, amazing, delighted, or even “so pleased”. It could be your weight or fitness, your income, savings and investments or relationship with your spouse, parent, sibling or children.
You can have level 10 across all areas of your life. First, be honest with yourself. Then set some new targets with some sensible timelines and get working on the life you would love to live rather than settling for one that is simply fine.
You don’t have to do everything and say yes to all invitations, but are you doing all that you can? Could you do more of what you really want or that would be very beneficial to you or others?
This doesn’t mean adding more to your plate. I would even say you should probably remove a bunch of things from your plate. Do you really need to watch the news or read a newspaper? Could that 30-60 minutes per day be better used?
What about tv? There are a lot of interesting shows on tv, but could you do something interesting rather than watch something interesting?
Could you improve your skills, volunteer, reach more people, reach your ideal weight or wealth target or even just learn to relax more and improve your resilience?
Think about it. You have the ability to achieve anything you set your mind to. You can start small with bigger dreams ahead as you shift some time blocks in your life. You can do this. Start today and make the impact you really want to make. Do less but have more of an impact on you and others.
If you are intrigued, but aren’t sure how to start, pick up my book Achieve Anything in Hardback (50% off), paperback, Audiobook (first book free) or ebook. It could change your life.
