Some time ago we published the 6 areas of life you need to master to control your destiny, where we talked about the importance of mastering your emotions and relationships of every kind, as well as mastering your finances and, above all, mastering how you manage your time. It may sound complicated, but the way Tony Robbins explained it in his book Awaken the Giant Within (published in Spanish as Controle su destino), it ends up seeming quite simple.
Today we can simplify the message even further with 4 simple steps you can start applying tomorrow and see changes in very little time. To do that, we are going to swap the goals for something I imagine we all want.
As our friend James Altucher puts it, we could boil our goals down to three simple objectives:
- I want to be happy.
- I want to get rid of unhappiness in my life.
- And I want every day to be as pleasant as possible. No problems.
Many people might think these three goals are too simple, but the truth is that few people reach them consistently.
Altucher himself admits that at least ten times in his life he felt he would never achieve them, even coming to think that the world would be better off without him. As some of you already know, at one point in his life Altucher even considered suicide.
But leaving extreme cases aside, the truth is that we can very often find ourselves trapped at one of life’s crossroads without knowing how to get out.
If you look back at those moments when it seemed your life was crap (or if you are going through one of them right now), you will see that there is usually one main problem, and that failing to handle it properly, or failing to handle your emotions properly, lets that problem infect everything else.
It may seem absurd, too easy or too complicated, but building these changes into your daily life will make you see everything differently.
1. Physical: get in shape with some kind of exercise
You don’t have to run a marathon; you just need to work up a sweat for 20 or 30 minutes a day.
Exercise will not only help you handle stress much better, it will help you in all kinds of situations, whether you are going through problems at work or in your love life. Sometimes all we need is that rush of endorphins released when we exercise, which are called “the happiness hormones” for a reason.
On top of that, if you are not healthy it is harder to be happy, and exercise will help you be healthier.
It will also make you more attractive, and seeing yourself as more attractive will boost your self-esteem and therefore make you happier. In difficult situations exercise helps, and even when what you want is to stop thinking about your problems, it keeps you busy.
The physical side of improving our health also includes getting enough rest and eating a balanced diet, since it has been shown that problems seem much more serious when we don’t get enough rest or when our sleep habits are out of control.
2. Emotional
If someone is dead weight for you, send them packing. If someone brings you more problems than joy, to hell with them. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about friends or a partner. If they subtract from your life instead of adding value, the sooner you get them off your back, the better. Enough problems come along on their own without keeping them close.
Get rid of toxic people and your life will improve immediately. (See: 9 types of toxic people we should avoid like the plague)
Try to be honest and to help the people who deserve your help, but be careful not to let certain people drain your energy and vitality.
Don’t do things you don’t feel like doing.
3. Mental
Along with exercise, reading every day is one of the most widespread pieces of advice, because reading exercises the mind. For people with an entrepreneurial streak, though, it is a good idea to get into the habit of writing down ideas as they come, because that is genuinely how many business ideas are born.
Start observing what is around you and what people complain about, and start thinking about how that problem could be solved. In fact, look at your own worries and how solving them could improve your life. Would it work for someone else? Would that business idea be profitable?
See also: How business ideas are born
Plenty of entrepreneurs, after travelling on holiday, see products or businesses that don’t exist in their own country, and so they import the idea, modify it or adapt it. To do that, you have to stay alert at all times.
Remember that the brain also works like a muscle. Overloading it can destroy it, and not using it enough can make it waste away. Unfortunately, we overload it with useless things and negative emotions, and we let it waste away for lack of useful intellectual work.
(See: What books to read to become smarter and make better decisions)
4. “Spirituality”
I put this word in quotation marks because most people associate it with religion or some kind of God.
And you don’t necessarily have to find peace through symbols or “spiritual institutions”.
When we talk about practising “gratitude”, the truth is that, rather than something spiritual, it is something we could approach from the scientific side. Many of our emotional problems and mental burdens come from not being grateful for what we have.
We give more weight to what we lose than to what we have, which makes a single problem seem more important than everything we could be grateful for.
(See: 18 quotes on the importance of being grateful)
In short, meditate and think every day about everything you have to be grateful for (which is no small amount), forgive (or don’t, if you don’t want to), and let go of everything that causes you pain when you bring it to mind.
Get rid of the painful past and think about how to enjoy the present and build a better future. That, for me, is spirituality, and in this kind of spirituality the only God that exists is me, because I am the one who solves my problems and brings good things into my life.
See also: This 21-day programme will help you be happier and more successful
Featured image: Sergiy Galyonkin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}