There's something everyone can improve to make their lives happier, healthier, more productive and less stressful. But too many people start with New Year’s resolutions, and they fizzle before Valentine's Day.
The Einstein quote - "Doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result is insanity" - is true! And it also applies to New Year’s resolutions.
The most common lie most people tell themselves on New Year’s Day is that they are going to lose weight. If you say you are going to lose weight, but make no changes in eating habits and exercise routine, then it's just words. In reality, you’re sticking with the status quo.
Sometimes the things that impact your life negatively sneak up on you little by little during the year, so the new year is a good time to reassess everything - the good, the bad and the ugly!
Personal tragedies don't make appointments and can't be avoided. That's just life. But you can simplify the complexity in your life to increase personal productivity and decrease stress. Simplification also works well to make your job or business more productive.
Here's a technique I use that you may want to consider:
First, write down the top five or six positives in your life (the good), and then jot down under each one a couple of ideas that could make them even better.
Second, write down the top few negatives in your life (the bad), and then ideas as to how you could make each of them less negative, or better yet, ideas that could eliminate the negatives completely. If the negatives are more than a few, then you may need a bad list and an ugly list of negatives.
The purpose of this simple exercise is to (1) help you focus, and (2) to give you an organized way to measure your progress on a regular basis. Otherwise, you will try to process all of your ideas in your head and "on the fly", which can be stressful and lead you to be forgetful. As a result, it's just more status quo.
Yes, you should have major goals, and I even suggest to people decade goals as well, so when you reach a new decade in your life "age shock" is minimized and you can feel a sense of accomplishment, rather than a feeling of just drifting through life.
A better life begins with a better you, and a better view of what you need to do.
Just do it! Now you have an idea as to how.
