Too many people believe it’s necessary to move mountains to see a worthwhile uptick in their lives. This simply isn’t true. Small habits that are repeated over and over create change and momentum.
These 10 habits take little to no time but create big results. It’s more about being more effective and training your self-leadership skills than it is about doing more.
Are you ready for small changes that make a big impact?
1. Create a plan for tomorrow before going to bed
Having a plan for the day before you go to bed is a simple yet powerful habit. Think about your goals and what needs to be accomplished tomorrow.
Write it down and then put it aside until the next morning.
2. Make the first meal of your day a healthy one
Whether you eat breakfast or wait until lunch, ensure that your first meal is good for you. When you start off eating poorly, the rest of the day is usually a dietary catastrophe.
Get off to a good start and you’ll be more likely to eat well the remainder of the day.
3. Deal with the least pleasant task on your list as soon as possible
Avoid putting off your most unpleasant tasks until the end of the day. Guess why? Because they won’t get done once they moved to the end-of-the-day column. You’ll ruin your entire day because you feel the burden of needing to get it done! So, get the least pleasant or sometimes it is also the most challenging tasks out of the way and enjoy the remainder of your day.
4. Avoid worrying about things and events outside of your control
It’s like driving a car: you can only control it if you are behind the steering wheel and in the driver’s seat. Once you are a passenger, you need to go with the flow, and you will end up where the driver suggested you go. True self-leaders know about the importance of getting in the driver’s seat for your life and making choices that you want and not worrying about things outside your control.
If you’re going to worry, at least expend the energy on something you can influence. Then you can come up with a plan to make the situation better.
5. Smile More
Smiling makes you, and everyone around you, feel better. It never hurts to smile and smiling makes you more attractive to others. Think about the person you know with the greatest smile. What do you like about it? See if you can create a smile just as great.
6. Be thankful
It sounds almost too basic to being considered a habit. It’s easy to focus on the things you don’t have, but much more pleasant and useful to focus on the things you do have. Feeling grateful tends to bring you more things to feel grateful for. It also makes you more effective in everything you do. In case you have a personal challenge with taking this view of the world, try this: every night before you go to sleep, name 5 things you are thankful for today and then see if you can expand your list to 7, 10 or 12 items. What a wonderful way to fall asleep!
7. Meditate
With a proven plethora of physical and psychological benefits, meditation is a wonderful habit to develop and maintain in your life. This habit of meditation will get you a long way and it is the master-habit for true self-leadership because it requires you to be in the here and now, to focus your attention on just you. Don’t start with anything fancy, maybe just start with a few minutes a day sitting in silence observing your breath flow in and out of your body.
8. Review your day
Try to learn something from each day. Imagine if you adjusted your approach to life just the tiniest bit each day. Making this a habit wouldn’t take long before you were living life at a whole new level. Review your mistakes and successes each evening is what self-leadership requires because otherwise there is no progress.
9. Exercise
Modern society doesn’t provide much in the way of physical exertion for most of us. If your job isn’t physically demanding, it’s important to add some exercise to your life. Not just for your body but also your brain graves a decent amount of movement to function properly and execute all the above-mentioned habits to your fullest satisfaction. Exercise is good for your mind AND body.
10. Do something enjoyable each day
Life should be enjoyed because that’s what it is all about! Unfortunately, it’s way too easy to run out of time the day before you have a chance to enjoy yourself. Self-leadership is also about taking good care of yourself and making sure you are having a good time every day. So, try to schedule at least 30 minutes every day to do whatever YOU want.
