1.) Less Is More: Become A Minimalist.
Strip your life down to what’s really most important to you. Focus your precious energy and willpower only on those 1-3 things.
And actually, having just 1 main life goal is better than having 3.
It’s worth repeating: LESS IS MORE.
Peel back the layers of crap in your life and realize that too much clutter overall, always ends up just being mental clutter.
And the more mental clutter you have, the more your mission will suffer.
2.) Every Now And Then, Slow Things Down.
Think about everything that’s happening with you. A good time to do this is for an hour or so every Sunday night. Are you on pace with your goals? If not, doing this once a week will give you the opportunity to re-adjust and make the necessary life changes. By consciously examining yourself and your current state of affairs (on a frequent and consistent basis), you give yourself the opportunity to be temporarily removed from what you may be ”too close too”.
Sometimes we can get so deeply entrenched in things, that we’re ”too close to them” to be able to notice details that might be obvious to other people. Its obvious to these other people because they aren’t ”too close to them” like you are. They aren’t entrenched in things like you are, and therefore they can see things more accurately for what they really are (instead of what you just want them to be).
By stepping outside yourself and looking at your life like you’re an outsider, you often see things from a different perspective.
Just talk things out to yourself out loud. Go somewhere where you wont be disturbed. Don’t always keep all your ideas and goals bottled up in your head.
Note: set a time limit on these little self-reflection sessions. Without a set time limit, you can tend to overthink things, and overthinking everything just as bad as not doing this exercise in the 1st place.
3.) Constantly Be Making The Necessary Life Tweaks & Changes Needed To Hit Your Goals.
If you’re doing the exact same things you were doing 5 years ago, then that should serve as a bad sign. If you’re finding it hard to hit your goals, there is usually specific a reason for that.
One example might be that you’re still going out multiple nights a week to ”have fun”.
Another example might be that your diet, or sleeping pattern is out of whack. Doing what I said to do in #2 (slowing things down and self-reflecting), will help towards figuring out what life changes are needed.
Again, talk your way to the answer. Victor Pride was really onto something when he said to do this a few years ago. This is what I do, I talk things out (yes out loud to myself). If you’re not used to doing this, it might feel a little strange at first. You’ll find over time however that it will have positive impact on your understanding of yourself.
Don’t be afraid to make frequent adjustments to your week to week life. Sometimes this may even happen daily. Be aware also however that you need to be giving things a legitimate attempt before you pull the plug on something. Every time you tweak something in your day to day, or week to week life, give it a solid go and a chance to succeed.
Learn to recognize quickly however when something is not working, and when it isn’t never be afraid to quit.
Sometimes quitting is actually a great way to win, rather than a great way to lose. Seth Godin talks about this concept in his great book ”The Dip”.
4.) Get REALLY Good, At Prioritizing What’s Really Important To You.
Your mission, will always be priority #1.
Nothing should ever come before the mission. Below the mission, you should then have little sub-missions. These missions need to be prioritized. These can range from the books you want to read, to sales training, building a better body, or to getting better with women.
These are just examples. I have several articles about this here on the blog. Having a solid, unbreakable understanding of what’s most important to you in your life, can be accomplished by your ability to prioritize frequently.
Prioritize frequently? Yes, scroll back up and remember #2 and #3 above. These life tips are interconnected with one another. One feeds into the other, and vice versa. Over the course of your life, your priorities will change (and they may need to change more often than you’d think).
Always have a current, up to date understanding of exactly why your priorities, are in fact your priorities.
5.) Its Better To Read The Same Book 10 Times, Than It Is To Read 10 Different Books.
I cannot overstate the importance of reading, and constantly expanding your knowledge and mind. Now the above statement may come as a surprise to you, given my article about reading 52 books in 1 year. I think if you’re new to reading, however, you need to read a lot of books early on to find out which 4 of them resonate the most with you.
Once you’ve found those 4 (narrowing them down from a larger list of 50-52), then listen to or read these 4 over and over and over again until you’ve completely ingrained them into your head.
Narrowing them down from a larger list will really help you clarify what’s most important to you. It will probably even help you figure out what your life mission is. Because naturally, 3-4 of those books will really resonate with you. And extracting 4 of them (out of a bigger list of 52), will make it very easy for you to spot the specific reasons why those 4 books resonate with you.
These reasons will jump out at you for very clear reasons. This will help you understand yourself better and become more self-actualized.
CONCLUSION:
Just some a few life pointers that I recently thought of. I really believe internalizing these points will improve your quality of your life, give them a go.
-Matt Mitchell
