[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#f5d64a”]S[/mks_dropcap]ometime you can get overwhelmed by various things in your life.
If you want to be more – happy and healthy in life; you need to simplify your life. Also, get rid of negativity & complications as much as you can.
This post briefly explains about 11 practical ways to live a better life.
11 Practical ways to simplify and live a better life
1| Start your day with a positive vibe
The way you start your day hugely determine how your whole day will be.
You probably know that developing a morning routine can help you to start your day in a better way.
This approach works well.
Here’s how to level it up.
- In morning ask yourself what are the three things, that you want to accomplish and
- How do you want to feel throughout the day?
Write it down.
At night you can check it and evaluate.
It doesn’t need to be, long.
Simple on point..within 15 to 25 words.
Dedicating 15 to 20 minutes of your morning time for meditation, stretching, body-weight exercise can help you to live healthily.
Activities like this, also make you active and you will stay energetic throughout the day when done regularly.
Here is a post that talks more about the benefits of morning exercise.
Also, try to have a nutritious breakfast every day.
Quick note: if you exercise in the evening then you don’t need to spend 15 to 20 minutes exercising in the morning. Just spend 5 minutes… do some stretching to open up your joints (some like to meditate a little bit longer, and that’s completely fine.)
Pro tip: Drinking green tea in the morning will help you to boost your metabolism rate (if you like to burn some more calories then this can help.)
2| Take control of your life
If you really want to simplify your life then – you have to take control of your own life.
“Well no one is controlling me…so how do I take control of my life?”
Taking control means –
- You make yourself responsible for your actions, decisions and where you are in your life…
By doing so, you will be more self-conscious and it will become easy for you to find purpose in your life. Also, when you develop that mindset you can decide two things very clearly;
- How you want to feel in your life and
- What you want to achieve in your life.
Developing the right mindset is crucial.
The best way you can start simplifying your life by understanding its deeper meaning.
Because no matter how much easy or valuable the information/knowledge is ..if you don’t take action you will not get what you want.
You have to think, plan and most importantly execute, to get success.
3| You deserve a happy and healthier life
You deserve the freedom, strength and comfort of a happy and healthy lifestyle.
Often we forget that we can’t work for hours ignoring things what makes us happy.
Prefer happiness and your health over anything else.
Because this will help you in the long run (to avoid burnouts and from other life problems.)
4| Take smart decisions by making fewer decisions
We can’t take many decisions in a day.
Yeah, anyone can argue about it.. that they always make smart decisions…
But the real fact is
When you take a lot of decisions together…there remains a high chance that some of them are not smart decisions.
A person who handles everything on their own and also have an important post in an organisation – they get overwhelmed easily when things don’t go as expected.
You will take more smart decisions when you limit the number of decision you make in a day.
By focusing on important things in your life you can make good choices and focus on things that matter most.
Do you ever think why Mark Zuckerberg wears the same coloured clothes every day?
Because it saves time, energy and effort.
He told that worrying about what to dress for different days can take a lot of his time so he prefers to keep it simple.
5| Detoxify your life by avoiding toxic people
Nowadays a lot of people are talking about body detoxing. It works. No doubt there.
But its also important to detoxify your life from toxic people.
There can be occasions when you do need to be around them; maybe you work in the same company or they are your neighbour. But you need to remember (those toxic people) and spent less time with them so that their negative thought process can’t influence your decisions.
When you do that – instantly you clear a ton of negative energy from around you.
Because those people’s only job is to demotivate you.
They can look like your friends or buddies… but whenever you present a new idea in front of them they don’t behave like a ‘good friend.’
When the worlds need more of those people who encourage us to find purpose in our lives and reach our goals. They will tell you the reasons why you can’t do it. And they will try to mention why you don’t have the skill…what it takes to be successful with it.
Also, they are good at convincing people – why your plans won’t work because they have seen their cousin/someone else do similar things like that and it failed.
Even if they have 0 – 5% of knowledge about that topic, – they will suggest you to not do it because they think so. And listening to those B.S. you start doubting on yourself.
Before you ask someone or value someone’s recommendation you need to find –
- Are they experts in that field?
- How much they know about that stuff?
- Have they tried that thing before?
And if they did how much hard work they have put in that… and did they made and executed on some smart strategies to make that project successful?
If you get three ‘Yes’ then sure think about what they are saying.
But don’t listen to their demotivational thoughts if they don’t have good knowledge about it.
You don’t need to be harsh.
Keep smiling when you see them but spend less time with them. If you can then avoid them.
6| Mix minimal and modern living
Many people say – minimal lifestyle is best. And I found it a little bit unpractical.
Minimalism approach is good. But there is a misconception that you need to avoid every luxury or say things which you use less but like it.
If you like one or two luxury items and getting those makes you happy then don’t feel the necessity to avoid them for the sake of minimalism.
Example: Let’s say you like cars and watches. And spent a good amount of your money on them. If it makes you happy and gives you the motivation to achieve more success then don’t cut those from your life. If you think a BMW car will make you feel good then get one.
Just don’t try to get too much onboard with (expensive) things that you like.
Some people from the start, try to go extreme minimalism and most of them fail just after a few months.
You don’t need to go extreme minimalism for 6 to 7 months by selling all your luxury items… And then after a year or so you feel you need some of them to make your life a little bit easier.
We can actually live a better life when we take the best principles from minimal lifestyle and mix it with modern living.
In that way, we can avoid buying useless things. Save that money, invest or use that for travelling.
Also spending less means you don’t need to worry about earning more or doing overtime work. You can use that time for self-care or spending time with your family.
Embrace minimal lifestyle but also take and enjoy modern discoveries and technologies to make your life easier.
7| Plan and manage your time
Everyone got 24 hours. Some people get their things done on time and some don’t.
Generally, procrastination is the main culprit.
Also, when we don’t allocate our time properly, we don’t see how much time we are spending on one thing.
We tend to give one work more time than it needs and then try to fix that by adjusting and cutting time from other things.
Often this makes us stressed out and we also deposit many unfinished works on the table.
If you want to simplify your life then you need to manage your 24 hours properly.
- When you are planning your day…try to do most important things or hardest things at the beginning of your day.
Then start completing other tasks one by one according to your priority list.
When it comes to finishing a task in time – the best way is to break the whole task into small chunks and work on each for a specific time frame.
Example: let’s say you are a painter. There are three steps to complete one picture. 1. Thinking or outlining what you are going to paint, 2. Doing the rough sketch and then finalising the sketch and then 3. shading or colouring.
For painting a beautiful picture all the three steps are crucial. If you get 5 hours to paint the picture then you need to give every step enough time.
But you want to spend more time on the main part. In this case – doing the rough sketch and finishing the sketch.
When you are working on bigger projects in life you can simplify the process by allocating specific time for certain things.
Also, for office work, study, business work set a timely reminder of 20 -30 minutes. So that you know how much you are getting done in that time period.
Another benefit of setting that alarm is – it helps us from distraction. Even if you get lost in thinking something else, while working…the alarm will wake you up and then you can refocus on your work.
This way you can finish your work in time and you will spend more time doing productive work.
If you already use some other strategies to be productive then feel free to write that in comments. I might include your tips when I update this post.
8. Learn to manage your money and spend it wisely
Most humans have a bad habit of increasing their spending when they earn more.
This makes them buy stuff that they don’t need and then to pay the bills they have to overwork or look for a high paying job.
It’s normal that when you start earning a good amount of money you want to live a better lifestyle and improve your standard of living.
But that doesn’t mean you have to make your wallet cry.
When you buy an item, see what others are offering and choose the best deal (that good for your wallet and you.)
Example: You can buy a good quality tee shirt with $25-$40 and you can get another teeshirt for $480.
If you are paying that extra buck for the quality of the fabric then go ahead…but don’t if you are paying that extra amount because it’s a (luxury brand.)
When you improve your spending habits and invest that money properly then you don’t need to overwork. You get an hour or two extra sleep every day and enjoy your life better.
9| Stop buying magazines- Ad covers more pages than content
There was a time when buying magazines made sense. Cause there was no internet and those are the sources for the interesting contents.
But today you have a bunch of options to digest the content you like.
Nothing personal. Some mags are still good. They provide some amazing insights and value, buy them.
Just stop buying those who makes you pay money to read ads.
To write this section of the article I did a little check on some popular mags.
I found out that on an average first 11 -15 pages of the mag is – only ad (designed like content) then you get – index, editorial and stories in details. And more ads between those pages also.
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Why magazine publishers are displaying a lot of ads
Magazine ads sell at a high price (One-page ad, coloured – would cost $130000 – $180000) in top magazines.
They work (captures attention/ brand recognition) but it’s harder for companies to scale and target customers who interested in their product.
On the other side, in terms of business ROI, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Google ads are performing way better than old magazine ads.
So, there is a declining trend in buying ads in traditional media platforms, like tv, mag etc. (in the age of Netflix and amazon prime who got time to watch ads on tv.)
Magazine publishers already know this. And they are trying to maximize their earning by displaying more ads.
Also, you can see top magazines also have a digital version nowadays.
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Now the worst part is – people buy a lot of things seeing those ads ( which they don’t need actually but for some time it seems cool to have.)
In simple words – it rises demand for things that you don’t need in your life.
Stop wasting your hard earned money.
Spent it elsewhere.
In travelling or in self-wellness.
10| Make self-wellness a priority
When you are ill/not good; you don’t feel the energy to push forward and solve problems.
Even if you are working fine in life but partially unhealthy, you can’t use your full potential to make something great.
You have to improve your self-wellness habits if you want a healthy life, work-life balance, fewer health problems and anything which requires your decision and physical work.
11| Slow down
Not everyone takes equal time – wait for the change
You are progressing and getting fit as you started working out recently.
But you still feel like you are not getting enough improvement.
Sounds familiar?
Perception. Its how you think a thing should be in your life.
Often we do little from our side and look for an unrealistic result.
And when it doesn’t happen, you become upset.
This needs to change.
If you really want to start living a better life then you must give yourself enough time.
Example:
It’s a story of two painters.
One can paint 10 beautiful images per day.
And the other one takes one week to 15 days to paint a picture. A masterpiece.
Now.
The second painter can stress out by thinking about the other painter who paints 10 images in a day.
But the thing is fist painter can’t paint a masterpiece.
The point of the story
It takes longer to make a thing which lasts for a long time. Click To TweetYou have to focus on playing your game. Not others.
Because when you play someone else’s game they can defeat you easily.
But when you play your game…you become unstoppable in life.
So, focus on ‘your’ game and keep winning.
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