Be honest. Do you want a better life?
I think we both know the answer to this question.
Of course, you do, I mean, you’re following us on social media (if you don’t, do that ASAP), and we are all about self-mastery and becoming the best you can be.
And after all, why wouldn’t you? You have only one life. It’s only natural you want the best out of it. Everybody does.
But here's the problem. A lot of people have this limiting/false perspective about success and what it takes to transform their lives for the better.
This false perspective ranges from the "He's just lucky" type of mentality whenever they see somebody who's successful, to making up an array of excuses on why they aren't where they'd like to be.
You're probably guilty of this too. At least to some extent.
Hate to break it to you, but if you continue to be this way, you'll never have the life you wanna have. It doesn't matter how hard you try, there's always gonna be something missing that keeps you away from your goals.
Maybe you already experienced this. You have the best intentions, you decide that you gonna turn your life around, but before you know it you are back to square one.
Luckily, there's an answer to your problems (this is becoming a common theme in my letters, lol).
The answer lies in your everyday life. The way your everyday life looks dictates how your life, in general, will look like.
What separates you from your dream life isn’t luck, money, or whatever your excuse may be. It’s a few simple habits that you can start implementing today.
By implementing these, you’ll ensure that your everyday life is set up for success.
And the best part is, you'll start seeing benefits right away.
It happened to me. Each time I came across and started to implement any of these into my own life, I immediately saw the change and impact these habits can have.
The bottom line is, if you want a successful life, you need to have a lifestyle (i.e. your everyday life) optimized for success. And that doesn’t mean driving luxury cars and smoking expensive cigars as you may be led to believe. It means having daily habits that enable you to achieve your goals.
Enough talk, let's dive in.
5 Habits That Will Change Your Life
1) Quality Sleep
I talked about sleep a lot. I even have a dedicated article to sleep.
That's how important it is.
I also used the following analogy a lot, but fuck it, here it is again:
If there was a pill that enhances your immune system, improves memory, improves your health, improves your mood, improves your athletic performance, reduces stress, etc. How much would you pay for it?
My guess is — it would be the best-selling drug ever.
Well, sleep helps you with all that (and a lot more), and it's free. Matter of fact our bodies crave it, yet so many of us neglect it.
A lot of people are kinda aware that sleep is essential for us, but not to the full extent.
When I say that sleep is essential, I mean, that every single aspect of our existence will be enhanced if we have a good sleep.
Sleep is that impactful on us.
But you'll not see any self-improvement gurus stressing about sleep this much. That's because if they don't have something sleep-related to sell you (which they usually don't), sleep in general isn't that marketable.
So yeah, if you are serious about transforming your life, focus on having high-quality sleep.
And if you exidentally stumble across some hustle freak who claims they don't sleep at all, because they can't waste time, I kindly advise you to stay away from them and their content.
I won't dive deeper into sleep here, if you want to read more about it, check out this article.
2) Being Productive
Having 60-90-minute time blocks dedicated to deep-focused work changed my life.
This alone doubled or tripled my productivity and the amount of work I can do.
As I said in my previous articles, we live in a time where everything is instant, and where every single thing is fighting over our attention. So staying focused is becoming harder each day.
You see, even though I'm conscious about the time I spend on my phone, I too could catch myself from time to time scrolling Instagram without realizing it.
Checking one single notification can turn into a 20-minute social media scrolling spree just like that.
Think about how many times this happened to you.
You sit down to work and your phone is constantly buzzing. No matter how much you wanna stay focused on the task you're doing, all those notifications are keeping you distracted. So you finally cave in, check your phone, and suddenly your focus is completely gone.
This way of working is highly ineffective, yet everybody seems to work like this.
Instead what you should be doing, is dedicating a 60-90 min time block, where nobody can reach you and all you do is work.
Put your phone on airplane mode and away from you, and focus on the thing you're doing.
I know what you're going to say "But what if somebody needs me?".
Trust me the world can keep going without you for 90 minutes. You aren't that important.
So unless you have somebody who depends on you (i.e. sick parents, or something like that), leave that phone away for an hour or two, and just work.
At first, it may be awkward because you're not used to doing things this way, but soon you'll realize how much more productive you can be once there are no distractions.
Just one or two of these time blocks a day will enable you to 10x your productivity and the amount of work you usually do.
Plus scheduling deep-focused work without any distractions at a similar time every day is the perfect recipe for entering into the flow state.
3) Staying Consistent
Consistency is key to success. Period.
Anybody can get motivated and do something for a day, week, or month. But only those who can stay consistent and keep doing that same thing for a year, two, or five are the ones who gonna end up successful.
Learning how to stay consistent is one of the most important skills because without consistency you won't be able to achieve anything in this life.
No matter how hard it gets, or how much you "don't feel like it", you need to keep doing it — you need to stay consistent.
To be consistent means to have discipline. You can learn more about discipline here.
4) Overcoming Procrastination
“Procrastinating is the biggest waste of life. It snatches away each day... and denies us the present by promising the future.” — Seneca
Procrastination is something I struggle with, big time, even to this day.
Whenever I wanna do something new, I start researching that topic (which is a good thing).
The problem lies in the fact that I tend to research and "learn" everything about that topic to the smallest detail. Even the things that are not related right now, but "could come in handy" later down the road.
The main excuse I give to myself is that I'm a "perfectionist" and that I need to know everything. Even though it's true that I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, the fact remains, that the reason why I do so much research is because I'm procrastinating.
The good news is, that I'm aware of this (as you can see, lol), and I'm doing my best to overcome this problem of mine.
The reason why procrastinating is so bad for you is that there's rarely a good reason to do it. There are things in life that depend on good timing, so if you procrastinate, you could lose the window of opportunity.
One can only wonder how many business opportunities have gone wasted because of this.
And there's almost always no reason to start something tomorrow if you can today. There's no preparation you can do that will teach you more about something, than actually doing it.
I always take myself as an example. Leki and I spent so much time researching and learning about social media before starting our brand. Here's a fact for you. We learned more in the first 2 months of doing it than we learned in the year of prep.
We are now at around 50k followers on Instagram (which we are really grateful for). But, who knows how many more we could have, and how much bigger our brand could be if we started a couple of months earlier.
With that being said, don't mistake this advice as me saying to you "Yeah just start doing whatever you want, without any preparation whatsoever".
Obviously, if you know nothing about something, then you shouldn't be doing it, and instead, you should do a bit of research.
But once you know the basics, then the best thing you can do is to just start.
5) Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone
Getting out of your comfort zone regularly is the best way to grow as a person. Contrary, if you always stay in your comfort zone, you'll never grow.
The reason for this is, that if you wanna learn, if you wanna grow, you need to challenge yourself. The best way to do this is to do things that are uncomfortable for you.
This is especially important in today's world where everything is made to keep us as comfortable as possible. You can almost get by without exiting your home. God forbid you do something challenging for once...
The result? Society as a whole has never been weaker and more anxious.
So if you don't want to be a part of that, you better start challenging yourself — get out of your comfort zone!
And you’ll be surprised how quickly those uncomfortable things will become comfortable to you.
I experienced this when I first started talking to girls. The first time I openly flirted with a girl was terrifying. The 4th time (even though I was still not that skilled at it) wasn’t uncomfortable at all. It was as if I did it 1000 times. This is the sign of growth.
The same goes for business, meetings, talking to strangers, etc.
I mean, the whole human existence is based on this principle. You do something hard, and after some time it becomes easy, so you increase the difficulty. This all results in growth.
So yeah, start challenging yourself regularly by doing uncomfortable things, and after some time you'll be surprised how long you've come.
And that's it. These are 5 habits that will change your life.
I know these don't look or sound sexy, and that’s why only a handful of people talk about them. Others are just trying to sell you the dream because that’s what gets views. But the thing is, this is what works.
You probably knew about these. But you still didn’t do shit, and that’s why I wrote this article, to remind you to start doing some shit. Because this is what will actually transform your life.
If you are serious about it, prioritize these things, and make the habit out of them. It’s a nonnegotiable. Wanna be successful? Wanna achieve your goals? Then implement these NOW.
And remember, what separates you from your dream life, isn’t luck, money, or whatever your excuse may be. It’s these habits and how serious you are about implementing them.
Thanks for reading.
Djosa
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