Continue to strive for progress

Are you ready to continue learning?

When something new things crosses our path that seems interesting it’s not too hard to start studying it. For example when you like to play soccer you will spend countless hours playing it and becoming better. The moment you meet someone you love talking to who speaks a different language you will do your best to understand them and make sure they understand you. Without this you wont be able to communicate.

The best students in class who will refuse to continue learning will lose their top position really quickly. The students who might not get too high grades but who like to continue to study will surpass them really quickly. Someone who learned speaking Spanish a couple years ago and stopped progressing will slowly take steps back in their knowledge of the language. If someone starts much later but manages to continue to progress will be the one whose Spanish will be much better in the long run. It’s not about how much you learned in a certain time span, but rather how long you will maintain and continue to improve your knowledge.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. – Henry Ford

Have you recently met up with your old school mates? Determine how they are doing now and question them about some daily habits that they uphold. The ones who strive for improvement every day are the ones who either have achieved great success or are the ones you will have to check up on in a couple of years. The ones who are in a decent spot now and who are satisfied to remain there will probably not strive for improvement. The moment you accept stagnation you indirectly accept a recline of your situation

Keep on challenging your mind and you will continue to feel young. When you stop maintaining and improving you will start to fall backwards. If you don’t believe it look at people you know who have stopped thinking about progress and how they will end up in a couple of years. Life accepts people that stop progressing, untill they can no longer follow in the field they are working. When that arrives it will be nearly impossible to get their standard back to the level that is required. Despite being surrounded by people who aim for growth, if you don’t go for it yourself you will no longer be rewarded for your efforts.

Use your time as a benefit

Use your time wisely

The amount of time we have each day is equal to everyone. We have 24h to fill in as we please. It’s true that responsibilities require us to spend time, but yet it’s your decision if you accept the responsibilities and how long you take to finish them.

While mostly we don’t have enough time, time could also work in our favour. Especially at a younger age there is plenty of time you decide what to use it on. Are you just letting the time pass by doing nothing important or going to use it for improvement and growth? For example as young adults, while potentially still at school, we can spend some time working to improve on our skills. Something else you can do is learn new skills and improve on old ones. So that before you get to work you will have abilities that others don’t have.

Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present. – Bil Keane

Looking in the past makes us waste time, unless you learn from it and then move forward. Consider how your future should look like and what goal you need to set to reach it. Lastly there is the present, it is most overlooked time. When coming home from school or work it is too easy to drop down in your couch and watch television for hours at end. However the present is the moment you have to grab your future in your own hands to strive for anything that you desire in your life. For example if you save and invest your money now time will be on your side to have a better financial future.

If there is something that you are not so good in time allow you to adjust or to make up for the lack of experience. For example on your first job you are slower that the people working there for years. Yet because they have been there for so long they might leave work as soon as they are allowed to do so. Because you are learning it and building experience you can add some extra time to improve yourself. This can either be staying longer at work or continue to learn from home. Practise makes perfect, the more time you sacrifice the better you will become and the rewards will come in the long run.

 

 

 

Improve while enjoying yourself

Improvement has many forms

Improving yourself is a slow process, so every small amount that can help you should be taken. Our free time is being spent doing things we love, but why not use it for improvement at the same time?

An example is going to a beautiful place for a hike. While it relaxes you it will have advantages for your health. Another example is going out with friends drinking something healthy or listening to your friends on a subject that you don’t much about. While you enjoy spending time with them you are learning something new that you can use later on. You kill two birds with one stone. You are not only enjoying yourself, at the same time you are improving your life.

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows. – Ralph Marston

Anything you spend your time on now will influence your future. If you only watch TV every day you aren’t improving and you will stay walking in place, if not moving backwards. On the other hand if you continue to work hard you may get a promotion or be able to start your own business. Consider your studying years did you only party and end up giving up on your studies or did you split your time between work and play and achieved your degree?

How you fill you life now determines the outcome. If you work hard now you may be able to relax some more later. If you avoid working now you will have a hard time in a couple of years. By the words of Dave Ramsey “Live like no one else now, so later you can live and give like no one else.” Do the things that no one wants to do you can do the things that everyone wants to do. Still working two hours after your workday ended, learning something new after your workday? No one else except for your boss is still working like that. They are doing it for their business, you are doing it for your future. Don’t do it for their business, but for your personal growth. Seek for the things you can learn from it.

You pay a price to win. Winning in life requires sacrifices, that no one is willing to suffer.

 

How your mind influences your body

What do you do to improve your body? 

Is it important for you to improve your body or do you rather focus on other things? Our body is our best tool to do anything we need to achieve.

Some of us have a situation which makes it harder for us to obtain or maintain a healthy body. For example having a handicap or having a disease that increases your weight or having to take pills that can have side effects for your health. When you have something specific that you have to watch out for be sure to ask your doctor what you can do to improve your situation. It may require you to go on a search for something that you can do, but it is well worth the effort. If this means you have to go to a specialist who can help you create a plan, than that is what you have to do. Everyone can improve their health, it might only be in small increments, but it’s better than nothing.

The human body is the best picture of the human soul. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

The way our body looks is a reflection of how you can use your mind towards achieving your goal. If you set a health goal your mind will help you get there. For example setting a certain amount of days you workout a week, but how many weeks a year will you succeed at that amount? Everyone has some time free to do the things that are important for them. But when you don’t have the same time as you usually do how succesfull you are at it is dependant on how you can put your mind on the task.

Our body is strong and can go through anything we put it through. Granted our body can be injured, but it can recover from it and come back stronger. Look back at the time you were injured, did you avoid movement at all or were you allowing yourself to move in a different way? A shoulder injury will prevent you to do heavy weightlifting, yet it opens up a whole new area of movement. The first thing to do is consult with your doctor and potentially a sports doctor to find out how bad the injury is and what injuries should be avoided and which ones are highly advised to do. The general advice is to try some small movements and the ones that provoke pain are to be avoided. As you are injured your body has hit a limit, yet your mind will take a beating as well. When your believe in yourself your mind will be strong enough to overcome the injury and to get back stronger.

 

 

 

 

Everyone likes different foods what do you like?

Which food has your preference

Everyone is so different, while we have neighbors who can have similar hobbies, grown up in the same situation yet our eating habits can be completely different. Luckily everyone is different, but the distance between two people’s tastes can be so far from each other. One might have a sweet tooth, love fastfood or crave a good healthy meal.

If you haven’t seen your siblings in a while, or you have but not as often, you can give it a try. Ask about the foods they used to love. Are they still their favorite meals? Have they changed dishes, or have they just stopped eating it as often as they did before? While it is difficult for someone to completely change preference it is still possible. In the past it has helped many people change their life and improved their health. Not eating as much as before and taking away all your cravings is a way to lose weight. The question remains if you will be able to maintain this method of living, or this method of suffering.

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are. – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

A better method of improving your weight is by slowly looking for healthy foods that you really enjoy. It may go from preparing a pizza on your own with healthy choices, buying fruit for when you are hungry, cooking a meal instead of ordering food or even to buy a healthy snack to stay full instead of resorting to going for fastfood. The keyword is “preparation”, the better you prepare for possible moments of hunger or your cravings the better choices you can create for yourself. Think about loving to eat pizza, but you are able to postpone it a day. Then why not make a pizza before the next time you crave it? You can put anything you want on it and it will be healthier than one you order.

Some people like to say you are what you eat. This is a difficult phrase to accept to it’s core. Yet it is tru that we get our nutrients from the foods we eat. If we never eat vegetables we will not gain the benefits from what they can provide. As written above it is possible to change your habits and to improve what you eat. Depending on what you eat right now others can try to assume things by looking at what foods you eat. A better thing to consider is what happens when you switch things around. Instead of ordering food 3 times a week turn it down one day, instead of only drinking soda and/or coffee swap one drink a day with a glass of water. Every start is difficult, but not throwing away everything you are used to makes it easier to make the transition. If you aren’t ready for the full transition don’t sweat it. Just putting in one small change will already help you a lot in the long run. It might even let you enjoy other drinks or foods that you never considered.

Become better at anything by improving your efficiency

Improve your efficiency

It’s great to become succesfull in life, to achieve this efficiency is a goal to achieve. The more efficient you become the more you will improve. When you set big goals for yourself you are looking to accomplish great things.

The easiest way to succeed at anything is by shortening the time you need to spend on it. let’s look at an example. If you want to become a doctor you need to study hard and long. How will you spend your study hours? Constantly trying to memorise every detail, writing down what you are learning, researching informaton around the course, or something else? Someones most efficient method doesn’t have to be the same for you. It might be better for you to pre-read the information before class. While someone else will be taking in the information during class and review it afterwards.

The men who succeed are the efficient few, they are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves. – Robert Burton

Being efficient doesn’t always mean that you spend the least amount of weeks on the task. You can also split your time up for different goals. If you have an exam in 2 weeks you can choose to study for the entire period. Others may focus themselves the last week. Some would study for a couple of days and then review it before the exam starts. Everyone has their own efficient method to accomplish their goals.

Succesfully becoming efficient allows you to show motivation and willpower. Instead of being distracted by scrolling on your social media, texting your friends or going to get a snack you can continue towards completing your task at hand. However this article is all focussed around one word, it doesn’t hurt to also look the other way. What can you do to reawaken yourself, how can you get back to work? Instead of solely looking at the task consider if you should put it on rest for a short while.

Your studying speed will improve if you take a break. Go out for a walk or a hike around the block. Emptying your mind for a bit allows you to go at it ever harder when you return. Our next article will be about adapting deadlines that other people set for you and how efficiency can help you with it.

 

Sticking to your principles

Maintaining your principles

Everyone has their own principles. This can go from trying to help people as much as possible, always tell the truth, to consistency can make you achieve anything.

In the light of adverse it seems difficult to stick to your long time principles. Keeping yourself true shows true character. One of the examples is telling the truth all the time. In some situations it is hard to continue the same path. When you did something wrong at your work it may seem difficult to take your responsibility for it.

I’m not going to change my principles. I’m not going to change anything just to make money. – Lyoto Machida

It is very tempting to change ourselves and our character to achieve greater success and succeed at your goals. Even though this might increase the speed at which you obtain your achievements, it does not feel right and will hinder you in your future. A great example of this is when you want to make money and you are doing it by cheating people for their money.

Another example is by doing a group work at school and holding yourself away from the work. The work will still be done, because your team members will want to succeed. However you are not making yourself popular, this may hit you back in the future. Either because you have hurt the people around you or because you lack the skills to make something great through hard work. Great things in life aren’t build by freeloading on the back of others.

Maintain your high standard principles and improve your character this way. Keep going and see how your life gets better when you manage to beat difficult times.

Self discipline

Build your self discipline

When you try to improve yourself frequently the most usefull tactic is by learning how to build and use self discipline. The things that are worth obtaining are difficult to obtain. That is why you need to have discipline to be able to stick to your goals.

The important thing you about discipline is that when you try something new you need your discipline to push yourself through. take for example starting to work out. At first glance you will need to keep going to the gym very frequently to avoid quiting.

It’s true that it’s not easy to be creating discipline, but you shouldn’t make it harder than it is either. It is just the power that you hold internally for whenever you don’t feel like doing something. You can use your willpower as a wildcard.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painfull. -John C. Maxwell

To reach your goal you need to know what is required to achieve it. Once you have found the activity you have to do the next hurdle is making a habit out of it. Practising a certain activity for 21 days allows you to consider it as a habit, that will get easier to maintain. After having created it as a habit you are going to less or even no discipline to continue on the same route. If you have been exercising for 5 years consecutively it will be unlikely that you are constantly considering not to go workout.

After managing to transform the activity into a habit you can turn your discipline to work on a different part of your life. For example if you first managed to add in working out into your routine you can implement your discipline in your food intake. Once that you are so used to take care of the food you are eating you can start meditating every morning. After implementing this you can continue by improving your second language by woring on it every single day.

The further you are on your route of improvement the more people will admire what you have achieved. Everyone will start to wonder how you have such an high discipline. Without even thinking about it like that you have build up your life and seemingly you have obtained an incredible level of self discipline.

Most people consider themselves as being badly motivated and/or low self disciplined. However everyone can improve on them as long as you put work into it and keep going for it.

 

Every action has a reaction

Everything creates a response

Every action that you take causes something to happen, either on the short or the long term. When you realise that taking small smart decision can improve your life you will start making better decisions.

Take for example going to study at university. Instead of directly going to work it may be a better idea to go and study something usefull. This will improve the possibilities you receive later on in your carreer. Eventhough this might sound like a good idea always consider how much it costs and how much it can help you. Going into a high debt for allowing yourself to go to university might cost you more than it will deliver you. Some studies aren’t improving your chances on the job market, so be carefull what you are going to do. Make sure you are atleast interested in the main subject you are learning. If you hate what you are doing it isn’t going to help you.

You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life. – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

What is the goal you want to strive for this year? Find out what you have to do for it and what activites are detrimental towards your progress. Anything not working on your goal can set you back. For example let’s use a controversial example. If you are planning to become healthy you might be going for a jog for 3 days a week. What if one of those days you choose to study instead of going to jog? Studying is important but it does take away from your health routine. You become healthier and more productive if you take just a 15 min break for a short jog.

When one of your goals is important to you create the need to constantly be improving on it. Doing this will avoid giving up on your goal. It will also make it easier to focus on it in different aspects of your life. The way to showcase this is by looking at something  like learning a new language. When you are building a passion for it you can go for it with different methods at a time. Learning on duolingo, listen to the radio in the target language, watching movies, talking to people and so on. When you like doing it you can focus on it in so many parts of your life. Every action you take into the desired direction helps you get there faster while at the same time enjoying it more.

 

Make wise daily decisions

What route are you taking?

Do you know someone who takes the day as it goes? Those are the people who frequently say not to sweat the small stuff. Life is too hard to be worrying about the small decisions. However tiny changes in your decision making can make a big difference in the bigger picture of your life.

Drinking a glass of water instead of a beer at a party isn’t going to make your life change around. Taking this decision once in a while will positively influence your life. Benefit upon benefit improves your quality of life. The same thing goes for working out. One additional rest day isn’t going to hurt you. But if you plan on working out 3 times a week, and skip one workout every week you are going to notice the difference.

All of us start from zero. We take the right decision and become a hero. – Govinda

Everyone has the same amount of time in a day or a week. But how you fill those hours determine how succesfull you will be. If you take good decision all day you will reap the benefits of them later on. You don’t need to reward yourself with tasty unhealthy foods for every small win you obtain. Delay your gratification and you be rewarded a lot more in the future. Instead of going to drink a lot alcohol, laying in your couch watching TV do something usefull that improves your life.

The more often you go and do some work instead of pleasure the better your freedom will be in the future. Instead of laying in a couch for 4 hours straight binge watching TV spend just 15 mins of learning a language. Then go read a book for 30 minutes and fill the rest of your time watching TV. Making a simple change like this really helps you to improve your capabilities.