living good daily book review

living good daily book review

Tips for Living a Good Daily Life

1. Setting Goals

The final step in achieving your goals is to maintain motivation and review your progress. A useful method of maintaining motivation is to visualize the end result of your goals. This is often an underestimated factor in its effectiveness as a motivator. Athletes, for example, use this visualization to “see” themselves winning a race or successfully completing their sport. Another method is to convince yourself that effort now is an investment for the future. This is very often the case. A small investment now can yield greater returns at a later date. At regular intervals, you should review the progress you have made in the action stage and your time management. This is to ensure that you are still on the right path to your desired outcome and often exposes a need for a change in your goals or the relative time spent on them.

Step three involves taking action. So often one can become paralyzed by the fear of failure, or you convince yourself that you are “just not ready yet”. In any self-change, a decision must be made. Without actions, your goals are a pointless exercise in lip-service. You must be assertive with your decisions and utilize your time management skills. If you make any mistakes or have any failures at this stage, do not be disillusioned, but do learn from them.

Step two is to learn effective time management. This is an important step as time management is the key to achieving your goals. Some people have got to this step and are asking “what goals?” Time management can be effectively achieved through a timetable and breaking down the goals you have already decided to set. Time should be allocated based on the importance of your goals. For example, a goal which is related to improving your academic ability should be allocated more time during the exam period than the goal of attaining a higher level in your favorite video game. An effective timetable should also allocate time for leisure as this prevents the buildup of stress and keeps motivation high. A key point to remember is to be flexible with time management. There are many unpredictable factors in daily life, and a rigid timetable often results in failure to meet it and loss of subsequent motivation. High achievers are often characterized by the fact that they spend more time on the job to be done than the average person would.

To start setting goals for your life, the first thing you need to do is to know what you want. If you do not know what you want, how do you expect to achieve it? In setting your goals, it is important to not limit yourself, think big and aim high. You are more likely to put in more effort if you have a big goal than if you have a small one. After you have your big goal, you then want to break it down into smaller goals. This is because a big goal can sometimes seem unattainable, and by breaking it down into smaller goals, it suddenly becomes more achievable. You want to make sure that your goals are measurable so that you can assess your progression. Closely related to this, your goals must be realistic. It is great to have lofty ambitions, but by making sure your goals are achievable, you avoid demoralizing yourself. A goal must be related to an area in which specific performance can be improved and must be time-bound. Setting timescales for your goals gives you a clear focus and urgency to achieve them.

2. Establishing Healthy Habits

Setting a schedule The theory goes like this: what makes life dull is routine. Without much thinking, we can agree that routine is, in fact, a very monotonous lifestyle. But a lifestyle without a routine can be even worse. A stable routine is what every individual needs. Even the most laid-back person will need structure in their life. Mere humans are creatures of habit. The whole theory of the everyday being a “ferie n” holiday has a detrimental effect upon one’s life and status at work. Where work can pile up until the last minute, free and unoccupied time is squandered to the extent of watching the clock, waiting for accomplishment and fulfillment kicked in, hoping “Toronto, we have lift off”. Holidaying every day is not all it’s cracked up to be. Working for the “now” is what most of us will find more enjoyable, and nothing feels better than meeting deadlines way before they come and having time to chill out and relax, worry-free. But what we need to avoid is this routine becoming a bore and chore. Time must be set aside within the week for enjoyment and leisure with the aim to truly unwind and forget about obligation for a short space of time. Any longer can lead to procrastination. Rituals in the form of routine need to be established: leisure for work, relaxing rituals, and winding down. This can only lead to a positive outcome and time well spent.

3. Managing Time Effectively

Perfectionism really kills time. It is possible to spend an infinite amount of time on a task, yet its perceived quality will not increase. If anything it may begin to worsen due to restlessness and fatigue. The more important a task, the more unfortunate the effects of perfectionism. A good strategy is to allocate an appropriate time limit to each task. This will require a little research into the task to determine its importance. High importance tasks obviously require the most time, however it is often possible to divide these tasks into several milestones each with a separate time limit. For example, it could be said that a student is to spend five hours writing an essay. This could be divided into research two hours, plan and structure one hour, write and then review two hours. The time limit should not be too harsh, but it must be stuck to. From time to time it is useful to check if time is being wasted on less relatively important tasks and adjust time limits accordingly.

To manage time effectively, you need to be clear about what you want and then prioritize accordingly. Take a piece of paper and write down exactly what you want to achieve. This could be short term or long term. This could be anything from “Completing statistics assignment” to “learning to play guitar”. Go through this list and assign a number to each item. This number represents the amount of effort you feel the task deserves, whether it is due to its time constraints or importance. Then simply work on the item with the highest number until all your numbers are zero. This list can be rewritten daily or weekly, depending on what you are aiming to achieve.

4. Cultivating Positive Relationships

Go out and form new relationships. Building positive relationships with others takes time and effort. It is essential that we make connections, join in with others, confide in someone, and exchange support with one another. Somehow or other, every one of us is lacking something, either it’s physical or emotional. By being in a positive relationship, it can fill the empty hole within us. At the same time, we are the supporting pillar to the relationship we have engaged in. We need to form a new relationship before the old ones we have start to break. Appreciate the people around you. Sometimes we take for granted the people closest to our hearts. We may not realize it until they are gone. Learn to appreciate them as they are the ones who bring you up when you are down, they are the ones who make you laugh when you are crying on the inside, and they are the ones who help you when no one else bothered. Never forget to thank them for what they have done. Do not use them to your advantage. Remember, you can always make new friends but not new old friends. Think of the quality of the relationship and the bonding between the two. Sometimes, it may be better to let go of friends that have been a negative influence on you. They are preventing you from cultivating positive relationships. Friends are like plants, if we do not take care of them, they will die. Step out of your comfort zone and into theirs and be there for them when they are in need. High-quality friendships are based on high-quality help.

5. Practicing Self-Care

Self-care activities are the things you do to maintain good health and improve well-being. Some self-care activities might already be part of your routine, such as eating regular meals, enjoying a hobby, or spending time with friends. Self-care activities are often nourishing to your senses, which can become heightened when you’re experiencing emotional or psychological turmoil. Recollections of an event—and your thoughts and feelings about it—may be rekindled by something you’re exposed to or that you experience day-to-day. If unrecognized and unaddressed, these recollections and the discomfort they evoke can stay with you. They can affect how you feel about yourself and others, and can color your perceptions of your life and the world. This can lead to changes in your behavior, relationships, and even your physical health. By doing self-care activities that you enjoy, you can improve your mood, emotions, and thoughts and may make some of these difficult recollections less powerful for you.