We live in a fast paced world, and it is getting increasingly difficult to keep up with the tempo of things. With the advent of more sophisticated technology and software, our lives are even more chaotic and disrupted. If we don’t check up on social media in two hours, we start to feel jittery.
We put on the news, even when we don’t want to, so that we don’t miss out on important happenings around the world. We are besieged by emails and text messages that add no value to our lives, yet we feel compelled to open each and every one of them.
The hours in a day are still 24 hours, same as it was from time immemorial, but it does seem to be getting shorter, because there is so much to do (most of it irrelevant) and not quite enough time to do them all. But we live only once, and we get no other chance to redo what we have done wrong. This is the time to take back our lives, this is the time to reclaim what modern times, technology and our anxiety has taken from us. This is the time to take full control.
How can you take back control of your life?
The article “50 ways to live life on your own terms.” originally published on Medium, is an extensive and well researched article written by Benjamin P. Hardy, a PhD candidate in Motivation Psychology. Hardy is a husband and foster father of 3, and knows what is important in life and what should be focused on.
Benjamin has explained 50 ways on how we can take back control of our lives. Here Lifehack summarises some of the key points that we think you should know. Feel free to take your time to finish the rest of his article by clicking the link.
On Personal Improvement
- Stop consuming the news: Media outlets have a goal to appeal to your fears by inflating extreme cases. This way, they retain their viewership. Ditch the news and get high quality news curated from sources like Google News.
- Do something terrifying: Do something every day that terrifies you. Confront your fear and make that call, ask that question, pitch that idea, or post that video.
- Work on your bucket list: Design your life around your ambitions rather than design your ambitions around your life. Make a list of the things you absolutely must do before you die, and then start working on doing them.
- Declutter: Remove all non-essentials from your life. We hardly use most of the possessions we own, and these suck energy from our lives. Also, they are dormant value waiting to be exchanged for dollars.
- Don’t obsess: Stop obsessing about the outcome. Instead, have an expectation in your own ability. This serves as a better predictor of high performance than expectations about a specific outcome. Expect optimal performance from yourself and let the consequence follow.
- Don’t check social media immediately: Wait at least 60–90 minutes after you wake up before checking your email and social media. If you check immediately, this puts you in a reactive state for the remainder of the day. Instead of responding to other people’s agendas, you’d rather live life on your own terms.
- Track an improvable habit: Track at least one habit/behavior you’re trying to improve because research has repeatedly found that when behavior is tracked and evaluated, it improves drastically. You can also make tracking creative. Do what works for you. Use a method you will actually do. But start tracking.
- Reduce the to do list: Have no more than 3 items on your to-do list each day. When you shift your life from day-to-day reactivity to one of creation and purpose, your goals become a lot bigger. Consequently, your priority list becomes smaller. Instead of doing a million things poorly, the goal becomes to do a few things incredibly well.
On Improving Relationships
- Marry for love: Find yourself a spouse who complements and supports you and makes you better. Remember that being married gives you a higher purpose for being productive. And also remember you don’t marry to make yourself happy, but to make someone else happy.
- Learn to say “No”: You must say no to people, obligations, requests, and opportunities you’re not interested in from now on. Know what you want and you’ll have the courage and foresight to pass up opportunities that are distractors from your vision.
- Be spontaneously generous with a stranger: Be spontaneous. When you get the wild thought of buying the person’s food in the car behind you, just do it. Don’t think about it. If you’re driving down the road and see someone with car trouble off to the side, just do it. Don’t think about it. When you want to say “I love you,” to a loved one, just do it. Don’t think about it.
- Befriend your parents: Become good friends with your parents. Although you won’t always see things the same way your parents do, love them and respect their viewpoints. If your parents are still around, rekindle those ties or increase the flame. You’ll find enormous joy in those relationships.
- Eat with the family: Eat at least one meal with your family per day because eating together creates a sense of community like nothing else.
On Improving Physical Health
- Less caffeine: Caffeine in the long run is more detrimental than it is helpful, and most of us are addicted to it. You need to stop depending on caffeine and get motivated from the inside.
- Quit refined sugar: Research shows that your brain will radically change for the better if you stop consuming sugar. Refined sugar has now been shown to make us cranky, make us make rash decisions, and make us stupid.
- Go on a fast: You should try fasting from all food at least 24 hours once per week. This is a great way to maintain health and vigor, as fasting leverages the self-healing properties of the human body.
- Sleep early and rise early: Research studies show that people who go to bed and rise early are better students. They are also better planners, are holistically healthier, and are more optimistic, satisfied, and conscientious
- Get 7+ hours of sleep each night: When you get a healthy amount of sleep, you have increased memory, longer life, increased creativity, attention and focus, lower stress, decreased dependence on stimulants like caffeine, and decreased risk of getting into accidents.
- Cold showers instead of warm ones: Replace warm showers with cold ones. Cold water immersion radically facilitates physical and mental wellness. When practiced regularly, it provides long-lasting changes to your body’s immune, lymphatic, circulatory and digestive systems that improve the quality of your life.
- Wake up with protein: Consume 30 grams of protein within the first 30 minutes of waking up. Protein-rich foods keep you full longer than other foods because they take longer to leave the stomach, so they are great for controlling your eating. Also, protein keeps blood-sugar levels steady, which prevents spikes in hunger. Eat eggs, turkey bacon, organic pork bacon or sausage, or cottage cheese.
- Replace carbs with healthy fats: Refined carbs and sugars make you fat, and you should replace them with healthy fats instead. Go for avocados, healthy nuts, meat, and fish. Healthy fats are good for your brain and body restoration, and help you perform better mentally and physically.
On Managing Personal Finance
- Tithe or give 10 percent of your income away: Many of the wealthiest people in the world attribute their healthy financial life and abundance to giving some of it away, because a natural principle of wealth creation is generosity.
- Buy a small place rather than rent: Don’t pay outlandish amounts on rent each month. If you don’t live in a big city where buying might be difficult, buy your own home. Most mortgage payments are far less than most rent payments. Paying rent is like working hourly. You get money while you’re on the clock. When you’re not on the clock, you get no money.
- Find out what wealth and happiness mean to you: Define what wealth and happiness mean to you, and never use another person’s definition of success to define what you do with your life. You must define success, wealth, and happiness in your own terms because if you don’t, society will for you, and you will always fall short.
- Change the way you feel, think, and act about money: Most people have an unhealthy relationship with money. The first step to changing your financial world is to alter your paradigm and feelings about money. Successful people expect to make a lot of money, believe that in a free-market economy, anyone can make as much money as they want, and that your background, highest level of education, or IQ is irrelevant when it comes to earning money. Start thinking that way too.
- Invest only in industries you are informed about: Don’t put your trust in someone else’s hands by investing in things you don’t understand. Although such investments usually sound incredible on paper, they most often turn out to be disasters.
- Create an automated income source: Create an automated income source that takes care of the fundamentals. Put a business in place that runs 24/7 even while you’re sleeping, sitting on the beach, or playing with your kids.
Dictate Your Own life
It has never been more important than it is now to take back control, and live life as defined by you. To learn more, we highly encourage you to read the original article.
