Small habits are often unseen and unnoted, but they have a serious influence on human’s life. They save your time, help to get rid of anxiety and worries, lead to happiness and they are just pleasant. Think about next: isn’t it good to use your free time in order to gain a useful habit or learn to do something new? But before you start, you need to clearly imagine how this new habit is going to influence your close and far future. Will the changes be positive? Then, you’ve got to start acting right now.
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1. Know Yourself
It is never too late to discover yourself. Start today. Watch yourself, track your thinking and behavioral templates, emotions, attitude towards different people and situations. Find out your fears, strengths and weaknesses, dreams and prejudices. Create a map of your character. How old are you? What are the main branches of your life? How did your childhood and youth influence you? What do you believe in and what disappointed you? You can achieve much more if you know yourself.
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2. Become Skills and Habits Cultivator
Nothing happens at once. Any development starts from the first try, first day, first page. Dare to perfection. This is your job: to go towards new skills, towards learning.
If to say simpler, a human is a bunch of certain skills and behavioral models. It is impossible to gain a new habit in a week, a month, even a year sometimes. You need to stay in this process for the whole life and to enjoy it.
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3. Learn to Keep the Right Rhythm
You need to keep up with the rhythm and to have your certain strategy in order to run a marathon. Same thing goes for long-term projects: if you max out during first days of your work and continue without a rest, you are going to burn out or to fall off the distance at all.
Keeping up with the right rhythm is a skill as well. Feeling your body, knowing your mind, planning rest and mini-breaks, working creatively during activity peaks and complete routine tasks during other hours: this all does matter.
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4. Simplify
Look for simplifications everywhere:
- Buy at least three books of a hundred you planned to buy, and finally READ them;
- Throw unnecessary things away;
- Do no more than 3 important tasks per day;
- Think less when you shouldn’t think at all;
- Communicate only with close and important people; devote your time for them.
Simplifications don’t allow you to distract and to feel stress.
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5. Become a Visioner
Instead of wanting something, imagine it. Find out what you need to do in order to get from point A to point B. You can’t become a visioner if you are not able to imagine your future in bright colors and details.
Great businessmen are all visioners.
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6. Become Organized
Being organized means having things and thoughts on right places. This means having your clear desk, house, contact notes in your phonebook, thoughts in your head. Still, managing your time is the most important thing here. It is time-management that helps you maintain stable and constant completion of tasks in your life.
If there is no order, chaos rules. Order turns into its contrariety, leaving the process unnoted. But it spoils your mood and lowers your effectiveness.
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7. Kill Procrastination in All Aspects of Your Life
Procrastination is what happens when you lack motivation. In fact, it exists only in your head it is not real.
Remember about what you want. Create a plan and start acting. Be disciplined, and learn how to inspire and motivate yourself.
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8. Take Care of Yourself
No matter how great are the people around you, take care of your body and soul. Close people will thank you for that. If you want to change the world and your environment, start from yourself, be the example.
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9. Be Prepared to Work
A skill of being ready to work is an art. How long does it take you to start doing something if nobody controls you? Learn how to start at once, without thinking how much you don’t want to do something.
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10. Focus
Constant, persistent approach towards everything is one of the most valuable skills in the world. Pure focus on one subject, on one task is possible to be achieved with the help of relaxed effort. Open your mind for the task solution.
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11. Learn to Negotiate
You enter negotiations in this or that shape every single day of your life. Isn’t it a reason to master this art completely? How much money or possibilities did you lose because of not having this skill?
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12. Learn to Plan Things
If you are not able to play, you’ll never be able to reach any great goal. You need to plan everything: time, strategy, big project, day-off, possible interview scenery etc. Still, be adequate with this skill, and do not try to control every detail.
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13. Control Your Budget
Many books about financial arts say the same thing: it doesn’t matter how much money you earn if you can’t deal with it. You can start earning 10 times more funds than you did before and to get in debts despite that. Learn to manage your funds smartly.
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14. Learn to Save, to Spend and to Invest
These skills are connected to the previous one. Despite that, they need different approaches. Saving, spending and investing are three different skills.
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15. Cook
Cooking meals is the easy and different skill. This is a creative process that helps you develop your creativity. Additionally, it allows on treating the world around you more consciously.
Choose a couple of meals that always attracted you, and start practicing.
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16. Put Right Questions
Asking yourself eternal questions like “Who am I?” or “What is my purpose on earth?” does not work well for all people. Mostly, it’s a waste of time. Ask instead:
- What should my next small step be?
Be aware though that putting question might be but unending loop of procrastination. The question above is simple enough to be answered and acted upon immediately.
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17. Think Critically
Critical thinking is the ability to improve your situation by using a higher level of thinking. It is a massive combination of separate skills that join together to form thinking processes which lead towards better results. You will improve the quality of your life when you learn to think critically.
Some additional useful skills:
- Develop your confidence;
- Think positively;
- Learn to break negative thinking templates;
- Remember;
- Think logically;
- Learn to express your thoughts in written form;
- Doubt traditional rules and wisdoms;
- Keep your home and mind clear.