Need to take control of your life? 6 tricks to do it and be happier
It’s not uncommon to feel that your life has spun out of control. That everything you do is reactive, and none of it is proactive. You seem to fall in the pit of despair, and you can’t seem to crawl out. This, unfortunately, is far more common than you would believe, so you are not alone. If you want to be happier, and gain control of your life, what do you do? Well, unfortunately, there is no magic spell that will fix everything, but doing a few simple things will start you on the right path. And once you have a solid foundation, you will find that a lot of the problems that you had before will fall away. It’s usually when our lives are disorganized and we can’t handle everything that’s coming at us that we feel overwhelmed. Here are a few things you can do that will let you start building that foundation and control your life again.
Sleep
Okay, most people don’t take this one very seriously, but it’s one of the most important things you can do in your life. Get yourself on a regular sleep schedule, and get at least eight hours of sleep a night. Your performance, both mental and physical, will suffer if you do not get eight hours of sleep. The problem with this is that if you have less sleep, you cannot judge yourself for that lesser performance, as you will think you’re fine. The only time you will be able to tell the difference is if you consistently get eight hours of sleep. When you look at the times that you didn’t get the sleep you will suddenly realize how much of a brain fog you were in. And don’t tell us that you only need five hours of sleep, the people that only need five hours of sleep are so rare, it’s rarer than being hit by lightning. You are forcing yourself into less sleep and suffering for it. Get eight hours.
Get some exercise
You don’t have to become a gym rat, but just get a little bit of exercise. You may think that you do not have enough time in the day to make that exercise happen, but you will find that if you do some exercise that you will function at a higher level and actually get more done. So, taking 30 minutes out of your day to exercise, can actually give you an hour to two more productivity. The only reason you don’t exercise is that you don’t want to. You tell yourself that you want to, but if you really did, you would be exercising. So, fire up that YouTube, pick an appropriate aerobics video, yoga video, or any other exercise video, and get started. Just take 30 minutes a day out of your schedule and go for it. You don’t even have to start with 30 minutes, start with five minutes, then move up. You will see the difference in your performance.
Make a budget and save money
One of the most underrated things that people don’t do is make a budget. When we say make a budget, we mean to write it down on a piece of paper and follow it every month. Until you know how much money you have, how much is coming in, and what you’re spending it on, you will have very little chance of taking control of your life. You will find that when you have a little bit extra money to spare because you’ve been taking care of that budget, that things become much easier and less stressful.
Your food
Yes, you heard this one before to, eat healthier. The easiest way to do this is just to try and remove sugar from your diet. Stop eating at fast food places and start trying to eat better. We are not going to tell you what to eat, as there is so much diet advice online it is frightening, but the one thing we have learned in all of our research is to cut down on sugar. Fats are okay, as long as you’re not having too much sugar. If you think we don’t know what we’re talking about, look at the amount of diabetes and Kidney disease that is out there that is caused by too much sugar in people’s diets over the years.
Learn to say no
We all want people to like us, and what happens more often than not is that we say yes to things that we know we shouldn’t have. Somebody wants us to go out, or someone wants help for something, or asks you to do something for them. Whatever it may be, look at how it will benefit you or not, and ask yourself do you really want to do this, and do you have the time to do this, and then buckle up and say no. They are not going to hate you for it. In fact, if they do get angry and upset at you for saying no, then they are not a friend that you really want anyway, and you solve the bigger problem. Start to think about yourself in your own life first, before you start to think about others. That doesn’t mean that we’re saying not to help a friend, it means help them when it’s important, and not when it impacts you negatively too many times. You choose when, not them.
Only worry about what you can control and not what you can’t
If you have so many problems that you don’t know which way to turn, if you have too many things in your head that you cannot sleep, then you need to sort them out. The easiest way to cut your problems in half is to make a list on a piece of paper of all your problems. Then truly look at the list, and ask yourself if there’s anything you can do about each problem. If you can’t do anything about one of the problems, then cross it off the list. Only deal with things that you can control. If it’s out of your control, all it is going to do is frustrate you, and there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. You will find that you can cross off probably half the things on your list. Suddenly you will find that you only have a few things to worry about, and you can control those much easier.
These are the basic foundations that you start with. There is no fancy self-help book that’s going to give you the secret of life and make the world a wonderful place. You have to earn it. The nice part is, that most of these things on this list, are exceedingly easy to do. Once you do them, you will find that many things that are not listed on this list, will fall in place. You will be able to gain control of your life and be more proactive again. Once you are proactive you are moving forward in your life. Once you are at that stage, then you can start looking at the self-help books for some extra tips to make things even better. But until you have the basic foundation, nothing you’re going to read is going to help you. So, get started today, as tomorrow never comes.