Category: INSPIRE

Key number 3 to start living your dream… Healthy habits, routines and good ones at that will lead to results.

As quite the opposite to yesterdays blog, this point is just as important. What you need is to place discipline over motivation, but perhaps even greater than that – you need to form habits. Setting up a habit or routine that is successful and keeps you in order will help ensure you are being productive and prioritizing your time accordingly to your lifestyle. Having the routine or habit doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to improvise, it just means this is your base, and you should be able to improvise from this if things don’t go to plan.

Routines and habits are key for several reasons. First of all – it allows you to do something every day that you know that will help build towards your dream. For example, if you want to be a guitarist this might mean practicing two hours a day no matter what, if you want to be a runner then it means you go running five times a week. What I’m trying to say is I know from experience that if you do anything long enough and with enough dedication eventually you will become good at it!

“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” – Colin Powell

Furthermore – when other people see your habits they will be impressed with your work ethic and want to work with you. People are drawn to individuals who they see can regularly produce results – and if you prove that you can produce results (or better yet, multiple results!) every day then the more potential partners you will find. No one wants to work with someone who hasn’t proved themselves to be reliable – it is those individuals who have proved their dedication that end up getting the most offers and taking their work to brave new worlds.

Photo Credit: Instagram @_clfurlong_| Location: Melbourne, Australia

Key number 2 to start living your dream… You need to be ready to adjust, adapt and improvise.

It is a big wide world out there – and in the current state of an ever-evolving reality (environment, culture, society, and technology) you need to be willing and ready to stretch and flow with how the things change. It is all about adapting your journey to success.

Building on that previous point is (yesterday’s blog) the notion that you have to know how to improvise. This goes far beyond being “up for whatever;” it means that you also have to know when to use caution when deciding a new course of action. Being able to improvise will help you find your way into exciting new situations that can advance your career or your journey to making your dreams a reality and give you great stories for the years to come.

Being able to improvise is an incredible tool to have, but it can be hard to learn. But when you learn to apply it and use it on a regular basis then you can rest easy with the confidence that no matter what you should be able to handle the struggles of day-to-day life in whatever dream you want to live. No one said this would be easy, and a key point is that you need to be flexible and ready to take life as it comes if you want to get anywhere.

I’ve always got a goal/dream or a bit of a plan in the sense of where I wish to aim for within a certain amount of years or where or what I want to do. However, getting to these points in life and getting to these goals and dreams will sometimes different than the way I thought it would happen – due to unforeseen circumstances. However, if you are passionate and set on your dreams you will make it happen by being able to improvise.

Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win. –Max McKeown

Key number 1 to start living your dream and to find success… You don’t need to plan it all out! 

When first starting out in the pursuit of happiness, in the journey of finding, creating and making your dreams a reality – it all comes down to just doing what you love and following your passion. Whatever it may be, you don’t need to plan it out – but simply do it. Whether it is a sport, video games, a handcrafted skill or simply you know how to sell unique items or maybe you’re a blogger – or at least want to be.

The key is to start.

Most blogger’s when they start, don’t have a grand vision. Maybe you like hard rock and heavy metal and are all about 80s pop. But you are not sure what you could ever do with that. All you should worry about now is that it is fun to write about it on weekends. As you grow you will begin to realize that one of the best strategies in life is to throw ideas against a wall and see what sticks. This is a lesson commonly used today, and so many people would regularly attend concerts or industry events with no real goal in mind beyond “meeting X individual” or just “hanging out with Y band and seeing what happens” and on a surprisingly regular basis, things turn out well.

The thing is – people like people who are, (in the words of that Bud Light commercial:) “Up for whatever happens”. If someone invites you to an opportunity you have to go – not just because you’ll probably have a good time and get to do some new things, but because of the connections, you’ll have a chance to make. If you’re willing to just go out and play it by ear mighty forces will come to your aid unexpectedly – and it will be glorious.

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.” – Steve Jobs

So go do what you love and see what happens!

Will you dare to dream? Will you dare to see the world changed? Will you dare to make a living? Don’t make the excuses of not being strong enough, patient enough or PASSIONATE enough. Because we all have the ability to change the world. I strive for a better version of me every day and I do this on the journey to see my dreams come true. Here are 7 keys to start living your dreams. Read them, think about them and I will be elaborating on them over a number of blogs. The next step is to you!

You Don’t Need A Plan From The Start

Be Ready To Improvise

Habits Lead To Results

Prove You Want It Most

Remember To Be Nice To EVERYONE

Enjoy The Ride

When You Get To The Top Of The Mountain – Keep Climbing

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman

No matter what you do – as long as you maintain your honor and integrity it’s pretty hard to screw up badly enough that you get sent back to square one. Always keep pushing and know that with these keys you might just be able to do something great!

Stress comes and goes, but usually, it will linger around longer if we don’t deal with it. Choosing to redefine our thoughts overstress will enable us to avoid being consumed by it, but rather challenged by it. When stress becomes a motivator, it becomes a healthy way to work harder for something. But if stress is controlling us and limiting our actions, we need to redefine our mindsets to overcome it.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. – William James

Here are 5 ways you can turn stress into productivity:

Get Caught Up to Stress Less

It won’t be easy to concentrate on what needs to get done today if you’re stressed about things that didn’t get done yesterday. Instead of letting the unfinished tasks daunt your mind, be more productive with your time and focus on completing them rather than worrying about them. If you’re behind on your list of things to do, getting caught up will offer some relief and you’ll find yourself not stressing out so much. Stress isn’t going to get things done for you, no matter how much energy you put into it.

Give Yourself More Time and Take Breaks

Unless it’s absolutely crucial for you to get something done by a certain time, don’t give yourself strict deadlines that’s not easily manageable; Doing so will cause you to stress out about getting the project done on time and you’ll be in constant worry as you repeatedly glance at the clock to see how much time you have left. While this may cause you to work faster to get things done, it’s not likely you’re actually putting in the quality work that’s needed if you’re simply speeding through the task because you’re fueled by a deadline you’re stressing over.

Don’t Do It All Yourself

If you are under a strict deadline or you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by completing the task, you should ask for help if you need it. Everyone needs help at some point and having an extra set of hands to help won’t feel as overwhelming as if you were doing it by yourself. With help, you’ll be twice as productive and you’ll worry less about meeting that deadline now that you have someone helping you. 

Get Some Perspective on Your Task

Becoming more productive in your day to day life can be accomplished by realizing what’s important and what’s not important because you’re likely spending a lot of your time stressing over things that are not that important in the big picture. A lot of the things that people stress over are actually not as significant as they would like to think they are… Keeping a positive attitude as you start the day, dive into your tasks, and tackle everything that needs to be done can deter you from getting sidetracked and wasting time on stressing over insignificant things.

Focus on Your Stress and Confront It

Sometimes focusing on your stress can be a good thing, if you’re trying to figure out how to better handle it that is. If trying to avoid stress isn’t as much of a successful method as you would like it to be, you could be produced through your stress and write down what it is that’s making you feel that way so you can confront it. In addition to writing down what stresses you out, also write down what’s the worst that can possibly happen. This will allow you to be able to look at back at what you wrote at a later time and see for yourself whether or not what you were stressing over was actually something significant. Usually, things end up not being as bad as they seem once you remove yourself from the situation and get a clearer head when looking at things.

Stress can ruin your life, but it only will if you let it. By learning to maintain your stress, you can become more productive, be happier, and learn how to look at the bigger picture of things. While it’s natural to feel some extent of stress when it comes to some things in life; Stress shouldn’t dominate your day.