66. Doing the Work to Improve Your Life

Which is 100% more enjoyable than wasting energy on past events that you can't change or worrying about future events that you have no control over. So don't spend that precious brain energy on anything but living in the moment. Hi, I'm Jay, a certified life coach and former educator who believes that rediscovering ourselves takes just a little bit of courage. This show is focused on helping you develop the mindset and the courage to regain your confidence to redefine yourself and to reimagine your life one episode at a time. Hey, positivity Percy, your Ben, what's shakin in your world right now. For me, I just completed a whirlwind three weeks full of endings and closures. Move both of our kids into their adult apartments one week, completed a six year board term for a professional association I was part of in my previous career, I presented at that conference on leveling up your leadership and finding your purpose. And I also attended my daughter's graduation from college. It's been crazy, exhausting, exciting and rewarding. And through it all. And I kept running across people who asked me, you know, what are you up to now? And when I tell them, that I'm a life coach, they often ask well, how does that all work? What's the work involved in improving your life? Well, welcome to episode 66, we're high dive into what it means to do the work as you seek to improve your life. Now, in researching this topic, I found a really good article about 10 things you could do right now to jumpstart your life. And I kind of drift on it myself a little bit from my own point of view. So are you ready? All right, let's dive in. Number one on that list, write a better story for your day. So what do you want to accomplish today? You're just sitting there listening to this podcast? What do you want to accomplish today. So try setting the tone or vibe when you rise up in the morning, like when you get out of bed, maybe you get up a little bit earlier, maybe you try going to bed a little bit earlier, maybe you definitely want to drink more water or work on saying sorry, more often. Perhaps you want to try to be less judgmental of others and, most importantly of yourself. Maybe you want to go for a walk or write out some affirmations. Perhaps you want to grab a meal with friends and catch up or call someone in your life you haven't connected with in a while. Anything you can do to change the script and try something new, is a wonderful, it's like really an incredible starting point for writing a better story for your day. So what does that gonna look like for you today? Number two, identify what's keeping you stuck. Now this might be a little bit harder for you to do. But we're gonna give it a try. So sit with your thoughts, perhaps journal, put all your thoughts on the table and be open and curious as to what you might be holding back or what might be holding you back. Generally, in my experience in both working with clients, and also getting coached myself, is that what keeps us stuck? Is our thoughts. Our thoughts about our circumstances, always generate feelings, which inevitably drive our actions which ultimately drive our results. So being open to examining your thoughts about your life, and the situations in your life. That's a really good way to determine why you're stuck. But it all starts with your thoughts. So ask yourself, are you having thought errors? And what does that even mean? I'm having a thought error? Well, oftentimes, we see circumstances in our lives. And we believe that they're true. Okay, and sometimes circumstances are true. But what you want to look at is the facts of those circumstances. Is it really true or is it just a thought you're having about it? When you start to do that, that's how you start to get yourself unstuck. Number three, go to bed earlier tonight. I can hear it now. I can hear it. Jay Jay, listen, I'm a night owl. I thrive at night, I do my best work at night. I hear you. And I used to be the exact same way. I used to stay up until one in the morning, two in the morning. I could sleep, you know, a couple hours for five, six hours and then you're fresh and ready to go. But it wasn't the best for me. So I know now getting at least seven and a half hours of sleep goes a long way to improving your life. And the key here at least this for me means it's lights out 930 every night. And I find and perhaps you will as well, that when you have a consistent bedtime. Over time, you start to see that you'll rise before your alarm like you'll start to Get up and wake up before your alarm goes off. So in my case that 930 Bedtime means I naturally wake up around 515 530 before the alarm goes off. Again, the key here is consistency. Maybe it means 10 o'clock view or 1030. But regardless be consistent in getting to sleep the same time every single night. And if you can go to bed earlier than you have been gone to bed. Number four, participate in a physical activity that you enjoy. Don't overthink this one, alright? Don't overthink it. If you're not physically active, don't think you have to go all in and run a ton or lift weight, whatever it may be that's going through your head right now. Start small, even taking a 20 minute walk can do wonders for your mind and your body. If you don't like walking, all right, what about riding a bike? Or what about dancing? Seriously, any physical activity you can incorporate into your daily routine will set your right for me it's walking, it gives me time to think because we tend to process and sometimes it even helps me plan my day. More importantly, it gets the body movement and the blood flowing. So participate in a physical activity that you enjoy and get things rolling for yourself. Number five, focus on right now. So now as humans, we spent a great deal of time replaying past situations, and worrying about the future. And focusing on right now plays such a key role in improving our lives. Because when you focus on the right now use spend that very precious brain energy on experiencing life in the moment, which is 100% more enjoyable than wasting energy on past events that you can't change or worrying about future events that you have no control over. And the truth is they might not even take place. So don't spend that precious brain energy on anything but living in the moment and focusing on right now. Number six, set realistic and attainable goals. Okay, here's here's where we we often trip up right? Those goals get in the way. When we want to make a change in our lives. We sometimes well, probably more than sometimes pretty regularly, we make huge giant unattainable goals. Think New Year's Eve resolutions, right? There's a reason the majority of us do not keep those resolutions, let alone achieve them. And if you want more info on that, check out episode to my New Year's resolution, pretty good episode, kick start your year today work on setting a small, realistic and attainable goal. For example, maybe you want to drink more water, right? Simple. So what does that look like? Maybe it's just drinking two glasses of water for seven days this week. Then maybe next week, you do five days, or you do four days and you do three glasses. As long as you start small, and increase your intake even slightly. You're making progress. Right? We're all imperfectly perfect. So making tiny gains is very important. And you my friend are more likely to keep at it with small goals talked about this before small wins small gains, micro gains. Now whatever you want to call it, tiny is better. Now if you say you're going to drink 100 ounces of water every day, starting tomorrow, you're not going to reach that goal and attain it, you might do it day one. But it's not a habit at that point. So start small and build up go slow here on this one. Number seven, reframe a situation in a positive light. So this is really closely tied to number two, identifying what is keeping you stuck. Why? Well, when we are stuck, it's because we create negative thoughts about the circumstances of our lives. If you work to reframe those circumstances, or any situation really any situation on any given day. If you reframe them and view them in a positive light, something starts to click. For example, let's say your boss chews you out in front of others during a meeting. All too often we want to look inward and say what did I do? Make sense? Right? We're humans. That's what we want to do. But what if we took a different approach? What if you chalked it up to your boss having a bad day? Or maybe that newborn at home isn't sleeping well for your boss? Or perhaps his daughter is dating a jerk? Or maybe you didn't get breakfast and his blood sugar's low. So often, we want to blame ourselves when in reality, it has nothing to do with us. When I was wrapping up my last job, I had been there for about 15 years and had about two months left to go. And one day I just snapped with a colleague just snapped. Was it something that they did wrong? No, not at all. Nothing. They didn't do anything wrong. They were doing their job. It had everything to do with my response to something they Did because I mean, I was having trouble with closure, I was having trouble with moving on. I was feeling like being left in the dust. Now, we don't always know what's going on with others. So reframing situations in a more positive light can help. Give it a try. Number eight, be grateful and pass it on. If you're not practicing gratitude on a daily basis, my friends you are missing out. I know, you might say, I don't have anything to be grateful for today. And I would say go deeper look deeper. Do you have your health? You have food on the table? What about a roof over your head? Sometimes, reframing what we have in our lives rather than focus on what we don't have. We often find that we're more grateful than we ever realized. When you practice gratitude, and you also pass it on to others, you'll find that your life will improve. Now, I know that not everyone is a believer in karma in the universe, but I see its power every day in my life. And maybe you'll see it in your life too. Number nine, relinquish what you can't control. Control the controllable now I think the best advice I can offer you here is to go and listen to episode 36. With my friend Laura tyranny, all about control a control over her advice on controlling what you can control and releasing yourself from everything else is pretty cool. So number nine, relinquish what you can't control and go listen to that episode. After you're finished this one. Number 10. Create an intention of being intentional. Whoa, what a concept right? One thing I've been working on recently is doing tensional thought creation. Now I'm planning an episode on that topic. But in short, when you create intentions in your life, intentional thoughts, intentional actions, intentional ways you communicate intentional ways you approach relationships, everything really everything in life. When you find that you do that, intentionally, your life will improve drastically why? The long and short of it is that when you create intention in your life, your mind does the work without worrying about trying to figure out like the why behind it. When you create thoughts intentionally. When you're intentional about your life, you free your brain up to do other more important work. Okay, so that's it 10 ways you can improve your life right now. My friends, this episode has given me a lot to think about. I hope it has done the same for you. And that's a wrap. That's wrap on another episode of positivity on fire. Remember, your gift of time listening to this show does mean the world to me my friends, and as always be well be happy be you. And until the next time, your quest for positivity begin today, a positivity policy. If you're ready to coach yourself, I invite you to download my free workbook. Seven Steps to regain redefined and reimagine your life. Head over to www dot Jason ramsden.com backslash my dash links and click on the download link at the top of the page. It's that simple. And hey, if you're interested in working with me as your own personal life coach, visit Jason ramsden.com and click Get Started in the upper right hand corner of the screen. I hope to talk to you soon until then have an amazing day. Positivity on fire is a production of impact one media LLC. All rights reserved.