Life Changed Dramatically When I Started Doing These 9 Things
Tiny changes. Massive impact.
You have to experiment in life.
If you never experiment, make changes, remove things, and add new ones, how do you know what actually works for you?
You don’t.
Some things won’t work, but some things will.
And what works for one person won’t necessarily work for everyone.
That said, here are 9 things I added to my life that worked for me.
1. Doing things for the sake of doing things
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.” — Alan Watts
There’s a certain beauty in doing things simply because you enjoy them.
Not everything needs to be productive.
Not everything needs an end goal.
Despite what today’s productivity-obsessed gurus might say, life isn’t meant to be optimized every waking second.
Sometimes you should do things just because you like doing them.
Over the past few months, I’ve gotten into the habit of reading more fiction.
Does it serve some huge purpose?
Not really.
But I’ll keep reading them.
Why?
Because I enjoy it.
And that’s enough.
2. Saying no without explanation
“No is a complete sentence.” — Anne Lamott
Saying no is always an option.
And you shouldn’t always feel the need to explain or justify it.
If you don’t want to do something, you can say no.
That’s it.
If someone can’t accept your firm no, you might want to question whether they deserve your time in the first place.
Setting boundaries isn’t rude. It’s a necessity.
3. Getting to the bottom of problems straight away
“If you don’t understand the cause of a problem, you’ll keep trying to fix the symptoms.” — Jordan Peterson
This habit has dramatically improved my relationship.
Whenever my partner and I have a problem, we deal with it on the spot.
We get right to the root of the issue.
Because if you leave problems unresolved, they don’t disappear.
Instead, they grow.
And sooner or later, the same issue will rear its ugly head again.
No matter how uncomfortable it may be, lay everything out on the table and work through it.
Bit by bit. No matter how long it takes.
4. Daily walking
Everyone knows the physical benefits of walking.
But the mental benefits are just as powerful and are regularly forgotten.
Walking helps with:
Reducing anxiety and stress
Improving mood
Increasing focus
Processing emotions
And one of the most valuable benefits of all, especially if you create things:
Sudden bursts of creativity.
I’ll be honest, I used to hate walking.
It felt boring and a monumental waste of time.
How wrong I was.
You’ll rarely regret stepping outside and going for a walk.
5. Reflecting on death
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” — Marcus Aurelius
In ancient Rome, victorious generals would parade through the streets after winning a battle.
But they also did something quite strange.
A slave would stand behind them and whisper something in their ear:
Memento Mori.
It means: “Remember you will die.”
It sounds morbid, but there’s wisdom in the madness.
Thinking about death grounds you.
It reminds you what actually matters.
It forces you to stop taking life for granted.
Because the brutal truth of life is simple:
What can happen to one of us can happen to all of us.
6. Approaching life with low expectations
“The first rule of a happy life is low expectations.” — Charlie Munger
Living with low expectations seems so ridiculously backwards.
It goes against anything any of us has ever been taught.
Yet it makes perfect logical sense.
You see, most things in life won’t turn out as you’d hope they would.
That’s a fact.
If you set your life expectations ridiculously high all the time, you’ll miss nearly every time, and you’ll forever be dissatisfied.
But by setting the bar lower, you’re significantly less likely to be disappointed when things go pear-shaped.
Low expectations don’t mean having no ambition.
It means living life with more acceptance.
Lower your expectations. Increase your happiness.
7. Taking things less seriously
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” — Oscar Wilde
Many of the things we treat as incredibly important aren’t actually that important in the grand scheme of life.
Taking everything too seriously leads to:
Chronic overthinking
Mental strain
Burnout
Unnecessary stress
That doesn’t mean nothing matters.
But it does mean you should lighten up now and then.
Because you know what?
Very few things are as serious as they seem.
8. Stop trying to impress people
“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” ― David Foster Wallace
Many of us are convinced that we are at the forefront of other people’s minds.
So we desperately seek their validation and try to impress them.
But here comes the ironic part:
Nobody was ever thinking about you in the first place.
The fact that nobody was ever thinking about you in the first place is quite liberating.
It’s liberating because it lifts an invisible heavy weight off your soldiers, giving you a much-needed sense of freedom and breathing space.
It’s not that people are terrible for not thinking about you.
They’re just busy dealing with their own lives.
9. Being radically honest
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.” — Mark Twain
There’s honesty, and then there’s radical honesty.
Honesty will make you liked.
Radical honesty will make you liked and highly respected.
If someone asks you a question and an opinion, don’t hold back and speak the truth that you see.
You don’t need to be bluntly rude, but you should always be honest.
Radically honest.
Always.
See you next time,
Tom
All valid points Tom. The problem is, people get them to late.