Simple Steps To Improve Your Life

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”  Patanjali

I wanted to start this post with this great and empowering quote from Patanjali, so that you will feel a lot more confident in your ability to change and why not, leave your excuses behind. Now, let’s begin. On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you say that your overall happiness is? 10, 9, 7, 5, 3? Have you had the courage to ask yourself this question before? It’s not a difficult one, but so many of us are too afraid to even dare to ask questions like this one because, the moment we do, and based on the answers we get, we would have to take some action, and taking action doesn’t always feels to good, does it?

I have asked myself this question, and many others a few years ago, and because I wasn’t pleased with the answers I got, I started taking action and I started working on improving all areas of my life, and even though I don’t have 10 in all areas, I have to say that the percentage went up, not down, and that is exactly what each and every one of us should start doing, keep track of our own evolution. We need to move forward and not to sit just in one place, or worse, go backwards. Evolve or die, and when I say die, I am not talking about you literally dying, because we will all go through that eventually, but figuratly. When the people around you are constantly changing and you are the only one who remains the same, you will feel lost, and you will start blaming everybody for leaving you behind, for not helping you out, not realizing that no one can help you, no one can make your life better but yourself.

You can complain all you want, but that won’t make your life any better, so it’s up to you to choose between evolving or dying. I’m sorry if I sound to harsh but I realized that a lot of people need strong words in order to wake up, once and for all. Don’t you find it funny how everybody wants to be somebody, everybody wants to be rich, beautiful, powerful, famous, etc. but nobody wants to take the time to grow? They want everything to start happening overnight and because it doesn’t, they start whining, criticizing, complaining, bitching, etc. … What’s so hard to understand? Nothing good could ever be built overnight, and nothing good will ever happen without work, persistence and commitment. You plant a seed in the ground and you wait for it to grow, you are being patient…

If you want your life to be a complete success, you want to experience success and excellence in all areas of your life, you need to work on making each day just that, you need to work on making each day excellent, a total success, and in the end you will gather all those days, you will put them together and you’ll realize that you just got yourself a successful life, but if you don’t, if you think that success, happiness, peace, wealth, love, etc. , just happen… well, you will have a big surprise.

Now, to help you awake a little bit, I want you to take some time and do a little exercise with me. You will read each category, you will analyze your current circumstances, you will write a short description of that area, you will rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, and then you will write the desired outcome for that category. You have an example underneath and I have to tell you that I do this every year for the last 2 or 3 years and it helped me a lot, and I know it will help you also.

Category	Current Situation: dd mm yyyy(04/04/2011)	Desired outcome after 6 months: dd mm yyyy (04/10/2011)
1. Growth: ….	I want you to write your current situation and I want you to appropriately rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. Be very honest, no need to cheat, remember you will only be cheating yourself.At the end, you will add them all up (3+ 5+7+… and you will divide them by 10 = X % ) and that will be the percentage that will tell you how high or low you really are, 30% , 40%… 67% etc… Your wake up call, hopefully.	And here, I want you to write the desired outcome and rate it again on a scale of 1 to 10.  You want to always go for the maximum 10, and even though after 6 months you will not have a 10, don’t be discouraged, remember that there is no failure, only feed-back, and if at first you had a “3″ and now you have a “7″ , that is a great improvement, and you will now go again for 6 more months, starting from “7″ this time, and going for “10″. We live and we learn, there is no end to personal growth, and you need to keep that in mind. It’s all about the process, the journey and less about the destination. And again, you will do the exact same thing. You will add them all, divide them by 10 and you will have the desired score, 100% .

1. Health

Your general condition in all aspects of your life, you are exercising at least 3 times a week, you have a healthy diet, you drink plenty of water, you sleep the right amount of time, etc.

2. Growth

Continuous learning, self improvement, self growth, getting better in all areas of life, etc.

3. Love

For yourself, your partner and others; you have accepted yourself completely; you enjoy your own company; you know that if you aren’t able to love yourself, others won’t be able also, etc.

4. Nurturing Relations

Cultivating happy, healthy relationships with yourself, your partner, you friends, family and all the people you interact with.

5. Contribution

 Making a difference, living your life on purpose, transforming lives through your work, making the world a better place, etc.

6. Leisure Time

 Taking time to recharge your battery and enjoy the many gifts life has to offer us, going to vacations, taking time off, relaxing, seeing the places you always wanted to see, etc.

7. Wealth

Practicing all that you’ve learned, working on making your dreams come true, using your unique gifts and talents and sharing them with the world, etc. , and by doing all of the above, your work is deeply appreciated and well compensated.

8. Forgiveness

For yourself, for your past mistakes and failures, for the actions you took that brought you pain and suffering, forgiveness your your old beliefs and ideas, forgiveness for those who may have hurt you in the past, etc.

9. Spirituality

Taking time to meditate, pray, contemplate; taking time to discover your inner path that helps you see the real you and the wonderful things you are capable of achieving; connecting to a higher Source; getting to that place where great and unlimited ideas, infinite abundance, infinite peace and love come from, etc.

10. Gratitude and Appreciation

Feeling grateful and expressing your daily gratitude and appreciation for the gift of life, for the good and the bad, for your health, you wealth, you friends and family, for you challenges and misfortunes, etc.

Gratitude is a small thing that makes a big difference, and even though many of us mistake gratitude and appreciation with attachment, I have to tell you that they aren’t the same. Expressing gratitude and appreciation comes from a place of infinite love, from a place of pure love, while attachment comes from a place of fear, fear of not having something, fear of losing that something you are attached to. While gratitude and appreciation attracts, attachment only pushes away,

Added by Luminita Saviuc on 4, April 2011