3 Powerful Life Improvement Techniques You Can Apply Right Now
By: Stef Hill
Tags: Startup, Productivity, Self Improvement, Business, Life

Would you like to give your life and career a boost? After years of researching ways to improve my life and business I’ve found three techniques that stand out as having real power. They are also techniques which give fast results. These techniques will change your life from the moment you put them into practice.

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Conviction and affirmation.

When I first heard about this method of achieving goals and dreams I was skeptical. My skepticism was triggered because this method is extremely simple. Literally anyone can do this with minimal effort and no particular skills.

What do you want to achieve? Craft a sentence where this has already happened. You don’t need to pin down exact specifics but don’t be too vague either.

I want to be successful. Too vague.

I want to own a farm with 14 chickens and 2 cows. This is needlessly specific.

I want to own my own farm. Perfect.

Now put it in the present tense, like this:

I own my own farm.

Other examples:

I have no debt.

I own my own home.

I speak French.

Write this affirmation down and carry the paper around with you. Read out and repeat the affirmation whenever you can. If you’re cooking dinner, prop the paper up where you can see it and read it out. At work, have it on your desk and read it out.

Just to be clear this is nothing supernatural like a spell. This is tapping into the power of your brain.

The human brain is a natural problem solving machine. This technique focuses your mind so that all of your actions contribute towards your main goal. Start today and see how much progress you make in one month, you will be blown away.

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Lists.

Speaking of the brain’s ability to solve problems, here is another technique. This is for when you are stuck in a rut and can’t think of a good solution. This technique gets you past the cyclical thinking that constitutes being stuck.

Take your problem, let’s consider a common one.

I need to make more money.

Get a pen and paper and write down a list of possible solutions. Try and write down 50 ideas.

Inevitably, you will really start to struggle the more your list grows. The obvious things like “find a part time job” or “sell my music collection” will roll out very easily. Once you get towards 20 ideas you’re going to find it much harder. Persevere until you really can’t think of a single new idea.

Check your list, the solution to your problem is in the second half of the ideas list. It may well be the last one.

What this exercise does is get you to step away from the obvious solutions. If they were going to work for your problem you wouldn’t be stuck. By challenging yourself to come up with more and more solutions you push your mind to come up with an innovative and creative idea.

Try it out, it works amazingly well.

Last but not least. Daily plan.

People who use this technique outstrip people who don’t many times over. Like the previous two suggestions, it’s very easy to do.

Do you feel like you often get to the end of the day and you haven’t achieved very much? Maybe you’ve wasted your time on lots of little bits of things and your big projects are relatively untouched. Maybe you spent a lot of time staring into space or trying to decide what to do next.

The solution to this is to spend 10 minutes every morning writing a plan for the day. Write out everything you have to do and want to do.

Categorize these tasks as “vital”, “quite important” and “would like to get around to”.

When you’ve finished, take the “would like to get around to” list and cross it all out.

You now have the flotsam cut out of your day. You focus first on the vital things and next, if time allows, on the quite important things.

Life is finite. We have to make decisions about where our time is best spent. There are reams of things we all could do or might like the idea of. Life is not a dress rehearsal. If it’s not important, don’t spend your precious time on it.

The other major benefit that makes this task worthwhile is the elimination of uncertainty. All the time you spend casting around or wondering what to do next is saved. You also won’t be tackling your tasks in a halfhearted way as you’re not constantly wondering if you should be doing something else.

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Apply these 3 techniques and your life will be very different one month from now. Good luck!