5 Things to Do Today to Make Your Life Better

You and I have spent the better part of our lives pursuing success, but we can’t change this eternal truth: The best things in life are (nearly) free. Good health, time with loved ones, relaxing with our pets, and the simple comfort of a cup of coffee at the kitchen table on a quiet Saturday morning…you don’t need to live in a palace to appreciate these things. It truly is the little things in life that matter the most.

There are also many things money can’t buy. For example, some of us have health issues, due to misfortune or genetics, that can’t be fixed no matter how much money we throw at them. Some mornings we get up on the wrong side of the bed. Murphy’s Law applies to us too. Yes, even ETR readers have struggles.

On those days we must turn to the scientifically proven rituals that are within our control and guaranteed to improve our well-being. Here are 5 habits to do every day for a better life, and none of them cost more than a few dollars to get started.

1) Give Gratitude

Being grateful should not be limited to Thanksgiving. As The New York Timesreported, “having gratitude has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners.”

It’s tempting to let one’s cynical nature reject the idea. I almost did. I grew up relatively poor on a farm just outside of Stratford, a small city in Ontario, Canada. We lived frugally, wore hand-me-down clothes, and clipped coupons for groceries. This upbringing left me with a scarcity mindset until my early thirties. When I was first introduced to the concept of gratitude, I was skeptical and wanted to reject it. But I gave it a try and added daily gratitude journaling to my habits. It’s become one of the most important parts of my life, and will add to yours as well.

If you don’t already have a copy of the Gratitude Journal we created, please get one here. It takes just a few minutes to fill out. You’ll simply list the people, things, and activities you are grateful for, and the achievements you made each day. If you are going through any type of health, financial, or marital struggles, I promise gratitude journaling will give you the right perspective on life.

2) Meditate for Minutes

How much would you pay for a pill that promises less anxiety, more focus, improved patience, greater creativity, and a better memory, all without side effects? All of these benefits are freely available to you through meditation.

It does not take long, nor is it difficult to experience the benefits. As little as a minute of slow, deep breathing calms you down and lowers blood pressure, and just a few minutes per day delivers an incredible return on investment. Click here for a 3-minute meditation program.

Admittedly, it’s not an easy habit to keep. I started and stopped several times before finally making meditation a daily habit in 2013 and it’s now been almost 1,000 days in a row I’ve meditated for at least 5 minutes. The secret is to effortlessly incorporate it into your daily routine, and that will likely mean doing it within the first thirty minutes of waking up.

Sit comfortably, either in a chair or on the floor (with your hips elevated on cushions to make it comfortable). Bend your arms, palms up, touch your index finger to your thumb, close your eyes, and breathe slow and deep. It’s okay if your mind races. If that happens, return your focus to your breathing. When I began meditating, I counted the number of breaths, and tried to do one more breath each day. Do whatever it takes to get started, and eventually you’ll come to love the internal benefits of feeling calm and being better able to control your emotions.

Start with just a minute for the first few days. If you can go longer, that’s fine. Next week aim for two minutes. Build up to at least five minutes, and preferably 15-20 minutes per day. It will make a world of difference in your physical and mental health…for free.

3) Write a Thank-You Card to Someone Every Day

My father, whom I loved dearly, was a bitter, jealous man, and I’ve fought all my life to escape the shadow of his demons. A few summers ago I found myself jealous over the success of a good friend. Feeling ashamed of these thoughts, I decided to turn bitter into better. Instead of envying my friend, I wrote him a note thanking him for being an industry leader and congratulating him on his success.

Writing the thank-you card was a big mental breakthrough. It lifted a burden of guilt from my heart. A big smile crossed my face as I dropped it in the mail knowing it would arrive as a surprise. Now I write a thank you note every day because this little act of appreciation has made a big difference in my life.

4) The 3 Es: Exercise, Eat Right, & be Early to Rise

We are incredibly fortunate to eat whatever and wherever we want. One of the greatest meals I ever had was a rich, five course lunch at the Antinori winery in Tuscany. But tempting as it might be, we can’t eat like that everyday. It’s fine to enjoy one or two meals of your favorite food and drink in moderate amounts each week, but history proves a rich diet is a recipe for gout, diabetes, and an early death. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to eat delicious meals made from nutrient dense, organic foods.

When it comes to exercise, you don’t need a $5,000 treadmill or $2,500 weight machine set-up in a dedicated home gym. You’ll look and feel better – and younger – from a simple program of walking and bodyweight exercises.

Finally, it pays to be Early To Rise. My longtime mentor and ETR’s founder, Mark Ford, shared one simple tip for giving me more energy. Go to bed and get up at the same time every day. When I took Mark’s advice on this, after ignoring him for years, it was like finding the missing piece of my daily energy puzzle. Gone were the 2 o’clock energy slumps, the Monday morning blahs, and the desire to hit the snooze alarm. It’s so simple, yet so effective.

5) Think Big

You don’t have to be told this twice. As an ETR reader, you’re already successful, and you’ve been thinking big since the day you were born. But there are benefits to formalizing your big thinking.

James Altucher, best selling author of Choose Yourself, suggests writing down 10 big ideas every morning. I recommend doing this before or after your morning meditation session. All you need is a journal and a pen. Add this exercise to your day to ward off the complacency that might be creeping into your life. It will help you make big breakthroughs on any problems in your business and personal life.

These five activities remind me of my great fortune every day, give me the energy and enthusiasm to keep on pushing on during trying times, and form the foundation of my spiritual and physical wellbeing. I am a lucky man, fortunate to count you as a friend and to have had success in business, and these five habits remind me of that everyday. Add them to your daily routine and I know you’ll get as much from them as I do

What is success?

Can you define success?
If you asked 5 different people to describe success then most likely you will get five different answers. The reason you will get different answers is that each person will talk about the things he personally wants to achieve and most likely those things will differ from one person to another.

So is there a general definition for success that could match everyone's description? Yes there is, success is getting all the things that you wanted in life whatever they were.

5 things you must do to be successful in life

Here is what you need to do in order to be successful in life:

• 1) Know what you are worth and never settle for less: Many people get married to ones they didn't really want just because they believed that they will never get the ones they really wanted! Most people settle for less just because they believe that they will never get what they really wanted. The only thing that will happen to you if you scarified your real wants is that you will live an unhappy life. Swear a pact that you will never settle for less than what you deserve and you will become a successful person (see also Self deception examples)
• 2) Refuse to believe those who put you down: If you knew your real worth and if you started perusing what you deserve then most probably you will find that everyone is putting you down simply because people feel uncomfortable when they find someone attempting to do what they never managed to do. The more you believe in yourself the more will people put you down and tell you that you wont reach anything. Before this website made me a millionaire almost everyone told me that i can never make money working from home! (see my book How i did it)
• 3) Believe in yourself: It will be impossible to keep trying while everyone is putting you down unless you believe in yourself. The road to success is tough, its full of criticism, sarcasm, hard times and tough moments. Most people who don't believe in themselves collapse under this kind of pressure. If you want to succeed in life then you must believe in yourself for if you didn't then no one will
• 4) Be Brave: Most people aren't successful that's why its not wise at all to follow their same path. In order to be successful you need to do what unsuccessful people didn't do and that's why you must dare to be different. When i decided to quit my information technology career to focus on my business most people told me that i was crazy, later on i discovered that crazy people reach what they want in life while others keep watching (see How to be brave in life)
• 5)Keep trying and learning: Success can rarely happen from the first attempt or even the first few ones. When you fall don't cry but instead stand up again and keep moving. Whenever you make a mistake learn from it and try again, one day your dreams will become true (see also How to do the impossible in life)

I have managed to become a self made millionaire at the age of 28. This didn't happen by chance because i already wrote that goal down five years before i accomplished it. Becoming rich is not about luck, starting big or being intelligent but its all about having certain beliefs about money and life.

Small Things to Remember to Change Your Life for the Better

It’s the first week of 2017, and Science of Us is exploring the science that explains how people make meaningful changes in their lives. Handy information for resolution season.

It is a New Year, which means, if we are to believe the PR pitches in my inbox, it is time for a New You. But perhaps you would rather just make some slight improvements to Old You, instead of going to the trouble of creating a whole New You from scratch. Here, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite lessons from behavioral science over the years, all of which are smallish ways that can help you create significant changes in your life. New You is just Old You with slightly better habits.

Take advantage of the weirdly powerful effect of writing.

In particular, some of us live and die by our to-do lists, and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin — author of the 2014 book The Organized Mind — has a theory on their underrated power:

I think this is really important, that you write down all the things that you have to do, clear it out of your head so that you’re not using neuro resources with that little voice reminding you to pick up milk on the way home and to check to see if you paid the utility bill and that you have to call back Aunt Tilly because she left a voicemail and she’s going to worry and all this chatter — get it out of your head, write it down, then prioritize things.

Also: Regular journaling (as in, three 20-minute sessions per week) seems to help with mood regulation and goal achievement. (And bullet journaling specifically gets a nod of approval from Levitin, too, if that’s the kind of person you want to be in 2017.)

Use the “fresh-start effect.”

That New Year/New You feeling has a name: Research psychologists call it the “fresh-start effect,” a term used to describe the hunger for change that often comes with the start of some new era. These are “intertemporal markers,” which “make people feel disconnected from their past imperfections” by “disrupt[ing] people’s focus on day-to-day minutiae, thereby promoting a big-picture view of life.” In one study, for example, college students were more likely to attend the campus gym earlier in the month, week, or day than later; the researchers also noted an uptick in gym attendance right after a school break, and, interestingly, right after gym-goers’ birthdays.

If you didn’t quite get going on a resolution on January 1, however, not to worry — as my colleague Jesse Singal once wrote, you can simply make up a fresh start out of thin air. A “new era” can be as big as getting married or starting a new job, or it can be as small as a Monday morning.

Take a third-person perspective.

Weird, isn’t it, how often you seem to know exactly what your friends and family should do to change their lives for the better? Perhaps inspired by this peculiar brand of know-it-all-ness, researchers at the University of Waterloo and the University of Michigan found in a series of experiments that people tended to make better decisions if they took a third-person perspective when considering their choices. Before making a change, try to imagine: What would you advise a friend in your same situation? (Just please try not to forget about Future You.)

By the way, the authors of a separate study, also on taking an outsider’s view of your own life, opened their paper by referencing an old LeBron James interview. In it, James explains his decision to leave Cleveland for Miami. “One thing I didn’t want to do was make an emotional decision,” James told ESPN reporter Jon Greenberg. “I wanted to do what’s best for LeBron James and to do what makes LeBron James happy.”

Adopt a reasonable amount of pessimism.

Daydreaming is fun. (Most of the time, anyway.) But focusing too much on “positive fantasies” can backfire when you’re trying to make lasting changes to your life, or so theorizes New York University professor Gabriele Oettingen. Instead, she suggests the following: WOOP. It’s Oettingen’s acronym for her four steps for more realistic goal-setting:

Wish: Dream up a goal.
Outcome: Imagine what it would be like to achieve that goal.
Obstacles: Return to reality for a second and consider the problems you may run into in the process.
Plan: Figure out how you’ll get past the obstacles.

It’s very similar to Daniel Kahneman’s “premortem” idea: “Imagine that you are [X amount of time] into the future. You implemented your plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Take five to ten minutes to write a brief history of that disaster.” It’s often worth dwelling on your failures, but this is perhaps especially useful to try before they actually happen.

Remember this tiny word: “Yet.”

Carol Dweck is a Stanford professor and the brains behind the notion of “mind-sets”: If you have a fixed mind-set, you believe your abilities or skills are pretty stable. If you’re not great at math, well, you’re just the kind of person who’s not great at math — not much you can do about it. If you have a growth mind-set, on the other hand, you believe that with effort you can get better at something you’re bad at. As Dweck once explained:

We’ve found that putting in certain phrases like not yet or yet can really boost students’ motivation. So if a student says, “I’m not a math person — yet” “I can’t do this — yet.” And it means that with your guidance they will continue on their learning trajectory and get there eventually. It puts their fixed mindset statement into a growth mindset context of learning over time.