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7 Quick Tips
for an
Awesome Day
amy hoogervors t
C O N T E N T S
wake up early
schedule quiet t ime
exercise dai ly
I N T R O D U C T I O N
create a brain dump
create before you consume
eat real food and drink water
be present
C O N C L U S I O N
Y O U R T U R N
You’re awesome.
(If you don’t believe it, stop right here. Go back and
read THIS, then come back here.)
Let’s start again. You’re awesome. Ok, there. Got it?
Good.
Now the big questions are:
How do we live into that knowledge?
How do we maximize our potential?
How can we be our best selves, so we can make our
biggest impact on the world?
We know we can do hard things. We can do great
things. We’ve done them before. But sometimes, we
don’t take action. We let old habits hold us back. We
don’t take the little steps that add up to big ones and
lead to great things.
7 QUICK TIPS FOR
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A N A W E S O M E D A Y
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Remember Newton’s 1st Law of Motion? “An object
at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in
motion with the same speed and in the same
direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced
force.”
This law is apparent in our lives, too. With the
wrong habits in place, it’s often difficult to get
started and to keep going in the right direction.
With the right habits, after starting in motion, we
can achieve success with greater ease and simplicity
than we might think.
Creating and putting systems into place is the key.
When we follow those systems, life is easier. Our day
flows more smoothly. We’re almost assured of living
awesomely.
One day of intentionality becomes one day of
awesomeness. Done seven days in a row, we’ve had a
week of awesomeness. After 60 days in a row, we’ve
had not only two months of awesomeness, but we’ve
also created some ingrained habits. We are in
motion, and it takes less effort to stay there.
3
Here are 7 Quick Tips for an Awesome Day:
1 - Wake Up Early
The most productive, successful people are early
risers. After resting, we have more willpower and
are able to concentrate well and get important tasks
done. The later it gets in the day, the more chaotic
our days typically become.
Getting up early, of course, predicates that you go to
bed earlier. If this is likely to be a struggle for you,
try to go to bed a half hour earlier tonight than you
did last night. Back your bedtime – and your alarm
clock – up in increments.
It’s important to get enough sleep, but if you are
going to cut corners, cut them by waking up earlier
so you can at least be productive for part of your
day.
This one area will help make all other areas easier.
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2 - Schedule Quiet Time
Start your day with time for spiritual, inspirational
or devotional reading, prayer, journaling, or
meditation.
Is reading life-giving for you, or is it writing or
meditating or drawing? Take at least 5-10 minutes
every morning, before you do anything else, to fill
yourself up.
If you like to use your smartphone for learning, a
couple of free meditation apps are Stop, Breathe &
Think; and Headspace.
Devotional and inspirational apps include Bible, by
YouVerse; I Am Second; and First 5, from Proverbs
31 Ministries. That app encourages readers to give
God their “First 5” minutes of the day. Each
morning, six days out of 7, a new devotional is
available. Set an alarm within the app, and when it
goes off, the app prompts you to “swipe to read” the
day’s devotional.
Of course, good old-fashioned books work, too!
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One of the worst ways to start the day is by turning
on the television or radio to check the news.
A study completed in 2015 showed that individuals
who watched just three minutes of negative news in
the morning had a 27% greater likelihood – when
asked 6 to 8 hours later - of saying their day was
unhappy. Those who instead watched
transformative stories in the morning reported
having a good day 88 percent of the time.
When watchers see negative news of the world,
about which they can do little or nothing, it makes
them feel helpless. It also leads to poor performance
in other areas, including work.
The importance of centering yourself on positive
emotions and focus, no matter the method, cannot be
overestimated.
3 - Exercise Daily
If you’re not exercising at all, or only sporadically,
an encouragement to do it daily likely is meeting
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with some internal resistance right now.
But we’re not talking about triathlon-level exercise
here. We’re talking about doing something to get
your heart pumping, to move your blood along.
Exercise, we know, boosts our mood, strengthens our
bodies, and clears our minds. By aiming for daily
exercise, even a walk of 20-30 minutes, you’ll start
to reap major benefits.
And if you miss a day or two because of weather or
life, it’s not a big deal. But if your goal is only five
days, what happens when you miss two or three? Not
too many of us set a low goal and then overshoot it.
So aim high from the outset.
Exercising in the morning also is best. It may help
regulate your appetite, and it starts your day off on
the right footing. And, it goes back to our early
morning time management techniques – the later
the activity gets pushed in the day, the less likely we
are to do it.
Fitness apps abound, and if you use a fitness tracker
you’re probably tuned into one already. Currently
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receiving rave reviews are MyFitnessPal, linked to
the Fitbit tracker app, to sync food intake and
activity, measure progress, and help set goals.
The most important key here is, of course like the ad
says, just do it.
You’ll probably find that you don’t necessarily look
forward to exercising, but you sure like how you feel
once you’ve done it. Most of us dread exercise from
time to time but find that getting out the door is the
most difficult part. Use whatever self-talk is
necessary, and go.
It’s all about baby steps.
4 - Create a Brain Dump
You know all 594 things you woke up thinking about
this morning, coming at you in rapid-fire succession
before you’d even brushed your hair, and you just
knew you wouldn’t get to all of them?
They require lots of mental floss, and our brain
8
juggles all of them until we get them out. Those 594
things suddenly seem like 1,494 things.
So the key to getting them out is to write them down
- each one of the 594. Grab a sheet of notebook or
copy paper and a pencil, and write them all down
under the heading BRAIN DUMP.
We can only house three or four thoughts in our
mind at a given time, so it’s impossible to keep track
of 594.
But once you write down all of them, it frees you to
really dive in and focus on what’s important.
And, whoa, look at that list now – we didn’t really
have 594 things on our list, after all. We only had
44! SWEET!!!!
Next, go through your brain dump list and pick the
THREE things that are most important to get
accomplished today.
Only 3! That’s your to-do list for the day.
You may wind up completing more than that, but
9
because we can only focus on so many things at once,
we’re going to only have three on our schedule.
And when we get those three things done, we’re
going to feel REALLY, REALLY, great about that –
like, hey, man, I’m-awesome great!
Too often, we flit from one task to another, moving
each one along but not completing it, and we get
discouraged by our overall lack of results. If we
switch our habits to working through and
completing one task at a time, then we can check it
off the list and not have to think about or stress over
it again – except for how great it felt to get that
DONE.
So which one task, if completed today, would make
the biggest impact on your schedule and your life?
Start there.
5 - Create Before You Consume
Your TO-DO list is important. Your TO-DON'T list
may be just as important.
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What are the areas of your day that suck you in, so
you lose track of time and before you know it, you’re
all off schedule? Is it Facebook or other social media?
Is it email?
We go to social media just to look up or check on one
thing, or email to quickly reply to one message, and
we get sucked in every time.
That’s why it’s important to also create a TO-
DON’T list, even if it’s just in your head. What are
you going to avoid today, not totally, but just until
you complete X. When can you schedule a social-
media or email check – at lunch, or for a half hour
after lunch?
Smart phones now have such a hold on our lives that
many of us reach for them as soon as we awaken, to
check email or social media before even getting out
of bed. That’s a great way to get distracted by
someone else’s agenda – not your own.
“Create before you consume” is a worthwhile
mantra.
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If you’re a creative person or need to create output
for your work or dreams, then write the rough draft,
draw the sketch, craft the plan, before you consume
more research, more thoughts and more ideas. Create
what’s already inside you, and then with more
research and information, go back and improve
upon it.
This will move you forward to create the outcomes
you desire
6 - Eat Real Food, and Drink Water
Each day, we need water and essential nutrients to
give out bodies what they need to work optimally.
When we fall short of that, it affects other areas of
our lives.
Our bodies are about 70% water. To know how
many ounces of water you need to drink daily,
divide your body weight in half. So a 150-pound
person should drink 75 ounces of water, not counting
coffee, tea or juices.
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Drinking a couple of glasses first-thing in the
morning is a great way to rehydrate and flush out
impurities. Drinking two glasses of water before
each meal also has been shown to not only help
rehydrate the tissues but also calm the appetite.
Eat nutritious, natural foods. We can’t out-exercise
a lousy diet, and what we put in our bodies makes a
difference in how our bodies perform and how we
feel. We need protein and healthy fat at every meal.
Healthy fats do not make you fat, despite what you
may have been told.
Low-glycemic carbs such as fruits and vegetables
give us energy but only a small boost in our blood
glucose and insulin levels. They are the key to long-
term health.
High-glycemic carbs from simple, refined and/or
processed carbohydrates spike our glucose and
insulin levels. They make us not only tired and
sluggish, but also fat.
Visit and bookmark glycemicindex.com for more
information.
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Most of us don’t get all the nutrients we need
through diet alone, so we need to supplement to
make sure we are getting the vitamins, minerals,
amino acids and essential acids that our bodies need
to work at optimal levels. If our bodies get enough of
the nutrients it needs, it can repair and heal itself
from injury and illness.
Start by making one change in your diet at a time.
Crowd out the bad food with the good food. Each
week, remove one of the bad foods and replace with a
healthier option. Keeping vegetables, fruits and nuts
on hand for snacks will aid you in being more
successful staying out of the cookies.
Small, permanent changes always win out over
massive, quick changes.
7 - Be Present
Noise and interruptions come at us incessantly -
messages, emails, phone calls, TV, radio. How do we
tune it out and pay attention to what’s important?
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It’s difficult to put away the smart phone, turn off
the television, and walk away from the computer.
But being fully present to the people in front of you
and the experiences of life can create irreplaceable
connections and memories.
If you’re doing a rote task like walking the dog or
going for a run, it’s easy to multitask and listen to a
podcast or talk on the telephone. But it’s difficult to
do two mental tasks at once – participating in a
conversation and doing your taxes at the same time,
for example.
By carving out time and space to be present and
intentional with our friends and loved ones, we can
create meaningful relationships that fill us up and
improve our happiness and effectiveness.
You’ve likely tried some of these 7 Tips in the past
and succeeded at one or two. Maybe it’s time to start
again. Perfection is impossible, but we can employ
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C O N C L U S I O N
tactics that will help us start our day strong and
keep it running smoothly.
Don’t undertake these all at once, or you’ll burn out.
Start slowly. Choose one to really focus on now.
Others may fall into place as you go, or you can add
them to your routine as you are ready.
You can create an awesome day, week, and year.
Because you’re awesome.
Are you ready?
So, how will you start? What have you tried before?
In which of these areas could you grow most?
Share your story and your own tips for creating a
Awesome Day in my free, private “Faith and Sweat”
Facebook group.
Visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/faithandswe
atcommunity/
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Y O U R T U R N
copyright 2016 by Amy HoogervorstAll Rights Reserved
Visit amyhoogervorst.com
Join the free Faith and Sweat Facebook Community atwww.facebook.com/groups/faithandsweatcommunity/
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