12 Ways To Improve Your Life Right Now

1. Strive for Imbalance-Don’t you hate it every time someone tells you “You need to balance your life?” Does that mean for every extra hour at work you need to find another hour with your family? For everything you say yes to, you need to say no to something else? Trying to find this balance has really stressed me out in the past.

A couple of days ago, Andrea, my 2 year old daughter came to sit on my lap whilst I was on the computer. She wasn’t her chatty self and stared blankly at the wall. It took me a few minutes to realize this, then her eyes rolled back, her face turned blue and she stopped breathing. Needless, to say these were the longest 7 minutes of my life. By the time we had reached casualty, she had regained consciousness. We were told that she had suffered from an “absent seizure.” Afterwards, I realized that God had just sent me a celestial email to say, “Please stop your busyness and smell the roses.” It was my wake-up call and today I will rather err on the side of imbalance-less time for what’s in my work inbox and more time for my family “outbox”.

2. Stop Multi-Tasking. Research confirms that multitasking actually makes you less efficient, not more. According to author Edward Willett, “When you do two things at once, brain power doesn’t increase to meet demand; in fact, it decreases which means you perform each task more poorly than if you focused on one alone.” Multi-taskers, whose full attention is not devoted to the task at hand, often don’t take the time to fully
understand the breadth and depth of a project, thereby getting only mediocre results.

3. Be Wealthy in Spirit. “When you are wealthy, you live from the inside out instead of the outside in. Money is currency that is attracted to the energy produced by your spirit.” Simon T Bailey

4. The Giving Prescription. After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and falling into a deep depression, Cami Walker was given a prescription: Give away 29 gifts in 29 days. Today, 29 Gifts is a global giving movement in 42 countries. So, enhance your life, with your own 29 days of kindness. Remember, gifts do not need to be material. The most important thing is that the gift is offered. Find an opportunity with open heart and don’t expect anything in return. To get you started click here

Example of gift ideas:• Make a point of finding and calling a long-lost friend
• Hand out flowers on the street to make someone’s day
• Give an unexpected tip..the packer at the supermarket

Don’t plan your month of giving, rather go through each day looking for opportunities to present themselves and if you miss a day, don’t beat yourself up over it. Remember, it’s not about being a perfectionist! An open hand is always full-give away what you want to attract into your life.

“Is the rich world aware of how four billion of the six billion live? If we were aware, we would want to help out, we’d want to get involved. ”Bill Gates

5. Make a Meal in 10 Minutes or Less. For most of my adult life I have been spoilt by a great chef-Monsieur Woolies. So when I decided to venture into that unknown area of my house-the kitchen-I smoothed the way by finding 101 substantial main courses, all of which get you in and out of the kitchen in 10 minutes or less. To experiment with some of these click here

6. Organize E-mails in a Snap.Stop wasting energy and time by creating endless folders for different topics. Rather drag your messages into these trio of folders:

“Archive” It’s your e-mail reference library. It contains everything you might someday want or need. You don’t need to separate old e-mails into different folders-you can always search by sender, topic, or keyword.

“Hold” This folder would be for everything that requires someone else’s help. Don’t put stuff in your follow-up folder that you can’t actually follow up on yet.

“Follow-up” This folder contains all the e-mails that you must respond to but require more than two minutes to do so. (For any e-mails that take less than that to answer, you should respond as you read them.)

7. Design your Vision Board. I have personally designed 5 in my life and they really work! I believe in “Whatever you visualize, you materialize.” There is no better way to put that into action right now by creating your vision board. Most of us don’t have the time to get creative with cutting out pictures, sticking them on colourful cardboards, so here’s a far easier way-design your dream life online FOR FREE just click here

8. Avoid perfectionism. “Wonder Woman was a fictional character on TV. Were she real, she’d still be boring as molasses, as most perfect people are. Perfection means you never have to show character, you never have to fight for what’s right, you never have to struggle. That all comes so naturally, and it therefore involves no exertion. It’s much better to embrace your flawed humanity and therefore strive to be your best, and therefore become better every day.” American Orthodox rabbi, TV host and author-Rabbi Shmuley.

9. Reposition yourself. Separate YOU from your job or performance. You are not a failure just because you failed at something. You are not lesser than because you lost a deal or a job. Repositioning your life is simply a choice that you make. Sometimes failure is not so much about you as much as the methods that you were using. Change your methods and you will simplify your life.

10. Saying No Is Saying Yes to Yourself. Do you suffer from the disease to please? Here is a simple cure…start saying NO to others and YES to you. I recently found that every weekend was being filled with children’s parties, social gatherings, association meetings and very little ME time. I learned to become selfish and started to say no to anything that was taking me away from my family life. Yes, I pissed off a few people but I decided I was no longer in a popularity competition. Wendy Luhabe said “I can say NO as a full sentence.” The question is can you?

11. Ask: “What makes me valuable?” You may think that if you lost some weight, made more money, had the ideal job, lived in your dream home or found your soulmate then you’d be happier or feel more valuable. Sadly, this is not the case. Rather ask yourself “what makes me valuable?” What do you do that adds value, that you’re proud of in your life? Have the courage to answer honestly, without apologizing for it. In doing so you will soon discover your authentic self.

12. Energy Boosters. Try the following to increase  the daily energy  you have available and add to your energy reserves:

• Make a list of everything you plan to do today: In Column A, include the activities that drain you; in column B, those that replenish you. Now figure out how to remove one item from A and add one to B.
• Plug into a great memory of you bursting with excitement-your first crush, a big promotion. Relive it in your mind. Enthusiasm, radiance, joy—these energetic states come from happy emotions
• Don’t turn on the TV for 24 hours. Its an energy drainer-specially the news.
• On your way home, don’t read or listen to the news. Rather listen to invigorating music on the radio or Ipod.

For more information on our image and etiquette programmes visit our website www.profimpressions.com or contact Haydee Antezana, Motivational Speaker  on info@profimpressions.com