When you hit rock bottom, or your life is heading in the wrong direction, it is easy to blame fate or bad luck. You look at people who seem to have it all and wonder how they managed to get a free pass through life. The straightforward answer is that they did not get a smooth ride. They hit obstacles, roadblocks, and dead-ends in the same way as you. They changed their lives, and you can do the same thing. When you are feeling low, you can learn how to turn your life around and change your path to achieve your goals and lead a successful, happy life.
By learning how to turn your life around, you equip yourself with the tools that motivate and inspire you to work hard and effectively in pursuit of your ambitions. You learn to persevere and feel good about yourself and your life. There are twelve easy actions that you can perform to build positive habits, greater self-confidence, and set yourself up for success.
1. Read Daily
Get into the habit of daily reading – set yourself a time (twenty to thirty minutes) or a page or chapter target for each day. Aim to read at least one new book, packed with quality information a month, and you will gain plenty of new knowledge over the year.
What sort of books should you read if you want to turn your life around? The best material is non-fiction because you are using your daily reading session to educate yourself. Read about your work (practices, procedures, and new research) and read about your interests (healthy living, inspirational people, investments, communication, and strategy).
Electronic books and PDFs are freely available for download or as printed material if you want to add notes and highlighters. Your reading habit does not need to break the bank but choose wisely to give you maximum benefit.
Target your daily reading to arm yourself with the knowledge you need to work towards your goals of living a happier, more fulfilled life.
2. Write Down Your Goals
The written word has magical powers – you need to commit to your goals in writing. These are not a wish list, but a going-to-achieve list. Once you identify your goals, identify what you need to make it happen. Then work out the steps and actions you will take to make it happen.
A journal is an excellent place to record your goals and track your progress. By the end of the year, you can draw inspiration from your past successes. New successes building on past achievements motivate you to aim higher.
Review your goals in the morning and evening and prime your brain for success. If you change your mind about some plans, write a new list. Always have a written list of your goals to inspire you to persevere and work hard to achieve success.
3. Surround Yourself with Positive Inspirational People
Some people give you energy, support, and encouragement. Make time to build and grow relationships with these people because being surrounded by positive, encouraging people will inspire you to achieve your goals.
Cultivate a positive, can-do attitude, and you will attract other people who will benefit from your positivity and encouragement. By building a positive and hopeful group of friends, you increase your ability to meet your goals and encourage them to achieve their goals as well. Everyone wins.
No-one achieves success by themselves. Grow your team of supportive family and friends invested in your success.
4. Love Your Body
You need to build up your level of health and fitness so you can work hard to achieve your goals. You get one body with minimal available spare parts, so make sure you cherish it.
Your body needs lots of water to stay mentally sharp throughout the day. Get into the habit of taking regular glasses of water in the morning, throughout the day (before meals), and the last thing at night. It’s hard to keep a positive mindset when you are dehydrated, pay attention to your body’s needs. If you feel tired or stressed, have a glass of water, your body will thank you for it.
Contemporary lifestyles don’t provide enough exercise, so plan to have thirty-minute sessions at least three times a week. More is better but commit to a minimum of three sessions of swimming, fast walking, dancing, running, or training with weights to tone your body and improve your stamina. Plenty of movement is key to physical fitness.
5. Pay Yourself First
Invest in your future by committing to saving 10% of everything you earn (more if you can). Educate yourself about investments and how you can make your money work for you. Set yourself up for success by either setting up a direct payment to a savings account on payday or manually transferring the money on the day you get paid.
The saving habit gives you a buffer against future hard times. When you spot an opportunity to set up a business, change your employment, invest in a new project, or training, you have funds behind you and the confidence to act.
6. Time to Commute is Time to Learn
You need to commute to and from work every day, and this is a slice of time that you can utilize for success. Listen to inspirational podcasts or audiobooks. Most people commute for at least an hour a day. Turn your travel time into learning time and gain half a day of training every week.
Fill your mind with knowledge, inspiration, and new ideas during your daily commute. You increase your skills and opportunities without having to go back to school or pay for a class. Think about what will improve your earning potential and teach you how to turn your life around.
7. Ditch the TV
Stop wasting time watching TV and gain hours of free time to spend on yourself. Plan to make use of these increased hours most productively and joyfully so you can turn your life around.
If there are sports, films, or TV series that you are committed to seeing, then set yourself a TV watching schedule and restrict your viewing to those times. You can move any program and watch only that program at a convenient time.
Make the most of your reduced amount of viewing time by making a social occasion of it, share a film or sports event with friends. Then you can nourish your positive relationships with a shared activity.
8. Find Your Voice
The communication skill most in demand is the ability to stand up and present ideas and information in public. Speaking in public is the one activity that scares most people. If you work on your skills and ability to speak in front of colleagues, clients, and others, you stand out from everyone else as a confident, successful person.
How do you turn yourself from a shy retiring mouse to a bold and confident public speaker? Positive affirmations to overcome your inner voice and change your mindset help. But, to become a great public speaker, you need to stand up and use your voice to explain your ideas. Inspirational speakers are not born but created by practice.
Take a deep breath and embrace every opportunity to talk in public from making presentations, welcoming people to an event, and running workshops. Learn from other people, find and use your voice to inspire and influence others.
9. Positive People Do Not Moan
Moaning is complaining out of habit, frustration, or an unattractive personality trait. Moaners are not inspiring people. The only reason to complain is if you are seeking a positive outcome. If you buy faulty goods, you take action to gain a replacement or a refund. You complain to achieve a result.
Moaners and habitual complainers do not look for a positive outcome. They see the negative side of everything their boss doesn’t treat them with respect, the bus is always late, and their sandwich is stale.
Be the person who understands what you can change and improve – act and get your faulty goods replaced and get up earlier, so your bus always gets you to work on time. Moaning makes you and everyone around you unhappy. Be an inspiration to your family and colleagues by adopting a can-do attitude and only complain when you have something that needs to change.
10. New Skills, New Attitude, New Brain
Every time you learn something new, you create new connections in your brain. Improving your golf game is not the same as acquiring a new skill. To gain the benefits of a flexible and adaptable mind, you need to challenge yourself and move out of your comfort zone.
Learn a new language or musical instrument, and you energize yourself by exploring a new idea with exciting discoveries. Adults can get stuck in a rut, trapped in their comfort zone, and gradually losing a sense of play and wonder. Every time you try and master a new skill, you open yourself up to the possibility of change and growth in all areas of your life.
11. Get a Side Hustle
Technology empowers everyone to set up their own business with minimal or no working capital. Being the boss and running a successful business is a dream for most people. But it is a dream that is within your reach.
Take inspiration from what motivates you to get out of bed in the morning. You have a unique skill set and interests. Make them work for you by sharing your passion with the world. The internet lets everyone set up an online business and try out their ideas at a low cost and a relatively low-risk way. Working for yourself, earning an independent income, and pursuing your dreams is how you turn your life around.
12. Give a Little, Gain a Lot
Successful people across the world give their time and money to good causes that matter to them. But the real secret is that they started giving before they were successful. They shared when conditions were not ideal, and they didn’t have a lot of time or money.
The act of giving to help others rewards the giver as well as the recipient. Acquire the giving habit, and you will feel lighter and happier. Focus on the needs of others and what you can do to help. By giving help and support, you receive help and support – a virtuous circle where everybody benefits.
How to Turn Your Life Around Step by Step
The power to turn your life around is in your hands. You can start today. You do not have to complete all of the steps outlined above; you can pick and choose. The first essential step is to recognize that you need to act differently. To get a different result, you need to stop doing what you’ve always done and act differently.
Time is your most precious resource – by using slices of wasted time to learn and take care of yourself, you improve your skills, health, and attitude. And it’s not hard. You set goals for yourself, and then you put in the time and effort to achieve them by setting yourself up for success.
You know how to turn your life around, and you can start today.