Most people want more out of life. This is not to say that you’re unhappy with what you have. In fact, the secret to happiness is wanting what you have. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t want to scale the highest peaks of success and happiness because there is no standing still in life.
But there are people who are desperately unhappy with their situation – in fact, most people claim to be unhappy in their job, a staggering number of people worry about money and then there are others who are simply and often deeply unhappy with themselves as persons.
What you need to understand is that you’ll never get more out of life by wanting or by being dissatisfied with things as they stand. The one thing that stops you getting something different out of life is – and this is kind of obvious – that you tend to do everything the same. Keep doing the same things and nothing will change. If you want change in your life, you’re going to have to do actually change your life!
But what? Like all great journeys, changing your life starts with the first step. A small step will suffice because you’re going to have to gradually recondition your mind – to get yourself comfortable with the idea that, in everything that you do in life, you have a choice to do something different, something new. One of the most powerful exercises that I propose to my personal development clients is that they use the very routine that has anchored to their current life to dismantle the habitual, repetitive patterns of behaviour that have so constrained them, their view of life and the boundless possibilities that life holds for them.
I propose the same powerful yet simple tip to you. Break routine by using your routine. Every morning, you will find yourself with a load of little chores that you’ve been doing in a routine manner every day of your adult life. However, if you do something as simple as brushing your teeth with the hand that you don’t normally use, you will have reached two, potentially life-changing, milestones. Firstly, you will have woken up to the obvious truth that, in every single thing that you do in your life, you have a choice. This awareness will enable you break every single destructive habit that is holding you back from the life that you really want. Secondly, because you’ll be brushing your teeth differently, you’ll have to pay more attention to the task. Highly successful people call this ‘focus’. Focus just means paying attention – to whatever it is that you’re doing right here, right now.
Life is made up of moments – each moment that you pay attention is a moment well spent – you relearn how to be fully focused, fully aware of what needs to be done when life’s big decisions call for real action – not the repetitive reaction of the normal doomed-to-failure mind.
