Get more out of your day, live your dreams.

Getting more out of your day should be easy, but see there is that thing called habit. As I previously mentioned in one of my articles, the human brain is designed to find the easiest or least painful way of doing something.

You might think "well great, that i exactly what I need". Unfortunately in today's, day and age we can no longer afford to take the easy way out. The easy way normally leads us nowhere in a hurry. We procrastinate, get depressed and anxious about the dreams we have. Unfortunately we are doing this to ourselves by over thinking.

The best advice I can give anyone here is not to see your imagined future as a fact. It has not happened yet, so how do you know? I am not referring to future outcomes you have experienced as part of a certain chain of actions resulting from habit. This is pretty much set in stone if you don't take the decisive action to change the habits giving you less than desirable outcomes.

Let's look at your dreams. The dream you have is a goal that does not have a action plan. It's hard to see the outcome of any action without a plan in place with actionable steps that gets us there. Hence we call it a dream as we cannot visualise it happening. Many great people had dreams of achieving the impossible. The difference between them and you is that they put the dream onto paper and planned action steps with goals to achieve that would eventually lead them to make their dreams a reality.

Will it be easy? No it never has been. Ask yourself the following question. Why do you want to make your dream a reality? Find a strong enough why, this will be used along the way to remind yourself why you started in the first place. It will be tough and you would want to quit many times. Use the why to get you through these hard patches. Next you need to formulate a plan. It does not need to be a formalised business plan that you want to present to the likes of Donald Trump. This is your plan, outlining certain goals that you need to achieve along the way towards making your dream a reality.

With the fun part done, now time for some work. Yes work, it will not be easy. Every evening before you go to bed plan for the following day. Planning allows you to break large goals down into smaller actionable tasks that you can complete on daily basis. It might not seem like a hole lot in the beginning but trust me it adds up. This also helps you manage your time in order to work around your day job, family and lifestyle commitments. After planning, end your day off and get a good night's rest.

You need to start your following morning right as this will set the tone for the rest of your day. Get up drink a glass of water and give yourself at least 5 min to wake up. Revisit your plan, remember what your why is and get busy. Just keep in mind that if you need to be at the office by 8:00 forget about getting up at 7:30 and still getting a good start to your day. Plan for a minimum of 2 hours in the morning. Your morning routine will set the tone for the entire day. Keep track of your progress during the day marking off personal goals that you achieve during the day. Be strict on yourself and set certain "achieve by" time limits to keep yourself on track.

At the end of your day revisit the items you have completed and plan for the following day. The process is challenging, requires hard work but bears results. When you feel down or doubtful remember to ask yourself why you started following this process in the first place. 

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