How can we improve our lives?

The New Year is always a time for us to reflect upon our lives and decide in which direction we would like to go. Year after year we make resolutions of things we would like to achieve, be it in our career, business, health or relationships. If you are anything like me you will realize that you lose sight of your targets as the year progresses. Even when we start the year with energy to make some real improvements in our lives, we find our motivation is depleted before the first quarter. We fall back to the old patterns of behavior that create the same financial, social and health limitations that we have had in previous years. But why do we find it so hard to improve and create some long lasting changes that will improve our lives. Year after year our salary scale remains the same, our business turn over does not grow, we remain in the same toxic relationships and stay with the same unhealthy bodies. We only improve a little bit but fall back time and again. How can we make some real long lasting changes in our lives that can make us have the life we have always dreamed about.

We all know what it takes to make a better life, fortunately we are in an information age with an abundance of knowledge. Each one of us is one google search away from knowing what we need to improve our lives or one self-help book. We are told that practices like waking up early, exercising, meditation and positive thinking are a good start. We are told that we have to adapt good habits and abandon bad ones, create meaningful relationships and abandon toxic ones. We are told to have gratitude, humility and patience. We are told we must work hard and maintain discipline in whatever we do. We are told to manage our time well and work on self-improvement through education and healthy lifestyles. All these things and many more will make our lives better. It does not take significant changes to transform oneself, all it takes is a small change that will create a ripple effect that will filter down to other areas of our life. A small change in direction repeated over time can lead us down a different path that will drastically change our future destiny.

But why is it that even when we are aware of this we still find it difficult to create and sustain long term changes in our lives. We sometimes get started hoping that the momentum will pick up but the energy or fire that we begin with often dwindles along the way. There is a knowledge action gap between what we know we are supposed to do and what we actually do. One possible reason for this is illustrated by Mel Robbins in her book "The 5 second rule". She basically says we are working against millions of years of evolution of the brain. Our minds are adapted to staying away from difficult tasks and seeking out the easiest path of least resistance. Therefore when faced with a difficult task or situation, the primitive mind which is also the instinctive mind kicks in. We make decisions to do the right thing but we find ourselves hesitating at the last moment so the mind talks us out of it and we find ourselves taking the easier route before we know it.

Fortunately she says our mind has a 5 second window to act upon its inner knowledge before it talks itself out of it. This means that when you decide to do something such as wake up in the morning when your alarm goes off or speaking up your mind in a board meeting you count down from 5 to 1 and then just do it. This takes your mind away from overthinking it and does not give time to talk you out of it with excuses.

Another possible reason why we find it difficult to change is illustrated by Joe Dispenza in his book "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself" in which he says your life is a result of how you think, how you feel and how you act. When you think in a specific way, it creates a specific type of emotion that makes you feel in a specific way. When you feel this way it creates a specific type of action or behavior that creates a specific environment. In turn this influences how you think, triggering the same circuits in your brain that create the same emotions, physiological states and actions that create the same environment. This creates a cycle of being and as long as you are unconscious of it, you unknowingly create the same life. In order to truly change, Joe Dispenza says we have to think greater than our environment. We have to be conscious of patterns of thinking and emotions that are not in tune with our needs and change them intentionally. We have to be conscious of unhealthy actions or habits that create the negative environment and continuously work to change them.

Jocko Willink, a former Navy Seal in his book "Discipline equals Freedom" suggests discipline as the key to improving our lives. We always think motivation is all we need but it cannot bring us through truly challenging times but discipline will. This is why we begin our new year fully motivated to embark on new journey but lose focus along the way. Our instinctive mind will always sabotage us because it is primitive in nature and will cause us to choose momentary pleasure over future gain. We therefore need a disciplined mind in order to tame the instinctive urges of the primitive mind. He says we simply have to do the things we have decided to do and avoid the things that we have not decided to do. It is the decision that makes the whole difference. Instead of focusing on what we should do, our focus should be on what we will, must and have to do no matter what the circumstances.

My personal interpretation of discipline is it creates a separation between the planning and execution of a task to an extent that the two must not intermingle. Jacko Willink refers to the Navy seal saying of "Plan your dive, dive your plan". This means that there is a moment in which you have to make a plan for what to do and a moment in which you have to execute that plan without question. When you dedicate time to planning you carefully think through what you are going to do before acting so your strategy is more effective. When you dedicate time to execution you do not have to waste time thinking about what to do and are free of any distractions.

23 time Olympic Gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps goes by this strategy as well. He visualized his swimming to the greatest detail during his training so that when he jumped into the pool he did not have to waste time thinking of what to do. He executed his plan as he had already made it from the thousands of times he had visualized it. If something went wrong he already knew what to do because his actions would have been preprogrammed from repeated visualization of every possible scenario.

This strategy of separating the planning and execution of an action can be applied in any endeavor of life not just for athletes and navy seals. There are 3 steps to this approach, the first is to create a goal, then make a plan and execute on that plan.

Creating the goal:

The goal is the thing that you want the most in your life. Whereas for Michael Phelps it was to win the Olympic gold medal for you it can be anything ranging from starting a business, to building a house to getting that dream job or starting that relationship. The biggest problem I have realized with our goals is we often prematurely create them before doing some deep soul searching. We setup goals because of influences of other people or because of what other people have achieved without taking into account our own unique needs and desires. It is important not to prematurely set your goal before carefully analyzing your own unique needs. It was Socrates who said the key to happiness is to know they self. In many cases we think we know ourselves and what we want but in reality we are highly influenced by our conditioning which make us set goals that are not in tune with what we truly want. It was Thomas Merton who said, “People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”

This is why it is so important to set the right goals that are in tune with one’s inner self. To do this in most cases we have to empty ourselves of any biased preconceptions of what we think is good for us and begin to ask ourselves what truly sparks our interest. Our thoughts often take on material shapes and we think this is what we desire: houses, cars, money, women, friends etc but in reality what we really want are the feelings that these material things bring. Buddhists believe that there is no thing that is a thing in itself and therefore, all these objects are but a manifestation of thoughts and emotion. This is in line with quantum physics experiments which show that everything is energy and vibration. Therefore the ultimate goal or desire is really nothing more than a feeling of a particular quality. Ask yourself what kind of feeling you would like to experience for your future self, I have reduced to eight emotions that the soul desires for itself: security, peace, freedom, productivity, love, vitality, abundance, wonder.

A worthy goal should satisfy all these, being careful not to bias one over the other. If a seed is planted it should first be protected from predators by securing it. Only then shall it find peace and quiet to exercise its freedom to be productive and grow. By serving nature with its shade it will find love from which it will obtain vitality to produce fruits of abundance and finally all can wonder in its beauty.

These eight considerations will help you establish a worthy goal and help you continue to refine it until it is more concrete to you. You can then integrate this goal in your visualization which should be done before you go to sleep by repeatedly seeing it in your mind and all things related to it. Identify objects in reality that satisfy its emotion so as to strengthen the feeling. Look at how it affects your life and how it makes you feel in all its depth and breadth. The more detailed the visualization the more you are likely to see it manifest in your daily life.

The goal you establish should also be challenging but not too challenging that it exceeds your potential. It should match your skillset so as to inspire and motivate you. It should arouse your passion and interest. It is the goal that will give you drive to keep on moving during truly challenging times and so it is important that you establish a worthwhile one. The question you have to ask yourself is where you want to be in the next 3 years and what kind of emotional experiences you expect from there.

Making the plan:

Once you have established what your goal is you must create a plan. A plan is a goal that has been divided into many sub-goals. This makes each sub-goal easier to achieve in comparison to the main goal. Jonatan Mårtensson said “Success will never be a big step in the future, success is a small step taken just now.” Therefore we have to divide our main goal into smaller achievable, quantifiable and actionable steps. You can write these down on a list and I usually establish them by comparing my goal with where I am right now. I then ask myself the missing pieces that are preventing me from reaching my goal starting with the most difficult to the easiest. After reviewing the list I will find that there are things I can begin working as soon as right now or tomorrow in order to create that first step to a new direction.

I can then create a schedule and assign a time and a place for each action point to be executed. The schedule should be realistic and seamlessly sequenced to make it more efficient. Time for rest, pleasure and reflection should be put into consideration but this should not constitute more than 20% of the available time. Each action should have a portion of time assigned to it so that even if it is not completed others are not ignored.

I usually like to plan my day every morning before I get out of bed, this way I do not have to waste time during the day making little decisions because I have already made up my mind on what to do before the day begins. You can also make an annual, monthly or weekly plan depending on what you find most convenient and write down exactly what you intend to do. The act of creating and visualizing your plan builds an anticipation within you that increases the motivation to proceed to the next step to execute the plan.

Execution:

The most important thing during execution is to spend as little time planning as possible so most of your actions are on autopilot. You already know what you have decided to do and you must do it in order to fulfill your higher purpose and so your discipline will not allow your weaker self to fill your mind with excuses on why you should not go through with it. The execution state is the flow state in which you minimize distractions as much as possible and concentrate only on the task at hand. You will only be allowed a break at the time your schedule allows it and only for that time before you resume your task.

I have found that it is better to begin my day with the most concentration demanding tasks and then handle the less concentration demanding tasks as I feel more and more exhausted. The important thing is to stick to your schedule so that even if unforeseen circumstances occur that cause you not to finish a particular task you must switch to another so every task has got some portion of your time.

During execution you do not question why you are doing a particular task you simply do it to the best of your ability concentrating all your energy and focus on the present moment like a razor intent on slicing a cable. You must however maintain a degree of flexibility so that when things do not go according to plan you follow the contingency plan. You should take note of the challenges that you have faced so that when you make a plan for the next day you know what changes to integrate in there that should resolve the issues the following day.

Conclusion:

This article is not a definitive guide on how to achieve success, it is simply my view on the subject based on the research I have done, my personal experience and intuition. It is best to interpret it from your own context however one thing to always keep in mind is from Arthur Ashe quote “Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”

As long as you are doing something that you are passionate about and truly love then it doesn’t matter if you do not reach your goal because you have already enjoyed the journey every step of the way. The goal is simply to give a fixed direction in which to navigate like a compass so that you do not move in circles and end up where you have already been.