PPI #140: Habits That Will Change Your Life

How do I be productive? How do I stay motivated? How do I sustain positivity? These are just a handful of questions that I get from my clients on a daily basis. The answer is simple. Habits. Positive habits. Positive habits that not only allow you to remain productive and achieve your goals, but habits which also promote balance and longevity. Today I'm going to share with you the habits that I use with my clients each and every day so that you can retrain yourself to be more productive and successful and and ultimately build yourself towards a happier life.

Hi, my name is Eric Partaker and I've been recognized as the CEO of the year. And I'm also the author of two best selling books including the Three Alarms. Now I for one used to really struggle with procrastination so badly that I actually bought an entire set of books on how to overcome procrastination and they actually sat on my bookshelf for 10 years. For an entire decade I stared at these books. But I eventually started to apply some of these techniques and as a result became a lot more productive. And we're going to be going into some of that today. Now you may not think that it's possible to live an inspired, accomplished and fulfilled life all at once, but I assure you that it is. And today I'm going to be teaching you a handful of things that you can be employing to reach the next level. The first thing that we need to do is we need to find work that matters and we need to find meaning in our work. Is what you're doing. Does it allow you to express your gifts, your talents with the world? Does it allow you to showcase who you are? Does it allow you to showcase your uniqueness? If it doesn't, then you gotta question, well, what is it that you're doing? Can you be switching to something else? And even if at first when you ask yourself that question, you say to yourself, no, I can't really switch to anything else. This is the only thing that I can be doing. Question that, really push yourself, think, okay, is that really true? Or am I perhaps living into this reality that I've created from created for myself, which doesn't really represent or fulfill me in the way that I would like. So we need to make sure once again that we're doing work that is meaningful, or at least we're finding meaning in our work. We want to be doing stuff that ultimately is service, just not to ourselves, but is a service to others as well. If we can find something that helps not just ourselves, but other people, it will bring so much more meaning and fulfillment to what we're doing in our lives. The next thing I want to talk about is the power of having a morning routine. I'm going to suggest something. It's a simple little acronym that I created. And to give you a little bit of context to this, I like to think of my mornings as a time where I, like, rev the engine in my day, where I'm going to set my whole day up for success. And so I came up with this simple acronym to rev the am, rev the engine, rev the morning of my day, get that engine going so that my day is powered for success thereafter. That acronym basically provides a framework for our morning routine. So Rev AM is the acronym, and each of the letters stands for something important to do, all within just a single hour in your morning. The R stands for read. We have a lot of things that we want to learn and do, and if we don't actually create space in our day for that learning, for that knowledge building, that, then often we feel a little bit regretful and we don't feel like we're doing our best. So the R stands for read. The E stands for exercise. We need to start our day with something positive, you know, something that boosts our energy. And exercise is such a phenomenal way to do that. It gives us a sense of, you know, positivity and a mood boost that we can carry throughout the entire day. So having some form of exercise in the morning, super important. The V stands for visualization. I. I take literally just five minutes to visualize. How would the best version of me show up in the context of the day? What would that version of me do not do? How would that version of me react and interact with the various people and the situations that I can see I'm going to be encountering in the course of my day. So that's the rev part. Reading, exercise, visualization. And then we want to rev the am. So the A stands for affirmations. These are just simple positive statements that you might have come across during the course of your life or that really means something to you that are worth rehearsing and saying to yourself on a daily basis. Whether that's something as simple as saying like, I never give up, you know, I always win, I always persevere. Or it could be something such as, you know, I'm good enough, I, you know, I love who I am, and I look forward to this day. Whatever those affirmations are, we want to affirm our greatness. Affirm, affirm our ability to achieve to succeed and ultimately affirm that we are happy with who we are right now, in that moment, with nothing else. And then the M stands for meditation. And it's a great way to clear the mind and set you up for success for the rest of the day by just taking a moment to clear, you know, those thoughts and to take a moment to just relax, become comfortable within your space. And if you haven't started a meditation practice, you don't need to make it complicated. Just start meditating for just one, two, even, you know, five minutes a day. And there's plenty of tutorials that you can find on YouTube and in other places that can teach you how to meditate. Super simply just type it in and you'll find tons of really great techniques and simple ways in which you can start meditating. So we just talked about creating a morning routine there. And another powerful thing you can do is create an evening routine. And what I suggest that you do in the evening is simply try to protect your sleep. You know, when we're watching TV and looking at our phones and doing all that artificial light, all that artificial light is going into our eyes. And when it goes through our eyes, it gets picked up by a gland at the center of your brain called a pineal gland, about the shape of a pea. And that gland, when it picks up that artificial light, thinks that it's still daylight outside. And as a result, it stops producing or lowers the production of a key substance in your body called melatonin, which induces sleep. So the simple technique here, the simple thing that you do to stop this from happening, is shut off all the electronics one hour before bedtime. If you do that one hour before bedtime, your brain's melatonin production will go where it needs to be so that you could sleep restfully and deeply and get that rejuvenation that you so desperately need. Next up, you need to declutter your life. So stop doing more, do less, do smaller. You know, a more finite set of things that will make a difference in your life rather than trying to do absolutely everything, declutter your life. What are the things that you need to most focus on rather than trying to do it all? Trying to do everything all the time. And the fifth thing that you can do is focus on the small things. It's the small things which done consistently over time that lead to great results. It's sort of like interesting compounding in a bank, right? You put in a small amount of money at first, and then over time, that interest compounds and that bank account balance grows. It's the same with your positive habits. If day in and day out you're doing these small habits and you do them over a long period of time, you get absolutely transformative results have such a huge impact on your life. So for example, if you are not exercising on a daily basis, well, start small and exercise literally for one minute each day and then maybe two minutes and then three minutes. Just plant that seed as small as possible so that you can be doing that consistently day in and day out. And as the consistency gets established, then look to grow the habit. Then let that habit, let that seed blossom into the full tree that you want it to be. For example, you know, let that in the example of the exercise routine. Let that one minute of exercise suddenly become, you know, 5 minutes and 10 minutes and 15 and 20 and maybe an hour over time. But focus on the consistency first because that small, those small habits done every single day consistently build up the discipline and eventually compound over time and turn into the positive results that you're looking for. And I'd love to hear from you. So don't forget to leave a comment and a rating as well. And if you'd like to get a copy of my new book, the Three Alarms, please head over to my website at ericpartaker.com that's E R I C ericpartaker.com where you can pick up a free digital copy of my new best selling book, the Three Alarms.