The beautiful thing about life is that we have the freedom to make our own decisions. Things as small as what side of the road we walk on to choosing where to invest our hard earned money. They all impact the flow of our days in their own ways, and the quality of our day is a result of our decisions.

But, there are a handful of decisions you make everyday that are truly disproportionately impactful. They are decisions that influence other downstream opportunities or choices, which are what make up the bulk of our days. In these decisive moments, it is extremely important to make the right decisions consistently.  

This might best be understood in a pair of examples. Let’s start with the first decision of your day. When your alarm goes off, do you get up, or do you snooze? If you get up, then you start your day on schedule, and you can begin going through tasks seamlessly and comfortably.  However, if you snooze, then you immediately put yourself off track and have to play “catch up” for the rest of your day. This might impact the quality of your breakfast, and put you in worse traffic on your way to work, thus, placing you in a more stressful state. See how quickly that compounded? And it all originated from one decision.

Another example is let’s say you need to go to the bank. Either you can plan a time for it and go, making a firm decision without hesitation, or you let it linger in your mind, distracting you from other things, and negatively impacting the rest of your day.

Each day is filled with decisive moments that affect the rest of your day, take control of those moments and experience a whole new level of productivity.

Its important to have a strong morning routine. Mornings set the tone for the rest of your day, and it’s an opportunity to instill productivity into your day.  

One extreme version of this comes from Personal Mastery expert, Robin Sharma. He encourages everyone to do three things at 5 am as part of his 20 20 20 rule:

The reason why he believes in it is because mornings change lives. Good mornings lead to good days which leads to good years and good lives. So, find the right balance in your morning routine to make sure you are preparing yourself in the appropriate ways. If you’ve already got a solid morning routine, then keep it up, you’re on the right track! But, if you’re still looking to perfect your morning routine, test a few things out until you find what you like.

“Take it day by day. Don’t stress too much about tomorrow”. I understand, and I’m guilty of it too, we all have a master plan that we are working toward. That master plan might not come into fruition for many weeks, months, or years. All of the work that needs to be done to get there might be daunting, but by giving it time, you’ll inch your way closer.

When it comes to stressing about tomorrow think about what that means. It means you are allowing something that is out of your control to affect your current mood. Maybe there’s a big event or family situation that is causing stress that won’t resolve for a few days, but even that future date is out of your control.

However, what you can do, and what you are in control of, is you can pick things to do in the moment that helps alleviate the gravity of the situation. Remember that you have the choice, and the ability to impact the situation immediately is an optimistic thought and a reminder that things will be okay.

So, “take it day by day. Don’t stress too much about tomorrow.”

Health is an extremely important part of your life and path to personal development, but as you may or may not have noticed, we haven’t shared anything really related to best health practices. Gina B is a registered dietitian, published author, and well renowned speaker in the dietary community. In the video, she tells us the foundation she teaches to having a successful diet plan.

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 I was on the phone with Lulu Yanez, a motivated and self-driven woman with a booming Instagram page, who shared with me a technique she uses. She stores all of her content ideas and impressions on post-it notes that she sticks to the door in her room.  Her door is filled with ideas, and it is a great reservoir of thoughts that she can tap into any time she needs to!

I decided to give the same concept a try at work, but with organizing my task list. I created three sections for me to put post it notes and organize my to-do’s.  Things that are urgent, things that are ongoing, and things that are completed.

I think this method really worked for me, and here is why. First, using post it notes and keeping them on my desk has allowed me to easily refer to my next objective, eliminating the down time between working on tasks. It also helps me reduce disruptions and distractions. Also, as random thoughts or tasks pop into my head, I can write it down immediately and take care of it later, instead of dropping what I’m doing to address it. If certain task are too big, I can write them onto separate post its, creating a natural plan of attack instead of being overwhelmed by a larger goal.

In sum, it’s rewarding finishing a task and moving it to the completed section, thereby validating the effort I put in and helping me keep track of how much I am getting done!

Social media sometimes gets a bad rap for all of the distractions, and bad information that it offers. However, it also does an incredible job connecting people. That’s the purpose of it! It provides instant access for two people from across the world to communicate, who may not even know of the other person’s existence. It’s crazy if you think about it, and there has to be some value in it.

Well, within the topic of self-improvement, that value is motivation and accountability! When interacting with other like-minded people, you feel motivated to do even more! It acts as the reminder you needed to take yourself seriously and follow through on the things you said you were going to do. Even though you’ve never met this person, you are still terrified to disappoint them, and will work extra hard to avoid a confrontation.

So, to really leverage this power, the best thing to do is to join an accountability group! 

I just learned about Earl Nightingale, a World War II era philosopher and author, and am blown away by his work. He shares a simple message about our psychology that has lasted the test of time and will continue to ring true. Our minds are powerful and capable of influencing our life. He gives a great metaphor for this in this meddage.

He goes on to talk about the power of our mind, and perception. Limitations are self-imposed, and if you feed your mind with limitations, it will begin accept them and produce more of them. The same goes for solutions and ambition. So, fill your mind with goals, ideas, and solutions that all point to success, and your mind will amplify that intention on its own.

This quote is similar to the distinction between 'playing not to lose' and 'playing to win'.  When you play not to lose, your focus is on not making mistakes. Your execution will become really rigid.  You’re more likely to put pressure on yourself and not perform like you should.  On the other hand, when you play to win, you have nothing to lose and can attack the challenge head on.  This allows you to take chances on your way to earning the result, without fear of what might happen.

To continue, using a lens of positivity helps you see opportunity. The reality of every situation we inherit is we can either go up or go down. You can get promoted, or you can get fired. You can get engaged or break up. Although both possibilities seem equally likely, when you choose to focus on what there is to gain, the perspective you choose tends to be favored in your life and transpire more often than you would think.  So, use positivity to see all that there is to gain. Don’t focus on what you have to lose.