PART II: Opportunities

Here we can look at different opportunities to improve your life in many ways, including career opportunities plus any opportunity that comes from learning new things and understanding yourself better.

Sometimes certain factors can get in our way, especially the recent COVID-19 Pandemic. Certain obstacles seem so high and out of reach, but sometimes your mind overreacts to this and makes it harder for you to achieve any opportunities.  Obviously, the pandemic is completely out of our hands (hurry up vaccines). Now it is time to fight back, and make the obstacle the best destination to follow, to follow and conquer. Maybe you have an opportunity to do something new during these times.

Here are a few mental traits below that can help with the opportunity or increase the power of the obstacle, not in your favour.

Willpower

This is super important, as not having the will to do something sets you up for instant failure.  Everyone needs the willpower to help them achieve new things as your excitement for any opportunity will have its low points, and it’s these low points that turn things south.

Will power is required to push you further, the will to understand that you will have low moments and that it will be temporary. Here you need to check over your goals and remind yourself why you are doing said opportunity in the first place.

Habits

Habits are another obstacle that can let you down, as it’s easy to just carry on as you are, doing the same things (habits) repeatedly.  Your brain likes habits, as it knows what’s likely to happen which in turn adds security to your life. Our brain wants an easy life. 

Breaking habits is temporarily uncomfortable, but as time goes on it gets easier and easier to overcome any habits you may have.  For example, people who give up smoking struggle for the first few days but eventually it gets easier as your body no longer sees smoking as a habit you still do.

Routines

We all have routines in some format in our life, for example, we go to bed at night, and wake up in the morning. This is a routine.

We sometimes eat at certain times of the day, every day. Our minds enjoy routines as it has nothing new to learn like habits, gives your mind a rest and a sense of security.

So Now What?

In the next chapter, we will discuss how to go in the right direction towards our goals and opportunities without letting any obstacles get in the way.

Learning what routines are healthy and what are not plus how to break bad habits while creating good habits to help you along the way.

“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Chapter Four: Habits and Routines

Where do we start when challenging both habits and routines? We go back to the beginning to find out why we have these habits or routines, so this way we can decide if they are good habits and important routines, etc.

Habits

Here, we will look at why you have certain habits and if they can cause destruction on your future.  Some habits are healthy habits that we must keep like for example, the obvious one being eating, or sleeping.  These habits I know are very obviously good but there are some out there that are not, take for example overeating, or oversleeping.  This shows you that a good habit can be abused in becoming a bad habit.

Another example is a good habit of checking windows are closed, and doors are locked before leaving the house, to prevent burglaries or any unwelcome guests. But this again can also be abused where you keep checking the same thing over again, even though you already have done them in the first place.  This is better known as OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) which is a disorder that is very hard to get out of.  I know this having suffered from it myself.

So, the secret here is habits in moderation without letting them take over and controlling your life.  You could start by writing down habits you find useful and habits you could get rid of.  This way it will be easier to figure out what is a good habit, and what isn’t.

Examples of good habits:

  • Eating efficiently
  • Drinking enough fluids
  • Exercising
  • Keeping track of bills etc.
  • Loving & Kindness
  • Sleeping efficiently
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Hobbies
  • Meditation & Yoga

Examples of bad habits:

  • Eating junk food
  • Smoking
  • Drinking alcohol excessively
  • Being lazy
  • Drinking sugary drinks
  • Watching too much TV
  • Avoiding problems/procrastination
  • Being aggressive/hurtful
  • Telling lies
  • Judging others

How to Tackle Bad Habits

According to research on habits, they say it can take up to 66 days to change a habit, whether that be a bad habit or not.  As you can imagine, breaking any habit will be at its most difficult at the beginning of the cycle, while slowly getting easier as time goes on, when hopefully after approximately 66 days, the habit should be gone.

To break any habit, you really need to look at the habit and understand why you want to break it, and how your life will improve once this habit has gone.  This part is extremely important, as you may need to rethink this repeatedly to use as fuel to help with breaking the habit.  You could possibly write down in a journal your progress towards breaking the habit, with little reminders of why you are doing it in the first place.

It can always be easy to fall back into a habit, as it managed to be a habit in the first place, so you are accustomed to the problem.  If you ever do slip up, don’t then give up and see yourself as a failure, just try again, and again, while getting better at it and stronger still.  Never give up on yourself, just the habit you are trying to destroy.

Routines

We all do need a routine to a certain extent, to get us through the day like a morning routine, traveling routine and a sleeping routine.  These routines are obviously important and help you through life.

Some routines, like going to the same hangouts, the same holidays, doing the same thing constantly is a routine that would be better to break, there is much of the world to explore than doing the same thing over and over out of convenience. This really isn’t living.

Apart from waking up, eating, going to work and sleeping, all other activities should be exciting and different from what you normally do, it’s easy to sit in front of a TV all evening, but this is not going to make you happy in the long term, although everyone deserves to rest and a bit of TV won’t kill anyone, but the term a little is very important here. Don’t abuse the TV! If it is a habit you need to shake, then re-read this chapter again.

Summary

So, as you can see, we all have habits and routines, some important and worthwhile and some not so much.  But at the end of the day, don’t try and do it all in one go, destroy one bad habit at a time, not going Gung-Ho at it, as this can be very overwhelming. 

Remember, make notes in your notebook or journal detailing your progress, as to help you forward and to remind you of why you are doing this in the first place. Countdown the days in your diary/journal from 66 to 0 to see your progress, etc.

The same goes for your routines, don’t do too much at once, just one routine at a time.  It is not a sprint.

“I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world… it pushed me to think of things bigger than life’s daily routines… to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.”

– Mikhail Baryshnikov

Chapter Five: Follow Your Heart

When we enjoy doing things, doing them will tend to be easier than doing things we dislike or just aren’t that fond of.  Why is this? The simple answer is that we enjoy doing them, so we are more likely to be happy doing them.  This is why we need to follow our heart and not just do things for the sake of doing them.

As strange as this might seem, you might think that this is obvious, but if you looked at all the things you do in your life, whether that be work or chores, you would find that everything you do isn’t what you necessarily want to do.

Ok so work, for example, we most probably need to do this as it pays the bills, but so many people, even people I know, don’t enjoy their work, and just do it because they must.

This is where we need to change things.  We need to maybe find a career we can enjoy, a career that you want to do and that makes you happy.  

There is always a way to do this, it just may take some time to do.  You need to get your notebook/journal and write down things that make you happy, and then list possible jobs that associate with this.  Even if you must start at the bottom, you will be happy and likely rise to the top quicker than you would if you were doing a job you dislike.

So now is the time to focus on what you would like to do, and start putting it into action rather than just dreaming of the idea, etc.

Hobbies

One thing I would like to mention here is that a job you do will need to be something meaningful to you, but at the same time if you have a hobby that you enjoy, then it would be crazy to maybe go in that direction for work.

The reason I say this is, say for example your hobby is photography, and then you start to build a career in photography, this could remove the enjoyment you once had with taking photos.   

This is not the same for everyone of course, as I know a couple of photographers who enjoy working in photography while taking photos also as a hobby, but even they admit that it feels like they are bringing their work home with them.

So here you need to think carefully about whether this could impact your hobbies and remove the fun from it.

Work/Life Balance

This is super important as even the best jobs can be frustrating and make you unhappy if you are not enjoying time away from your career and spending quality time with friends and family.

There are only so many hours in a week that we have, so make sure you have time to enjoy other things in your life whether that is exercise, hobbies, spending time with kids/family or any other activity you enjoy doing.

Plus, you need time for you, just you, to gather your thoughts and relax.  Mindfulness and meditation are great examples for this, along with Yoga postures and long walks to rest your mind, which I mentioned in a previous chapter.  Feel free to look back over this book to remind yourself of these tips.

Be Yourself

The most important thing here is to be yourself and don’t emulate others.  There may be times where you listen to feedback from others or get advice for direction, which is fine, but it doesn’t mean you need to become them, it is just advice for you to improve you, yourself, and nobody else.

Just remember there is only one you, and being unique is what can set you apart from the others, which in turn can improve your likelihood of success in your career and happiness in life in general as being you shouldn’t need pressure, we are already ourselves and only need to impress ourselves and enjoy each moment we are alive, because their won’t be another you.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chapter Six: Time To Act

So having read up to here so far, feel free to re-read any or all the previous chapters again to make sure you understand fully everything I have explained.

I have kept this book and all the chapters short and quick to read so that each part is easier to understand and memorize.  I have found that books I have read with short chapters have had a bigger impact on me and been much easier to understand and remember than books that have 20/30-minute chapters.

No one needs to put pressure on you to succeed and be happy, you need to do this for yourself and only yourself, as only you can make yourself happy, as happiness comes from within, and happiness is already inside of you for the taking, we just need to remember where to find it, and hopefully this book can help you along the way to a happier, more courageous and inspiring you.

This book is deliberately small and straight to the point, it isn’t me being lazy and writing as little words as possible, I am just living in the modern world where time is precious and sometimes, we need to get straight to the point and then move on with that point.

“Fear is a good thing. Fear is going to lead you to take action.”

– Steve Bannon

 

Part 3 Coming Soon.

© Copyright 2019 by Joseph Stewart – All rights reserved.

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