4 Simple Steps to Turn Your Life Around
You may be stuck in a dead-end job, just trying to make ends meet. You may have lost your job due to Covid, or be dealing with lingering effects from getting sick. You may even have the outward trappings of success, but be dying a little inside every day, and desperate to get out.
The good news is that, it doesn’t matter what situation you find yourself in. If you take the following four steps every morning, you’ll be able to quickly turn your life around. Best of all, each step is super simple.
Step 1: The Maui Habit: It’s Gonna Be a Great Day!
“The Maui Habit leads to you doing other good things, right after, and through the morning, and day after day.” — BJ Fogg
The Maui Habit is as easy as it gets. First thing in the morning when you wake up, as soon as you stand up, say, “It’s going to be a great day!”
If you’re really down and struggling, you can say, “It’s going to be a great day…somehow.”
Stanford behavior researcher BJ Fogg offers this habit as one of his Tiny Habits for change that people can choose. According to him, the Maui Habit is the #1 habit that people choose which becomes automatic.
Why do habits become automatic? They’re easy, and they work. You get a benefit from doing the habit that you can see and feel. That keeps you doing it.
So why does it work? How does saying, “It’s gonna be a great day!” help you to actually have a great day?
People want to be right
People want to be right. Most of us would rather be right than be happy.
What happens when we tell ourselves that it’s going to be a great day? Our subconscious immediately sets about making sure that we’re right.
Imagine waking up, and thinking, “I don’t know why I even bother getting out of bed. Life sucks.” You drag yourself out of bed, head into the kitchen for breakfast, and discover the trash wasn’t taken out. Your first thought will be that this is an example of how life sucks.
You’re right! Hooray, you! Unfortunately, you’ve now primed yourself to see all the ways life sucks. You’ll be depressed and miserable. But you’ll be right!
Now imagine you wake up, and say, “It’s gonna be a great day!” You drag yourself out of bed, and your subconscious immediately kicks in. How can it be a great day if you have so little energy? You spontaneously do a couple of jumping jacks to get your heart rate up.
This morning, when you get to the kitchen, you’re already pumped from those jumping jacks. You see the trash, and think, maybe the trash truck hasn’t come yet. If you hurry, you might still get it out in time. You grab the bag of trash and run it outside — just in time for the trash truck to get it.
You’re right! Hooray, you! It really is going to be a great day!
Step 2: Make Your Bed
“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” — Admiral William H. McRaven
Making your bed is a simple task. It’s so simple, even children can do it. But the effect it can have is profound.
By starting your day with a simple task, which you can complete successfully, you start your day with a win. It helps to give you confidence.
The next thing you do that day may be something you’re not sure about. You may have tried and failed in the past. Or you may have gotten just so far on a project, and be stuck about how to get past that point.
If you’ve already had a win, you face that new challenge with confidence.
But there’s another reason making your bed helps start your day off right.
Close your loops to increase your power
When we leave things undone, we create open loops in our brains. Every time we see the undone thing, a little voice in our head reminds us that we have a task we need to do.
Those open loops can be good things. That’s what reminds us to put the milk back in the fridge instead of leaving it on the counter.
But every open loop drains our brain power. It’s like a cell phone, constantly beeping with alerts. Pretty soon, you’re looking at your cell phone all the time, and have no time left to do anything else.
If your head is full of reminders of things you need to finish, you won’t be able to start anything new. And that will keep your life stuck where it is.
So making your bed gives you confidence and the ability to start new things. If you share your bed, you can make your half while the other person is sleeping. Seeing the bed half-made is more likely to get them to make their half, automatically. So then you’ll both start the day with confidence and the ability to take on new things.
Step 3: Get Dressed and Put On Shoes
“You act differently when you have clothes and shoes on. You are more professional.” — FlyLady
Especially now, with so many people working from home, there’s a real temptation to not bother getting dressed. People even act like it’s some sort of treat. “You can work in your underwear.” “You can take conference calls in your pajamas.”
Maybe every once in a while, you can still have a lazy day where you don’t get dressed. You sit on the couch binge watching Netflix and eating Cheetos. When it’s time to go to bed, you don’t even have to get changed.
But what got done that day? Nothing. Because you never signaled your mind that you were awake and ready to get things done. You sleep-walked through the day.
It’s even more important if you’re trying to make a change in your life. Wearing shoes signals that you’re ready for action. If you get the call that you need to be somewhere Right Now, you can grab your keys and be out the door in an instant.
People sense what they can’t see
You may be wondering why it’s important to signal your brain that you’re ready for action. Isn’t it more important to actually take action? Well, yes…and no.
If you are going to be sending anything out into the world — emails, phone calls, video interviews — you need to send it out with the right energy. And even if none of those things shows whether or not you’re wearing shoes, the energy with which you approach them will be subtly different.
Sales trainers coach sales people to smile before they pick up the phone. People can hear the smile in your voice, and respond more positively.
Similarly, if you are dressed and ready to take action, that will come across in your manner. You will be slightly more confident, slightly less hesitant. The people you’re interacting with won’t be able to see whether or not you are wearing shoes. But they’ll know who they’d rather work with — the confident person who gets things done.
The flip side of this is that, you’ll also be programming your subconscious to think getting dressed and putting on shoes means “ready to work”. You’ll notice a willingness to dive into your daily tasks, as soon as you’re dressed. You’ll have a reason to be more confident, because you really will get more done.
Step 4: Do Your Most Important Thing
“When you develop the habit of starting on your most important task before anything else, your success is assured.” — Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy calls this habit, of doing the single most important task on your to-do list before you do anything else, eating your frog.
This vivid mental imagery comes from the witty remark, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
Average people tend to procrastinate on the important things, and get bogged down in trivial tasks. And that makes sense.
If you respond to an email, you can do it quickly, and feel good about accomplishing something. It makes you feel valued by your coworkers. They are relying on you for crucial information they need to do their jobs.
If you dig into an important task, it might take hours to complete. That’s a lot of delayed gratification, before you can feel good.
But once you do complete it? You’ll feel much better than you do when you answer an email. You’ll know that you’ve done something that truly matters to your long-term success.
That’s why highly successful people tend to be the ones who focus on doing the most important things first.
As Stephen Covey memorably demonstrated, if you fill a container with big rocks, then small rocks, then sand, there’s room for all your rocks. If you start with sand, then small rocks, you have no room left in the container for your big rocks. The big rocks are the important things you need to do to move forward.
This is even more crucial if you’re not working for someone else. No one will tell you what to do on any given day. If you want to move forward in your life, it’s up to you to decide how to spend your energy.
The best way to spend your energy is by accomplishing your most important thing.
The magical 3-hour window
Each of us has a magical window of time during which we are most productive. We can make the most progress on our projects, come up with the most inventive ideas, and make the most insightful decisions.
For most people, this window is first thing in the morning. That is when you have the greatest reserves of brain power.
You have not yet been bombarded by the million-and-one calls on your attention you’ll get later in the day. You are not yet wearied by decision fatigue — the reason it’s so much harder to stick to a diet in the evening versus the morning.
Doing your most important task during this window allows you to bring your strongest mental weapons to bear on it. You’ll accomplish it faster, and do it better, than if you wait.
For the chronically sleep-deprived, the window may not open until 10am or even later. You need your morning caffeine and sugary breakfast to clear away your brain fog, instead of naturally being alert shortly after you wake up. For you, the single biggest improvement you can make may be to get more sleep.
Even if you’re groggy when you start your day, you can make sure you’re able to work on your important thing when you do fully wake up. Don’t allow yourself to get bogged down by minor tasks (such as answering emails) that require lots of decisions. Prepare yourself for getting to work on your important task by looking up phone numbers, reviewing background material, or anything else you need to dive into your task once your magical window opens up.
Conclusion
To turn your life around, it is important to start each day with a positive, confident outlook. You need to prepare to do your best work, then actually do the single most important thing to move you forward. These four steps will help you do that:
1. Say, “It’s going to be a great day!”
2. Make your bed
3. Get dressed and put on shoes
4. Do your most important task
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I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you gain control of your life, increase your confidence, and become optimistic about the future. If you follow this daily, you will change your life very quickly!