5 Easy Tricks For The Mind

Consider these to help you sustain a good balance throughout the day.

You’ve read dozens of articles that promise big results when you make small changes.

You know about the morning routine and you might have exhausted yourself trying to nail it with a million different habits, only to still find yourself deflated halfway through the day.

You may schedule in a time to write down a list of things you’re grateful for but negativity still floods your mind now and again. You’re constantly reading about self-help and quite frankly, you’re tired of it.

Basically, it’s hard. Life is hard.

Well, this article isn’t for you if you think it’s going to fix you. But stay with me anyway, there is still hope.

I always say that you have to first be happy with what you have, and then believe that you are what you want to be. But it needn’t feel like a chore, and the second it does, something needs to change.

I do things every day to enable my good spirits. These rituals and habits are the symbols that represent my state of mind. They enable my feelings.

But I don’t rely on them to make me feel good — I use them as triggers. The taste of coffee in the morning makes me feel good but I feel good before I drink it — I wake up, go downstairs, and as I make my coffee, I look forward to it and felt genuinely grateful for having it.

All cliché habits become undervalued in the midst of our busy lives because although repetition is somewhat necessary to drum things into your head, it loses its value after a while, especially if your spirits aren’t high.

But, they do mostly work (with the right mindset).

Here are 5 tips to self-improvement that you may have not paid as much attention to:

#1. Implement Changes Slowly.

Chucking yourself in at the deep end is exciting in the beginning but exhausting and overwhelming after a while. To get results, I advise implementing changes one at a time.

It’s often difficult to get started because looking at all the changes you want to make can overwhelm and seem huge. And some of them are, so it would be unfair to expect a complete change in your lifestyle while still trying to keep up with the rest of your life.

The amount of times I’ve lost a tonne of weight quickly, only to pile it back on just as fast is ridiculous because I didn’t make permanent changes to maintain a healthy weight. Now, I’m losing weight slowly but maintaining that momentum, knowing it will be easy to sustain the goal weight once I reach it.

It’s the same with building new habits. Make one change a week (or a time you feel is reasonable), and just add each one on at a time. You’ll feel much more optimistic about the changes you’re making and it’ll give you something to look forward to. More importantly, you’ll be more likely to stick to them.

#2. Finish Every Morning Shower With a Cold Splash.

Many people have heard that taking a cold shower is great for you. But it’s short-lived. How realistic is it for someone who is not accustomed to taking cold showers all year to suddenly maintain this new habit? A cold shower has many benefits (for the scientific explanations of a cold shower, Google it – it’s all there), but it’s just unpleasant and dreadful.

I’m a sucker for a nice hot shower and I guess many other people are too. It makes me feel cosy, warm, and it puts me in a good mood. But it’s not quite what I need in the mornings to tackle the day because more often than not, I feel like going back to bed, not starting the day!

I suggest getting the best of both worlds and benefit from the comforting hot steam to relax you and finish with a brutal shock to the system with around 10 seconds of cold water to get those benefits of science.

I see the cold splash as a mental reset. No matter my mood, bad or good, this will change the subject and restart. If I was in a good mood before, this will only make me shout in the shower and say “let’s gooooo” as a way to motivate myself. If I started my day off badly, this will easily snap me out of it in the form of a slap in the face by the universe.

#3. Have a Midday Routine.

You’ve read about the morning routine. You’ve read about how sacred it is. And it really is. It’s bloody important because it’ll boost you for the day.

But, like coffee, there’s a comedown, a loss of energy — at around midday. I’m not a nutritionist, but I do have common sense, so obviously I’m going to tell you to eat a balanced diet. However, that’s not it.

What do you do straight after eating lunch? I used to sit down and relax, read, eat chocolate, drink coffee, etc.

If you’re stuck at work and your stress levels are high, avoid talking about work with a colleague when you’re taking a break — I made this mistake countless times and although there’s an urge to feed the mind with it, it’s just self-destructive.

At my peak happy point a few years ago, I was doing something else. I was going for a 30-minute brisk walk with a colleague around central London. The views weren’t the best and it was busy as hell, but I had a good time chatting about anything that was not work-related, and I would come back to the office feeling pumped for the afternoon.

The midday routine is just as important as the morning one because it’ll help sustain that good boost you gave yourself earlier in the day. It’ll keep you going till the evening. It’s a little break in the day that reinforces your “you’ve got this” attitude if done right.

On days where my mornings haven’t gone very well due to a moody toddler or a generally low state of mind, I try to listen to something inspirational while doing something physical right after lunch. I re-introduce the brisk walk, or I do housework from muscle memory so I can concentrate on resetting my mind.

#4. Save Positive Messages for a Rainy Day.

I’ve worked the stressful office job with low pay and benefits. There was no inspiration, no motivation, and middle management was inexperienced, childish, and unprofessional. However — the jobs themselves have been good, my colleagues became my family, and the clients and partner companies I worked with were incredibly talented and plain awesome. I would get thank you emails, compliment phone calls and messages on my LinkedIn. I saved all my positive messages and read them all almost daily to boost my confidence. They were my affirmations.

I didn’t know about The Secret then and I didn’t know how to love myself. I found this reinforced how well I was doing in my job despite all the pressures. It gave me reassurance that I wasn’t useless, at the very least.

I still read these messages sometimes, because inevitably there will be times when I feel unsure about myself. The truth is, everyone is insecure — everyone. We have different methods to overcome them, but we cannot deny that a nice message from a loved one or client will cheer you up. Keep them somewhere. My husband, an extremely successful software engineer and business owner, keeps a handwritten note from me stuck to the bottom of his computer screen. He will never admit it, but I bet he reads that and feels good.

#5. Stretch.

No, not yoga. I don’t do yoga.

I do stretch a lot.

I stretch first thing in the morning as I’m getting out of bed, and whenever I feel the need to let out a bit of built-up stress. I stretch just for fun, too, because it feels awesome.

The inspiration came from my son, like many of my ideas. When I get him out of bed in the mornings I lie him down on the sofa in his bedroom and he usually does the biggest stretches as he yawns. He always smiles right after. Doesn’t it feel amazing to just stretch your entire body?

Obviously, you can check online for the best ways to stretch safely, and even do stretching classes. I don’t spend more than a couple of minutes at a time doing it, but it’s a little free pleasure that can alter how the rest of your day goes.

Treat these as the unlimited jokers in your card deck. You might have other tricks up your sleeve, and that’s great (respond with your tips in the comments).

The key is making the habits stick like brushing your teeth without them becoming chores.

These are easy to implement into your life while you work on your inner self. They won’t make you happy, but they can help keep a good mood going.

You’ve got this.

Sylvia Emokpae, thinker and philosopher, is passionate about self-love, motherhood, and pro-race. See more work like this.