10 Ways To Improve Your Life Today - A Life With Intention

We have 10 tips to help you to improve your life today.

#1 Invest In Yourself

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself”. Warren Buffet

A very simple and inexpensive way to invest in yourself is to read. Reading is a cheap and powerful way to change your mindsets and learn from some of the greatest thinkers of our time; it is a game changer.

If you read the right books you are getting knowledge from highly successful, accomplished people at a price that is less than a few coffees.

I have made reading a regular part of my life in the last few years and it has been a life changer. It has guided me in health, fitness, leadership, business, relationships, finance, time management and so much more.

There is gold sitting in some of these books but sadly so few find it but we would encourage you to make reading a part of your life.

What If I Struggle With Reading?
The right books will change your mindsets and change your life but if you don’t like reading please check our article on “smart reading”. This is a tool we found that can help you read more books in one month than a CEO.

One of the features of this tool is the video summaries of the books by the authors who wrote them. It is been named the Netflix of reading and it is a very effective tool. Click >HERE< to find out more, the link will open in a new tab.

If you do like reading but would like some tips on becoming a more effective reader, with some book recommendations click >HERE< for an article to help you become an effective reader.

Other Forms Of Investment
Another way to invest in yourself is online courses, programs and conferences. We live in an incredible time where the internet has enabled us to learn almost anything from anywhere.

You can find quality courses taught by some of the best on almost every subject you can think of so it makes sense to take advantage and invest in your skills.

Many courses will have a private Facebook group that you can join, connect and exchange ideas with other like minded people.

The team at A Life With Intention have done many courses and we have found the Facebook groups that to gain access to hugely valuable. The other upside to the online Facebook groups is that is if you are unable to travel to conferences for whatever reason you have a community online for support and connection.

#2 Find Mentors

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled”. Plutarch

Mentors will help you cut the learning curve on anything you are trying to achieve. They help you avoid making unnecessary mistakes; you can learn from their mistakes and victories.

Here are a few people who would accredit a lot of their success to mentors.

Bill Gates

Founder of Microsoft who has a net worth of around 89 billion and was mentored by Ed Roberts

Warren Buffet

Investor, CEO of Berkshire Hathway who has a net worth of around 84 billion. He was mentored by Benjamin Graham.

Michael Jordan

Basketball superstar and Olympic athlete who led the Chicago Bulls to six National Basketball Association championships and earned the NBA’s Most Valuable Player Award five times. Michael Jordan was mentored by Phil Jackson.

Alexander The Great

He served as king of Macedonia from 336 to 323 B.C. During his time of leadership, he united Greece, reestablished the Corinthian League and conquered the Persian Empire. He also became the king of Persia, Babylon and Asia, and created Macedonian. Alexander The Great was mentored by Aristotle.

Oprah Winfrey

Talk show host, actress, producer, business women and philanthropist. Oprah Winfrey was mentored by Maya Angelou. The Oprah Winfrey Show was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011 and she is a multi billionaire. Oprah Winfrey was mentored by Maya Angelou.

Steps To Get A Mentor

The first thing you could do is research how other successful people got mentored. Learn from their journey and see what actions they took and replicate their steps.

A starting point for this process is to think about where you want to be in 10 years, find someone who is there and ask them to mentor you. You can contact most people via social media but before you do that, you should do some research on them before contacting them.

Getting a mentor will be easier if you offer some sort of value to them at no cost to them. If you have no skills to offer them you could offer to work for them for free and although this seems counter-intuitive, you have a higher chance of success with this strategy.

Look at it this way, if you work for them for free and get mentored you will be learning under someone who has experience, knowledge and a strategy of how to get the success you aim for. It could end up being a priceless experience for you.

Things to Keep In Mind

You need to be realistic about who you are trying to get mentored by. If you are in the early stages of your career you might only need someone who is a few steps ahead of you. These people will be reachable and more likely to help you.

The Attitudes Mentors Look For

– Enthusiasm

– Humility

– Teachability

#3 Use Your Time Wisely

“The trouble is that you think you have time”. Jack Kornfield

Your time is your biggest asset and you can’t get it back so use it wisely to build a great life for yourself. The best way to not waste your time is to define an endgame. This could be something you want to achieve.

When you commit to a goal you will have to work out what you need to do to achieve it. What you aim to achieve will teach you to prioritise your time and without you trying, you will value the time you have much more and waste less of it; your time will become precious.

#4 Choose Relationships Wisely

“We become the average of the five people we spend most of the time with”. Jim Rohn

Set high criteria for the people you allow in your life. If you invest in yourself you will attract the type of people who are also trying to do great things and build a great life.

How Do You Meet Good People?

A technique we found from The 67 Steps is called inversion and you can apply this to a lot of decisions you need to make. In this case you would use inversion to consider who the wrong people are and avoid them.

Who Are The Type of People You Should Avoid?
Insecure people. Insecure people will sabotage your development and block you from reaching your goals. They may not be bad people, it might just be a stage on their journey so don’t take any of their actions personally.

You want to make a point of being around good people. Good people will celebrate your success and want you to do well but how do you find them?

The first thing you should do is to become the person you are trying to attract.

Becoming the best version of yourself is lifelong process but every conscious step you take towards that goal will help you attract better people. The next thing you could do is to start going to social events and meet new people.

One way of finding like-minded people is through meetup.com. Look up meetups that are happening in your local area based on things you like doing and go along. When you meet people you connect with you should exchange details with them and start investing in the relationships.

#5 Master Your Mind

“Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power”. Lao Tzu

Having control of your mind is one of the greatest tools you can have.

It is a human tendency to move away from pain into pleasure. You have to learn to discipline your mind so that you can move towards your goals as it is very easy to indulge on things that can be harmful to you like fast food, drugs, alcohol and sugar.

Negative thinking patterns and other unhealthy emotions can also be addictive. If you have control of your mind you can win the mental battles that can end up ruling you and ruining you.

How Do You Win The Mental Battles?

The first thing to do is to not trust your brain. Your brain is a divided entity as one part wants instant gratification and the other wants to make good decisions.

The way to combat the weak areas of your life is to build good habits. For example, if you eat too much of the wrong foods, start making steps towards the right actions.

Small steps will lead to the right actions and habits. When you take continual action like this you will start to see progress.

#6 Build On Your Strengths

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit". Will Durant

If you build on the things you are good at, you will naturally create enjoyable work for yourself. The main key here is to know yourself; self-awareness is so important and this is an ongoing journey of self-discovery.

The two things we have found very helpful to do is to ask people we trust and respect what our strengths and weaknesses are. You might need to do some groundwork here to prepare yourself for their honesty but what they tell you will give you some very valuable insights.

Another exercise we found to be very helpful is a SWOT analysis. This is usually some you do for starting a business but it can work to understand yourself better.

SWOT stands for

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

Another route you could take to help you understand yourself more is to take some personality tests. We found these absolutely fascinating and will give you some insights about yourself that you may not have noticed.

The classic test is the Myers Briggs which you can find online. We found one called The 16 Personalities. This is based on the Myers Briggs test and it is free.

#7 Eat Healthy & Exercise

“The greatest wealth is health”. Virgil

Good health is the foundation of a healthy happy life. There are numerous studies to show that regular exercise and a healthy diet will help you look and feel good.

The food you eat and the exercise you do enables your body and mind. To live a healthy and happy life your body needs healthy nutritious food.

What Are Healthy Nutritious Foods?

Food that grows on trees and plants is a good start for improving your diet.

Opinions on this vary a lot and so we would advise you to do some research on this topic to see what you think makes sense for you.

We have looked at many different viewpoints on diet from Keto, Paleo, Atkins and the list goes on but recently we found this book that we would recommend you take a look at called The China Study.

Disclosure

The link below is an affiliate link. This means that at NO additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

This book is based on one of the largest comprehensive study of human nutrition ever conducted and from this study, the author recommends the best diet for long-term health.

It is a weighty book from a content point of view which makes it a heavy read but the result of their finding is that a plant-based diet is nutritionally the best diet for long-term health.

Here are few sobering discoveries that they found from their data.

– Animal protein promotes the growth of cancer.

– Heart disease can be reversed through nutrition.

– Carbs are not all bad.

– You can eat a full nutritionally balanced diet without animal-based foods.

– People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic diseases.
– People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest.

This is a very controversial topic and we are not here to push a “party line”, we are just presenting the data in the hope you will do some research for yourself.

Below are some resources that may help you research the topic further.

www.drmcdougall.com

www.nutritionfacts.org

Other Things To Help Your Body & Mind

– Regular Excercise.

– Quality Sleep.

– Meditation.

– Plenty of Water.

– Time With Friends and Loved Ones.

Even with all the things in place in your life, you will still have problems; there is no way of escaping problems but you will be in a better place to deal with them.

#8 Work Hard and Smart

“Smart work pays best. Trust it". Connor McGregor

Working hard is always going to be an uphill battle if you hate the work you are doing. On the flipside, if you are passionate about the life you are living you will naturally want to work hard.

How Do You Find Something That You Are Passionate About?

This goes back to knowing yourself and in this article we did we give you some pointers to help you find your life purpose. You can read it by clicking >HERE<

Below is one of the tips from that article.

When you are out on a Saturday night not working, what can you talk about effortlessly all night?
What you enjoy talk about in your spare time is a huge indicator of the type of things that you are really into.

Being passionate and working hard are a great start but there are still not enough to get you to where you want to go; you have to work smart with a plan and a strategy.

Strategy is not only about knowing what to do, it is also about knowing what not to do. This goes back to getting good mentors and books; all the steps weave into each other.

#9 Be A Life Long Learner

"Once you stop learning you start dying". Albert Einstein

There is too much to learn on any given subject for you to ever stop progressing. The mindset of always wanting to learn will keep your mind fresh and flexible.

One way to cultivate this is to watch how children play; they are still in awe of the world. Having awe of our world keeps you in a place of knowing that there is always more to learn and new ways to grow.

This attitude will help you any field you work in because you will keep digging deeper into any given subject, knowing that there is always more to discover.

We’ve been conditioned by school that learning is boring and unrewarding but this is simply not true.

If you dedicate yourself to learning and self-education in many subjects you can you create an amazing life.

If You Find It Hard To Find Time To Learn

Finding time to learn and develop yourself can be difficult but we recently found an amazing tool that has doubled the number of books we read in a month.

It uses all the learning styles (visual, auditory & kinesthetic) to help you learn the concepts from the books at a faster speed.

The biggest feature by far is the fact that you are getting taught by the authors of the books. This is an amazing way of learning, we have called it smart reading.

Click the link below to find out more about this cutting-edge learning tool or click >HERE<

#10 Be Humble

"Liberate yourself from the need to be right". Seth Godin

Humility is a value that will keep you grounded and teachable. It doesn’t mean that you lack in confidence it just means you know that there is always room for growth.

Humility is very simply an attitude that will help you to keeping learning and growing for the rest of your life. It is linked with step #9 (Be A Life Long Learner) and it is probably one of the most underrated attitudes that you can cultivate to help you grow and create a happy life for yourself.

How To Grow In Humility

– Vocalise when you don’t know something.

– Say you are sorry when you have done something wrong.

– Always be willing to learn from anyone.

– Be willing to hear other peoples points of view even if you don’t agree with them.

– Don’t throw away your dignity or be unkind to yourself, but laugh at yourself.

How To Create a Great Life

One of the inspirations for us starting A Life With Intention was to share our journey of development to help other people.

In the early stages of trying to get the main components of our lives in a good place; health, wealth, love and happiness we went through a program that really helped us.

This article was inspired by the ideas we learnt in that program and it has helped thousands of people worldwide build a life they love.

The program is based on ideas from some of the best thinkers of our time distilled into an easy actionable program that can help you develop habits and mindsets that will change your life.

To read our review of this life-changing resource which has tips to help find your life purpose click the link below.

If you found this article on “10 Way To Improve Your Life Today” helpful you will get a lot out of our article on “How To Create A Great Life”.