Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible – Tony Robbins

Let’s continue from the last post and see what personal practices we can adopt this year for all four important areas of life i.e. Health, Wealth, Relationship and Death.

There is an interesting research done by Marc McCormack and published in Success Secrets that…

83% of Harvard School graduates had no goals 10 years after graduation.

14% had goals, but not in writing.

And the remaining 3% had written goals.

As a Result?

Those that wrote down their goals were earning 10 times more than the group with no goals.

And 14% whose goals were not in writing were earning 3 times more than the group with no goal.

So, you can see how important it is to write down what you want to achieve.

There is something magical about putting your goals, wishes, demands on paper; it gives a clear signal to universe that you are now serious and ready to receive.

Time for Actions:

Grab a cup of coffee, find your favorite corner at home, and write down what 3 outcomes you will achieve in 2016 for all four areas that fulfills your life.

Answer these questions.

1. What 3 improvements I want to see in my physical shape this year?
2. What 3 passive income ideas I want to explore to earn more money this year?
3. What 3 improvements I want to see in my relationship with loved ones and others?
4. If I die this year, what are the things that would give me a sense of fulfillment and achievement? And how can I achieve those in this year itself?

Personal Practices for Four Areas of Life

1. Health:

There is a proverb in Sanskrit…

|| शरीरमाध्यम खलु धर्मसाधनम् ||

śarīramādyaṃ khalu dharmasādhanam

Meaning

The body is the means to the attainment of all dharma or right living and thinking.

Health is the most valuable possessions and is always the first wealth.

Remember, we can only go where our body takes us. And also without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should.

Our body needs to be consistently exercised in order to make it healthy and strong.

Remember this formula,

Strong Body + Strong Mind = Powerful Combination to Live Your Life Fully.

What’s the secret of making our body strong?

Well, there’s only one: Make it a priority.

Unfortunately, health always gets pushed down to the last place in our priority list. Isn’t it?  Make health your number one priority in this year.

By health I don’t mean only physical health. Our mental, emotional, and spiritual health is also a part of our overall well-being.

Physical health

Involves two things: Diet and Exercise. They both must go hand in hand. Working on exercise without paying attention to diet is of zero value. At the same time physical exercise cannot be substituted by any special diet.

Paying attention to Diet:

• Eat only when you’re really hungry. Don’t stuff food in your mouth out of habit or when you’re in stress.
• Eat healthy, fresh, vegetarian food that is grown organically.
• Chew each bite 32 times and drink clean-purified water 10 minutes before your meal if you want to lose weight. Don’t you believe me? Read it here.
• Simple tip that helped me overcome my bad habit of eating junk: One day I got up, removed all bags of chips, canned food, cookies (except chocolates…. can’t resist chocolates…sorry!), and cans of coke from my house. After that I completely stopped buying them again. I replaced those items with fruits, dry fruits, and seeds (chia, sunflower, pumpkin seeds). So whenever I am little hungry there is no junk food in front of my eyes. I left no choice but to take either handful of almonds or a banana. Give yourself healthy choices. If you don’t see junk, you won’t eat it either.
• Most of us don’t pay attention that we eat same type of food every day. Give surprise to your body by introducing different food periodically. How about trying few days of juice fasting or eating whole foods or paleo diet, or simply, eat nothing for a day or two! It helps cleansing our body and makes us feel good.
• Do you know food has direct effect on our productivity? Pay attention to what you eat and how you feel after.
• And finally, eat with a sense of gratitude!

Importance of Exercise:

Devoting 15- 20 minutes in a day to physical exercise is all that you need to keep your body strong.

• Start with going out for a brisk walk in open air in morning or evening for 15-20 minutes.
• If you’re living in a cold place like me, where going out for a walk may not be feasible for couple of months in a year, you can start doing 15 minutes of high intensity cardio using only your body weight. No need of expensive gym membership or ugly equipment. Watch this video.
• Do one round of Sun Salutation (12 set in one round). Sun salutation is an effective exercise which involves the movement of each and every body muscles. Sun Salutation if done in slow motion, it’s a good mediation, and if done with fast pace it’s an excellent cardio work out.
• If you’re working in an office environment make sure to take a 5 minute break every after an hour.  During break, climb staircase or stretch your body or simply do few rounds of deep breathing to energize yourself.

The other day, I was reading interview of Will Smith and I came across this great quote from him:

“Put somebody on a treadmill and I’ll tell you how good they are at any other thing they do in life” – Will Smith

Brutal truth, isn’t it? After all, how you do anything is how you do everything.

Mental Health:

It’s said that what bath is to body, thoughts are to mind.

New and fresh thoughts cleanse, purify and freshen us up.

Reading is an excellent habit which goes really a looooong way in life.

A simple technique for ensuring reading of 20 books a year:

First of all remove clutter from your mind. Don’t load your brain with information reading junk in newspaper, magazine or watching TV.

Instead, find an alternative to invest your time in reading good books on self-development, learning personal finance or new business skills.

Now commit to reading of just 20 pages per day.

20 pages/day = 600 pages/month ==> 7200 pages/year

On average if you read 300 pages book then 7200/300 = 24 books per year.

Therefore, reading 20 books per year is a safe guess, doable act.

Commit to this in 2016!

Make a list of 20 books in advance that covers different areas and interests of your focus where you want to grow.

Emotional & Spiritual Health:

“Peace of mind comes through the clarity of thoughts.” – Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Good reading, listening to experts, contemplating on what you think, read and listen, and spending time with loved ones having healthy conversation – these all helps enhancing clarity of thoughts.

Tips on Enhancing Emotional and Spiritual Health:

• Meditation is a great tool to enhance better clarity, calmness and peace. If you know how to meditate, make it a routine in 2016. If you don’t know meditation, learn it this year by attending meditation retreat. You can join Art of Living’s basic course to learn amazing Sudarshan Kriya. It’s easy to learn, affordable, and available worldwide. I am practitioner of Sudarshan Kriya for last 17 years, and am enjoying its great benefits on my health, mind and spirit.
• Plan one day in a month to be in silence and simply watch your thoughts. You will feel amazing.
• Go in solitude over one weekend to experience the deep connection within yourself, nature and universe. Do not take your laptop, mobile or any electronics device with you, just spend time with your own company. If you cannot enjoy your own company, who else would?
• Read this amazing book on wellness: The Wellness Sense.

2. Wealth:

Everyone wants money. You can do real cool things if you have enough money.

The other truth is, there are many who see being rich as something not so very good thing. They have biased opinion for rich people.

Growing up without pocket money I had always this thought that “it’s okey if I don’t have money”, gradually I lost interest for money and I was hardly thinking of making good money or to imagine myself being rich.

Now, that’s a dangerous thing. If you have set for mediocre standard for your financial life, you will be nothing but a mediocre. That’s how law of attractions operates.

Although one book that really helped me to gain clarity about money is T. Harv. Eker’s “The Secrets of Millionaire Mind.” I also attended their free three day intensive MMI seminar. It was truly mind blowing!

In short, money is very important thing in life. Love your money with all respect and passion.

Unfortunately there’s no encouragement for personal finance education, let it be at home, school or universities. How to earn more, save more and how to build net worth these all are very interesting topics and everyone must invest to learn them.

Personal Finance Tips on Wealth:

• Think of these 50 important questions to understand what it takes to achieve a good personal financial situation.
• Read at least one great blog on personal finance that provides relevant taxation and retirement saving information depending upon where you live.
• Plan for reducing your debt, building net worth and growing your saving. Don’t hesitate to hire personal coach if need be.
• Automation is a wonderful tool when it comes to organize your personal finances, savings or bill payments. It saves a lot of time and ensures regular saving. Download this Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance by Ramit Sethi.
• Add one more income source this year. Let it be active or passive. Try to earn money using your existing skills or talents or your passion. Think how you can make your leisure time productive this year.
• Set one hour every weekend for brain storming passive income ideas. You can invite your friend, spouse or family to join in. Note down the best ideas and see which one you can easily and comfortably explore to put more money into your pocket in 2016.
• Prepare your Black Box list: A list where you can store all your important information of bank account, id/passwords, insurance policy numbers, emergency contact detail of insurance agent and lawyer, photocopies of your identity cards, passport and other important documents. It comes very handy in case of accident or death.
• Read these 5 books this year: The Secretes of Millionaire Mind, Rich Dad Poor Dad, I will Teach You to Be Rich, Four Hour Work Week, Do Over.

3. Relationship:

The health of any relationship can be determined by the presence of one element: Friendliness.

Being friendly means being open and willing to accept each other, love the other person as he/she is with all his/her qualities and limitations.

Friendship is all about sticking together and loving each other even though there are differences of opinions and disagreements without being judgmental.

And remember, we are as good as our last performance, the highest score is the minimum cost of admission in next course, and so each time we have to raise the bar when it comes to display compassion, love, understanding and empathy for our partner.

Tips for Caring and Sharing in Relationship:

• Be a great listener: This is the single most important trait in a healthy relationship.

“When Heart to Heart Listens, Harmony is produced. When head to head listens arguments are produced” – Sri Sri

• Work through difficulties and disagreements: There will be sometime differences of opinions and difficult times; however, they should never enter in your heart. After any discussion always smile :)

“If you make someone feel guilty about their mistake, then you have not forgiven them. That guilt itself is a punishment.” – Sri Sri

• Provide personal space and allow others to be themselves.

“See mistake as a mistake, not as my or his/her mistake. My means guilt, and his/her means anger” – Sri Sri

• Spend one hour in a day with your loved one without phone /tablet/tv or any electronic devices. The presence of each other should be enough to engage the other person and have good time. Be that person. Here is an interesting link where photographer took pictures and removed mobile from it. Make sure this doesn’t happen with you and your loved ones.
• Set one common goals and be an accountability partner for each other and help achieve that goal. For example, you can think of starting one blog this year that you can monetize later on. Work towards it together.
• If we are living a purpose driven life we are more interested in living off passion and have less time for arguments over tiny matters. Help each other finding passion this year, if you don’t have already.
• Know when to stop caring – “Wait! What did you say?” Yes, this is interesting but very important to know the downside of being too soft. Read it here.
• And one last weird tip that comes straight from my own personal practice and that is start doing meditation together. Meditating with your own friend, spouse or loved one has a great impact on your body, mind and soul. It helps enhancing clarity, love, confidence and focus in life. Try it to see.

4. Leave Room for Surprises:

Last but certainly not the least; accept the fact that everything cannot be planned. Life has its own course of actions to teach what it wants.

Allow it with all due respect and acceptance.

Remember death can knock our door anytime. It may be a call for us or for our beloved ones. But before it’s too late make sure to live, love and laugh fully every single day of 2016!

Spend whole year doing what you love and loving what you do!

Let’s take a complete ownership of our life in this New Year, and create at least three desired outcomes in our health, wealth and relationship that we truly want and deserve.

While working for this, always hold gratitude for what you already have and focus on what you want and not on what you don’t want. Because it says energy flows where attention goes! What you focus on expands!

Be an action warrior this year!

Bharat

(Image Credit: Alejandro Escamilla)

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