Live a better life by creating small habits in your daily routine.

Live a better life by creating small habits in your daily routine.

In todays society people want to have everything they want right now, we just want the end results instead of thinking of the journey to get there. Most people want the big house, the nice car, the travel experiences, the pay raises, the hot body with the six pack but no one wants to put in the time and effort to get it.

There are no secrets to achieving anything you want in life. If you want more money learn something valuable, practice it over time and eventually you can get paid for doing whatever it is you want to do. The same goes for being healthy and having a good body. (Eat Less and Exercise More). This is nothing new and we are all aware of it, but if it sounds so easy why do only a few percent of the population achieve financial success, happiness in their lives and a healthy lifestyle? The answer lies in the small things that you do everyday.

I have personally found that adapting to big changes and sticking to them rarely ever work. Take as a sample that you decide to start saving money, putting aside 10% to 30% of your income once a month might not be easy to do if you have never saved before, on the same note deciding to go to the gym for 1 hour every day after years of not exercising might be very difficult to stick with.

This past two years I have seen an increase in my activity level both mentally and physically and it’s due to doing the same small routines every single day. Earlier this year I started to exercise at least 20 minutes every day right after I wake up. Twenty minutes might not sound like much but if you are able to stick to it and do it regularly on weekdays those 20 minutes become almost 7 hours of exercise a month, which translates to three and a half days of exercise every year. The best part is that once you create the habit you don’t even think about it anymore, just like brushing your teeth you include exercise as part of your daily routine. What has actually happened is that now I even miss exercising on the days I can’t work out, and the 20 minutes now extended to 30 and up to 40 minutes of daily exercise when I can.

The same method can be applied to anything in life; it’s like using compound interest for your most important things in life. To see achieve great results you just have to stick to doing a few habits every day, within a couple of months or years depending on how big your goal is, anything can be achieved.

Another sample I like to give is the use of simple savings and compound interest. Imagine you start saving money every month with increments of 1 dollar per day. So in day one you save $1, the next day $2 and so on until day 30 where you save $30 dollars. I’m sure you can find plenty of ways to save the first dollar on the first day, cut $14 dollars on day 14 by not drinking the extra two beers at the bar, and saving the $30 dollars on the last day by cooking at home instead of going out. If you stick to this method you will save a whooping $627 Dollars per month without having to change your lifestyle. Put all of that into an investment account with a 10% annual return and in 10 years you will have $133,530 by simply saving a few dollars every day. That’s enough money to buy a condo in Florida, get an exotic car, or travel around the world for 2 years without having to worry about work.

As you can see the key to achieving any goal in life is to stick with good easy habits and do them every day. Starting any one of these habits and countless others is very easy and once you put them into your daily routine you will quickly adapt and even forget that you are doing it.

Now is your turn to start forming those good habits and put them to good use. Start by cutting back on time wasters such as social media sites and watching T.V. every day and you will see how many more things you can get done. Put that hour every day to learn a new language, practice a new sport or music instrument, start a side business the list goes on and on, and you will discover how much easier you can attain the goals you want in life.

Leave a comment on what good habits you currently have, and which ones you’d like to work on.

Picture taken at the Thian Hock Keng Temple in Singapore