Powerful Habits That Prepare You For Anything In Life

If your life seems like one crisis after another, you’re not alone. These days, our lives are so complicated that things go wrong all the time. It could be something as simple as the car not starting or a person you love passing away due to disease. 

Problems are inevitable in life. They come up all the time. The trick is to learn how to manage them effectively. If you can get into certain mental habits that support your wellbeing no matter what is going on around you, you can prepare yourself for just about anything. 

But how do you build this shift in mindset? Let’s take a look at some of your options. 

Accepting Uncertainty In All Its Glory

As human beings, we don’t like the concept of uncertainty. We think that we will feel better if we have the future mapped out in front of us. But, of course, that’s not possible – and deep down, it isn’t really what we want anway. 

The trick here is to embrace the uncertainty of life in all its glory. Imagine if you really did know how the future was going to pan out. Your life would be boring. There wouldn’t be any excitement or thrill because you would know precisely what was going to happen next week or next year. Everything would become a drudgery. 

Understanding this insight helps you to appreciate the value of uncertainty. Yes – it isn’t always pleasant, but it is necessary. Without it, life wouldn’t be as fun. 

If you can, build your capacity to experience peace in the midst of chaos. Don’t hold onto the past. Let it go. Access your capacity to be joyful no matter what happens in the external world. 

Saving Regularly

Whether it is for funeral costs, children’s education or your personal enjoyment, regular saving is essential. Unfortunately, many people don’t do it. They perennially put it off to the future, telling themselves that they will sort it out later. 

This approach, however, is a missed opportunity. You want to start saving as early as possible. That way, you have more time to allow your investments to grow. 

Whenever you spend money on something, ask yourself whether it is worth your precious time. Think about all the times that you’ve wasted money on one thing or another and how it didn’t enrich your life. Then convert that into the time that you spend earning the money to get it. Often you’ll find that it is a bad deal.

Don’t Be A Survivor, Be A Thrivor

There is a big difference between survival and thriving. When you are a survivor, you rely on your stress hormones and sense of fear to get you through the day. But when you are a thrivor, you leverage feelings of joy and confidence to bring your dreams into reality. 

Merely surviving is not a good idea. It produces massive amounts of stress and, long-term, that leads to health problems. Thriving on the other hand is the reverse. It actually boosts your health and makes you happier. It changes your basic chemistry, promoting more health and less disease. 

Thriving is also just a better way to live life from a personal perspective. When you are in a state of survival, it is painful. You feel tense and exhausted all the time, harming your daily experience of life. But when you thrive, it’s the opposite: every little thing you do is a joy. 

Getting into this expansive state of consciousness requires rethinking your approach to your experience. You want to move away from your attachments to your circumstances and just allow life to take you for a ride. Ultimately, there is no reason to cling to anything. 

Having A Rough Goal For Where You Want To Go

You don’t have to write down your plans in minute detail, but it does help to have a rough idea of where you’re going. Simply plans or goals in life could include: 

• Finding a romantic partner to spend your life with
• Making a certain amount of money to enable the lifestyle that you desire
• Traveling more and having the resources to do it
• Improving the quality of your relationships
• Working on your health so that you are fit enough to serve the people around you

Life plans are, by definition, big projects. They specify your goals over many decades. When you create a life plan, it should include elements that will take you at least ten years to achieve. (You may get there sooner, but you should always prepare for the long-term). Shorter goals, such as getting an education, are near-term objectives. In the long run, the purpose of going to school is to provide the learning that will enable you to make a higher income in the future. And that could take a decade or more. 

Making Every Second Count

We would all like more time in our lives. But sadly, time is limited. We can only do so much in a given day. Unfortunately, many of us actually end up wasting time, spending it on things that don’t add value to our lives. We get into the habit of spending time with the wrong people or engaging in activities that don’t move us closer to our goals. 

People who use time well are extremely protective of it. They never waste it. Instead, they ensure that they use every second to bring them to their joyful place – the thing that will make their life great.

Spending time relaxing or meditating is not time-wasting. If you want to thrive, you need to get out of the habit of believing that you need to be productive every second of the day. The purpose of life is not productivity: it is joyful living. 

Take a look at how you spend a typical day and ask yourself if you are wasting time. If you go through this exercise, you’ll often discover that you are wasting many hours each day when you could be doing something to enrich your life. Saving just 30 minutes per day gives you back an extra two months in five years. Imagine what you could get done with all that time. 

Learning To Slow Down

Rushing around like a headless chicken is no way to live life. We all need pauses in activity where we can recover and recuperate. In fact, that’s how nature wired our bodies. We work best when we have intense periods of activity, followed by long periods of rest. 

Learning how to slow down can help you keep going for longer. Trying to rush to get everything done in life in the space of a couple of years isn’t always a good idea. To make yourself more robust, you need to pace yourself. 

Reading Regularly

You can learn about the world by paying close attention to it. But you can also get a lot of knowledge in a short period by simply reading about it. For instance, reading allows you to learn about important things such as finances and relationships without going through costly trial-and-error approaches first. 

Reading won’t give you a complete overview of life: you’ll still have to go out and live it for yourself. However, it can make you more adept at the intellectual aspects of life. 

Related to this is the idea that you should never stop learning. You want to be in a place where you can constantly entertain new ideas. By being open to knowledge, you’ll find that you can magnify your wisdom tremendously. 

Staying Humble

The expression “pride comes before a fall” is an apt one. People who believe that they are the greatest set themselves up for a drop. The problem with being the best at anything is that the only direction is down. So eventually, something is going to go wrong. 

Instead, always remain humble. Always remind yourself that you don’t know anything. Never assume that you are the best at anything. 

Get Into A State Of Flow

Getting into a state of flow is fashionable at the moment, but the concept has been around since ancient times. The idea originally comes from Daoism – an ancient Chinese philosophy and set of religious practices. When you get into a state of flow, all that matters to you is the task in front of you. The rest of the world disappears from your conscious mind. Time ceases to be a feature of your experience. Instead, you are using your whole brain to produce incredible results. 

Great artists and musicians often rely on the state of flow. They aren’t consciously thinking about what they are doing. Instead, they are just allowing their mind to go places and they are tagging along for the ride. 

Being in a state of flow prepares you for anything in life for two reasons: 

1. It focuses your mind on the present
2. It produces incredible results

Thus you spend less time worrying and more time working to improve your overall situation. 

So there you have it: some powerful habits that can help prepare you for anything in life. Use them wisely.