10 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Life

10 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Your Life

Happiness and life success rarely come easily.

And happiness and life success rarely, if ever, come from just one or two “big” actions.

More realistically, happiness and a good life come from doing the right things, usually little things, consistently.

And here are 10 things you can do TODAY to improve your life …

via Psych Central by Margarita Tartakovsky

You don’t need an overhaul to improve the quality of your life. Just a few steps can help to boost your well-being and make your days more meaningful. And the great part is that you can start today. Below, several clinicians give their suggestions on how to do just that.

1. Write a better story for your day. According to John Duffy, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist and author of the book The Available Parent: Radical Optimism for Raising Teens and Tweens:

For life improvement, I suggest the reader put life on pause, for at least a few moments a day, and consider what you’d like to accomplish today, and the vibe you want to carry.

Years ago, a client of mine was searching for a guidepost or mantra by which to live his life. After much soul-searching, he decided that, with every decision he makes, every day, he wanted to write the “better story.”

The better story might be getting up earlier rather than sleeping in [or] reaching out to help someone instead of passively ignoring their need… This turned out to be an enormous gift to me, as I now try to do this every day.

2. Identify what’s keeping you stuck. According to Deborah Serani, Psy.D, a clinical psychologist and author of the book Living with Depression, “This approach gets you to be both reflective and active, [which are] two steps necessary for change.”

1) Stop and see what it is that’s keeping you stuck right now. Oftentimes it’s a blind spot you can’t see, so taking time to mull things over helps you see more clearly. Is it a decision you’re afraid to make? Are certain people bringing you down? Are you in a cycle of negative thinking?2) Look around you to how this blind spot is touching your life. Is it only at home? Or just at work [or] school? and finally3) Listen to what your heart and mind tell you about what you need to do. Learning to reflect on your inner thoughts and feelings will help you trust putting them into action.

3. Get to bed earlier tonight. As clinical psychologist Ari Tuckman, PsyD, said, getting enough sleep is “an obvious but often overlooked” strategy.

It’s easy to steal time from sleep by staying up “just a little longer,” whether it’s to finish the laundry or finish a TV show. There’s always something that needs to be done or some fun temptation that keeps us from getting into bed on time. The problem is that the reward is had immediately — which makes it hard to resist — but the price is paid tomorrow.

It’s not uncommon to get a second wind at night, even if you were tired during the day, so that makes it even harder to stick to your bedtime. Unfortunately, even one short night’s sleep hampers our complex problem-solving, attention, and memory and makes us more irritable and short-tempered. This gets even worse when several short nights stack up.

The solution is easy to say but harder to do: Get into bed on time and you’ll feel better all the next day and hopefully get more work done, too. Of course, if you have someone that you sleep next to, then you should both get into bed even a little earlier and try to make some things happen. This will help both of you sleep better.

… keep reading the full & original article HERE