Sometimes I dread the New Year for this uneasy feeling of making resolutions that may not stick.
The problem with the resolutions I used to set for myself is the follow through.
Each time I would gain some momentum in my life, my mind would create these negative stories causing me stop following through on trying to lose weight, recharge my career or do something meaningful for my quest to get my book published.
My mind held me back and made me feel stuck.
Over the last few years, I made this important realization: Finding a way to overcome our mind’s negative overthinking is a powerful way to get unstuck. And it requires not some bold, unique strategy but a simple one.
To get unstuck in life and follow through on our goals, we need to break the pattern of overthinking, replacing it with something more useful – even if it’s for a brief moment.
And so for 2014, I have developed a few tips that I have used daily to help interrupt the negative pattern of overthinking that keeps us from achieving our resolutions and goals to help us get unstuck and get in the groove of action.
To get unstuck in life…to move forward on our 2014 goals, it helps to try these simple techniques whenever we encounter the disabling force of our overthinking mind.
I want to help you get unstuck in life because I truly believe that each of us are meant to be making a positive contribution to the place we work, the people who we love and the passion we pursue.
Learning to get unstuck in life is up to us, not anyone else.
Here are 63 tips to get unstuck and move forward in 2014:
1. Accept things as they are not as you wish they were or ought to be
2. Don’t listen to negative people
3. Start the morning off on the right foot by creating your vision for the day, listening to positive words, writing and creating
4. Read one page from an inspiring book
5. Take action right this minute
6. Get busy with a specific project
7. Insert positive ideas into your head proactively twice a day
8. Turn off the news
9. Stay away from gossip
10. Create
11. Exercise for just 15 minutes each day
12. Take a course, a seminar or a class that teaches you something new
13. Do something really hard that requires your total concentration
14. Set a goal and work towards it
15. Believe that the possibility of success lies at the intersection of work and persistence
16. Listen to someone tell a story about their life
17. Learn one new skill
18. Read a book that teaches you something
19. Change your body’s posture
20. Call a friend
21. Observe someone else for just 5 minutes
22. Go for a walk
23. Get off Facebook and social media for a half a day
24. Write down what you really want to achieve in your life…write from the heart not from your head
25. Attend a meetup or a conference where you’re likely to meet interesting people
26. Take a lesson on how to swim, play tennis or any other sport
27. Read a biography about someone interesting you admire
28. Find someone who’s doing what you want to do and say to yourself, “If he/she can do it, why CAN’T I?” and get busy doing it
29. Feed your body natural foods
30. Decrease your caffeine and increase water intake
31. Meditate or connect with your higher self each day
32. Smile at the smallest things
33. Speak honestly
34. Watch an inspirational movie that lifts you up
35. Talk to someone who has been through a rough time and ask them what they learned
36. Take small actions towards your bigger goal every single day
37. Pinch yourself each time you start going down a negative spiral of thoughts
38. Have 4 or 5 rituals that you do every single day no matter what happens
39. Celebrate the small milestones because it fuels your momentum towards your bigger success
40. Ignore the critics because you know the real truth: that you are unstoppable
41. Start a conversation with a total stranger at the supermarket or coffee shop
42. Stop believing that others are more fortunate than you – because you don’t know the chaos that people have been through
43. Participate, contribute and share
44. Volunteer for a tough assignment, project or task
45. Travel to an unknown place and force yourself to take public transportation when you get there
46. Eat and drink at the right time of the day, when your body needs it
47. Set a compelling goal for yourself for 3 months and put it on a piece of paper and stick it all of your home where you see it morning, noon and night
48. Start without having a complete plan. Most of us figure it out as we go.
49. Take every rejection or problem as an offering from life for you to grow
50. Be strong in your beliefs but flexible with your plans
51. Say YES more often
52. Work really, really hard at something you believe in
53. Spend more time doing than planning
54. Recognize that your future is unwritten and being created right now
55. Build deeper social bonds with others
56. Put as much trust and faith in yourself as you have in someone you respect
57. Just decide one way or another. Avoid limbo land.
58. Wake up just 15 minutes earlier each day
59. Ask meaningful and powerful questions to someone you look up to
60. Support your partner, a friend or a colleague with something that they really care about
61. Mentor someone younger than you who could use some of your life experience
62. Listen to fresh voices on a podcast
63. Get out of the house and do something that you truly enjoy
Learning to get unstuck in life doesn’t have to be so complicated. It can be as simple as making a call, writing something down, going somewhere. The key is to stop overthinking the future or the direction in your life and to start doing something. Anything.
No one will have the perfect path, the perfect job, the perfect career or perfect life because perfection is an illusion. Once we learn to accept the ups and downs and simply move forward, we will get unstuck in life and start living.
I wish you great success, prosperity, success, happiness and lots of fun in 2014.
-Bob Miglani, Author, Embrace the Chaos
[P.S. I chose 63 tips as an homage to Robin Sharma, a wonderful teacher]
