Tag: Barbara Genest

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Daily Habit to Improve Your Health: Drink Enough Water Every Day

While the average American consumes about 22 percent of their calories in the beverages they drink, over 75 percent of Americans also walk around chronically dehydrated. Problems like fatigue, foggy memory, irritability, and more like slow metabolism are associated with chronic dehydration that you can fix simply by incorporating the daily habit of drinking enough water.

stay hydrated

  • Stop Drinking Other Beverages –To start drinking more water, you’ll want to stop drinking any other beverage but water for the time being. You’ll also want to measure out the amount of water you want to drink each day so that you can see it visually and space out your consumption throughout the entire day.

 

  • Know-How Much Water You Need – Everyone is slightly different regarding their hydration needs. If you eat a low carbohydrate diet versus a high carbohydrate diet, you may need more water or less water, depending on your diet. Start with the recommended daily amount for average-weight men at 125 ounces and 90 ounces for average-weight women, and work your way up or down depending on how you feel.

 

  • Set Your Goals – Once you know how much you’re going to drink each day, set the goal and be very specific about how you’re going to do it. A lot of people find success is to start the morning with 8 to 32 ounces of water before consuming anything else. Try adding a squeeze of lemon to make it special.

 

  • Keep Water with You at All Times – Don’t underestimate how lazy you’re going to be about this. Invest in an eco-friendly, refillable water bottle. Keep the bottle with you full and ready to drink at all times, whether you’re in your office, in the car, or on the sofa.

 

  • Take Advantage of Triggers – If you normally drink another beverage when reading a book, checking your email, or enjoying a movie, make your water just as special. Buy good-tasting water and beautiful glasses and experiment with fruit-infused ice to make it feel special.

 

  • Drink One Glass Before Eating – For each meal and snack you’re going to have during the day, give yourself enough time to enjoy one glass of water thirty minutes before the meal or snack. Drink less during your meals and more between your meal to improve digestion. This will create a ritual with the water, which is easier for you to remember and habituate.

 

When you drink enough water every day, you’re going to notice that your skin texture improves, your eyes become clearer, and your brain fog disappears. Not only that, some people have even suggested they experience less body pain. It’s a wonder more people aren’t working towards this daily goal since it helps with so many issues.

5 Rituals to Boost Your Energy and Productivity

 

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Daily Organizational Habit: Prepare Your Clothing in Advance

One of the things you can incorporate into your daily life to ensure more happiness and success is to be more organized. When you’re more organized, life just goes much more smoothly. While some people seem to be born organized, those who aren’t can simply start developing the habit of organization by getting prepared for everything they do in advance.

 

Developing the habit of preparing your clothing in advance for everything you do will help cut down on anxiety and encourage better daily cleaning and organizational habits regarding your clothing and bedroom. Plus, you’re going to look and feel better each day at the office, even if your office is at home.

 

Planning all your clothing choices in advance will do more for you than you may think, in addition to looking more fashionable due to choosing clothing based on what you’re going to do, the weather, and other factors instead of being in a rush – you’re going to get these benefits too.

 

  • You’ll Feel Less Stressed Out – When you’re not rushing around trying to match things, you’re so much less likely to suffer from anxiety about getting dressed. If you have thought it out and picked something that makes you feel good, you’re going to have a better day.

 

  • You Will No Longer Have Outfit Regrets – You know as well as I do that if you don’t plan your clothing choices, things go wrong. You don’t have the right undergarments for that thing, so you can’t wear it, or sadly, you did and saw the pictures later and regretted it. When you plan in advance, you know the outfit looks great and makes you feel great, or you don’t even want to own it anymore.

 

  • You’ll Save Time – When you are scheduling time to plan the outfits you are going to wear, you will actually spend less time doing it. The main reason is that you’ll cut down on the tornado effect of rushing around tossing things on the floor or bed that you choose not to wear and then having to clean that up at some point.

 

  • You’ll Get More Wear from What You Own – When you aren’t planning your outfits, you end up wasting. But something amazing happens when you start planning – you start wearing more of what you own and buying things you will wear. It’s a win-win side effect all the way around.

 

  • You’ll Appear More Professional – When you have planned an outfit, you’ll also take the time to get the cat fur off your coat, shine up your boots, and pick things that look good on your body for the purposes you need them.

 

  • You’ll Feel Better About Yourself – If you look like an unkempt person all the time, even if you say you don’t care what you look like, you’ll feel bad about yourself. You don’t have to wear makeup or business suits but planning a look and getting cleaned up each day feels good.

 

The best way to accomplish this is first to get your wardrobe to make sense to you. Most people like to change out their closets seasonally, and some people have good luck organizing their closets by style and color or season and color or type and color. How you organize it will depend on your own needs, space, and lifestyle.

 

Then, to prepare an outfit, check your calendar for tomorrow to find out what you’re going to do that day and check the weather conditions you’ll need to be prepared for to maintain your comfort and safety. Note what type of self-care you need to be comfortable in the outfit, including hair styles, accessories, footwear, and so forth, so that you aren’t caught off guard as you get ready in the morning.

 

Organize your Environment for Success!

 

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Disconnect Yourself from Distractions and Notifications

One problem with the modern world is that it’s almost expected that people are supposed to multitask. The problem is no one can actually do it. It’s actually impossible for over 99 percent of humans to multitask. If you don’t believe me, you’ll need to look up the studies because it’s not something that is disagreed upon among social scientists.

 

Humans Cannot Do Two Things at Once

 

In reality, instead of true multitasking, you’re just splitting your attention between tasks – and not always evenly either. Trying to multitask is a productivity killer and also a mood killer. There are rare humans with superhuman ability who can multitask, just like there are rare humans who can perform superhuman athletic feats; some people are born with brains that are different from the norm.

 

More than likely, you are not one of those people. More than likely, you also cannot actually multitask. Trying to multitask is not just killing your productivity it’s probably even making you feel bad about yourself because you can’t live up to your own expectations, much less anyone else’s.

 

Multiple Studies Show People Cannot Multitask

 

Studies conducted by universities around the world have concluded that multitasking is not possible. Imaging shows that it takes most of us an average of 15 minutes to switch tasks and become reoriented to a primary task once distracted. There is no scientific argument that these things are true. After 50 years of research, scientists agree that trying to multitask is poorly affecting our productivity and our memory and, sadly, creativity.

 

Make The Commitment to Give Up Trying to Multitask and Start Focusing

How And Why You Must Remove Distractions

So, try this out for yourself. Turn your notifications off and stop being available 24 hours a day. You don’t owe it to anyone to be available to them at all times of the day and the night. And honesty, can you really be that much help at all hours of the day and night? When you don’t sleep enough, is your work done to a high enough standard?

 

Set specific times and block out your schedule for each activity and task you want to do each day. Whether it’s surfing Instagram or watching YouTube or commenting to your friends on Facebook Groups – or going for a game of Tennis with friends – get it in the schedule so that you can focus on it 100 percent.

 

When you get good at scheduling and actively shunning the idea of multitasking, you’ll feel so much more satisfied with your life and feel as if you have more time for doing all the things that make you happy and successful in life.

 

 

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Learn and Practice the Philosophy of Stoicism

There is no way for you to learn everything you need to know about this life philosophy from one blog post or article. However, if you’ve never even heard of the idea, just being exposed to this idea and what it really means can help you live a better and more successful life.

 

Live a Good Life of Virtue and Good Character

 

Firstly, a stoic believes that living a life of virtue and good character is the answer to living a happy and fulfilled life. To live this type of lifestyle, it takes introspection and an understanding of your own personal values, principles, morals, and willingness to live them.

 

You Are Responsible for Yourself

Are You Really Being Accountable?

 

Secondly, a stoic believes it’s within your power to be who you are and who you want to be and that you are fully 100 percent responsible for your own life and how you feel about it, but you cannot control what you cannot control. Therefore, a stoic will focus on controlling what is controllable.

 

Want Less Experience More

 

Thirdly, a stoic puts more stock in having experiences and learning new things over having more stuff or buying the most popular thing. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a minimalist, but they don’t just buy things for no reason or status purposes and actively focus on wanting less.

 

Accepting of Reality

 

Finally, stoics understand that they will not live forever. They are accepting that they’ll die at some point and live their life with that in mind. For example, if statistics show that walking fast 45 minutes a day extends life, and the stoic can make that happen because they have legs and the time to walk, they’re going to do it without struggling about the why or what-ifs surrounding the stats.

 

If you’re not sure who you are yet, or how you want people to think of you after you’re gone, take the time to discover who you are and how to become the person you want to be. If you are often considering the legacy you’re going to leave behind, it’s a lot easier to make the right choices when you have an options. Suppose you are fully accepting that you control your own reactions to the things that happen to you and not the other way around. In that case, it becomes a lot easier to make good choices minding your own personal ideals over what other people might think about it right now.

 

You can learn more about stoicism by reading books about philosophy like:

 

 

 

But you can also join groups about stoicism on Reddit, Facebook, and other social media sites that offer communities. There are also many useful YouTube videos about the philosophy of stoicism that you can get a lot out of.

 

 

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Ask Open-Ended Questions

One of the best ways to stand out at any event is to let other people talk. The best way to get other people to speak is to learn the art of asking open-ended questions. When you do that, the people come away from the event feeling heard, understood, and as if they like you a lot.

 

When people talk about themselves to someone truly interested and listening, it means so much more, as demonstrated by their actions. It is much more valuable and memorable to them.

 

To focus on asking open-ended questions, you’ll ask them what, how, and why often as they talk, using their own words to ask the questions.

ask question

Keep some of these phrases in mind to keep the conversion flowing:

 

  • What was it like to experience that thing you’re talking about?
  • What was the best part of that thing you’re talking about?
  • What was the hardest part about the thing you’re talking about?
  • How did you feel about the thing you’re talking about?
  • What brought you to this conclusion about the thing you’re talking about?
  • How is this thing you’re talking about similar to this other thing?
  • Tell me more about this specific aspect of the topic you mentioned?
  • What was the best part of your day today?
  • What’s been going well for you today?

 

Open-ended questions are useful because they allow the respondent to include more information than a yes or no question. You’ll get to know the people more deeply as you delve into their answers and the reasons why and how and what they’re doing.

 

It may seem almost contrary advice to listen and let others do all the talking at networking events, but this is how you get remembered as an interesting person. It’s just a little part of human nature that if you learn to exploit for your own purposes will teach you more about others while also allowing you to fit in more at every event you attend while reaping the benefits of the goodwill of others.

What 3 Key Questions to Ask about Online Marketing

As you start experimenting with asking open-ended questions at the events you attend, you’ll begin to notice that people respond to you differently because of it. Over time you’ll learn new ways to ask the questions that get even more profound answers allowing you insight into the people you surround yourself with that you may never have had if you didn’t ask more open-ended questions.

 

Even if you never go to events and are only around your family, spouse, and children, asking them open-ended questions can open communication to you all in a big way bringing you closer to each other in every way over time. Doing it every day after school or other events is a great way to check-in and learn a lot while simply listening.

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Daily Habit to End Clutter: Throw Stuff Away

The daily habit of getting rid of things you’re not going to use will help you cut down on clutter, ensure you think twice before buying something new, and make you feel light and free. Holding on to old stuff just because you hate to get rid of it is just clogging up your home with dust magnets, making your office look cluttered, and it might even be causing brain fog which cuts down on your productivity.

communication

It really doesn’t matter what any guru or so-called expert says, if your 1000 book collection brings you joy, even though you have to dust it, and you rarely read the books again – it’s not wrong to keep them. However, don’t let an illogical attachment to stuff keep you trapped in an environment that is not conducive to reaching the goals you’ve set for yourself.

 

So, if you read this title and thought, “Not another lecture on minimalism,” don’t worry, it’s not. In many ways, the ability to even call oneself a minimalist is pretty privileged to start with, and minimize is really in the eye of the beholder. This is more about keeping your spaces less cluttered and doing it by simply making it a habit to clean up right away. Practice throwing away, giving away, and ending clutter on a schedule to help turn it into a habit.

 

  • Set Up a System – Everyone has paperwork and mail coming in. The best way to handle this is to set up a system. Try only to touch the paperwork once. Get the mail, open it by the trash and organize each piece. Every year when you do taxes, toss out the tax year that no longer needs to be saved per your accountant’s advice.

 

  • Trash, Process, or File – If you got a medical bill you need to pay, process it, and file it. If you got a letter from your congress person, you could throw it away; if you got a letter from the IRS and there is no need to do something, file it. The idea is when you do what needs to be done immediately, you have less clutter around.

 

  • Get Rid of Those Clothes – If you have clothing you’ve not worn for a season, socks with holes, and other things you never use, don’t save them. All they are doing is attracting dust and taking up space. Make this easy by keeping a donate bag in your closet that you fill over time and donate when full.

 

  • Throw Away Old Electronics – You may need to find a safe way to dispose of these through your city offices, but there is no reason to keep old electronics forever collecting dust and taking up space. Instead, find a place to donate them and make it a habit to do so yearly.

 

Keeping these things causes dust and clutter in your home or office, but studies show that physical clutter in your space causes anxiety and even depression. People who keep their environment less cluttered tend to get more done and report feeling more successful. You don’t have to be perfect but make it a habit to toss things you’re not using every single day.

 

Stay More Focused with These Five Simple Steps

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Start Investing in Experiences

As we embark on careers to earn money, most of us don’t consider what really makes people happy or successful? Do things make people happy, or do experiences make people happy? According to science, experiences make people happier than possessions because experiences make us who we are.

 

Don’t worry, all the things you experience don’t have to cost a lot of money. Still, for those things that carry a higher price, you should start planning for them now by putting a little money aside so that on a future planned date, you can enjoy the experience without going into debt.

 

Experiences are important because:

 

  • Your Experiences Make You Who You Are – The compilation of experiences you have throughout your life makes you who you are in terms of your personalities and perception of the world. We all see things from the lens of our own life experiences, and the more experiences you can have, the more open your world view will become and the more well-rounded you will become.

 

  • You’ll Broaden Your Perspective – When you do more outside of your comfort zone, like travel to other countries, volunteer to help people in your community, take a class or do things that give you a point of view you may not have considered, before that experience.

 

  • You’ll Build Fabulous Memories – When you do more things and have more experiences, it gives you more memories to draw on to help you feel happy and satisfied. When you get together with family and friends, do you really show off your new expensive furniture, or do you show off your memories?

 

  • You Can Learn New Skills – When you buy experiences, you can learn new things to draw on in other aspects of your life. For example, hiking Mt. Everest is more than a fitness challenge. It’s also a challenge to push yourself out of your comfort zone and work with others in a team. All of which will help you in other aspects of your life.

 

  • Find Your Life Purpose – If you never leave your comfort zone, it may be hard ever to feel successful. Most people never travel away from their hometown, so they just don’t know what else is out there that might better define their purpose than what they’ve been exposed to so far.

The price of Greatness

When you live a life of purpose and new happenings, you’ll be happy to rise each day because of the joy you feel in the experiences you share with others. Even if the experience is going to the zoo instead of climbing Mt. Everest, you’ll still get more out of it than if you bought a new thingamacallit instead. You’ll have things to look forward to each day when you make it a habit to do things and have more experiences in your daily schedule.

Invest in More Training and Education

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Say No At Least Once a Week

As you work building in daily habits that will make you more successful, one of the skills you need to practice and habituate is saying no more.

For the next month or so, start saying no to something at least once a week.

say no

The way to choose what to say no to is to check your goals, look at your schedule, and ask yourself what you really want. If an action leads you to reach your goals and fits your schedule, saying yes is fine, but if it does not provide any value to you or does not fit into your schedule right now, say no.

 

When you do say no, you don’t owe anyone a reason with few exceptions. However, here are some reasons and ways that you can say no more often.

 

If You Already Know Say So

 

Sometimes you simply know that you don’t want to do something no matter what. Instead of putting people off or saying yes just to avoid the issue, start saying no right away. For example, if you have a friend involved in an MLM and constantly asks you to come to parties or buy things, and you have but resent it, start saying no and ask them to stop asking you.

 

Say I’ll Think About It

 

You don’t have to give people answers right away about anything. This can help you reduce the pressure on yourself to say yes to anything. Start making it a habit always to say, “Let me check my schedule. I’ll get back to you by 3 pm on Friday with my answer.” This way, they can wait patiently, and you can ensure that you want to say yes or no.

 

Always Check Your Schedule

 

Even if your first thought is that it’s something you want to do, you must always check your schedule before saying yes. You may be over booked already, and even if you’re going to say yes, you need to say no. Doing this will ward off burnout. Stretching yourself too thin is bad for you and everyone else that depends on you too.

 

Offer Alternatives

 

Sometimes you can’t do what your customer or the person wants, but you can turn your no into a yes in the recipient’s mind. If you know someone who can do the thing being asked of you better, tell them about it. If you can offer some help but not exactly what was asked for, say exactly that to the person.

 

One thing to remember is that you don’t have to be part of everything in your community. Saying no allows others to step up. Suppose you’re the type that runs your PTA, a small business, and more than two or three community organizations and clubs. You’re probably doing too much. Let others shine and take your time back. Your friends and family and you will thank you.

Write Down 3 Things You’re Grateful for Each Day

 

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Write Down 3 Things You’re Grateful for Each Day

One of the very first habits it’s important to incorporate into your daily life if you want to be happy and feel successful is the habit of gratitude. Being grateful is more than looking on the bright side. It’s actually about being realistic about what is good in your life.

I am Grateful

To record your gratitude, use whatever method works best for you, whether it’s to email yourself, using a paper diary, or some other method. The important thing is that you acknowledge in a way that can be tracked at least three things you’re grateful for so that you can look back on it and measure how far you’ve come.

Tips to Help You Practice Positive Thinking

Plus, there are many benefits to appreciation outside of a good mindset.

 

  • You’ll Feel Happier – The saying about what you focus on grows is very true, especially when your focus is on something positive about your life. When you can see the good in your life as it’s happening, you’ll be much more likely to be able to do it again.

 

  • You’ll Be More Satisfied with Your Life – It’s so easy to focus on things when they go wrong. You missed your alarm clock, you got caught in the rain, you spilled food on your new shirt – all seem like bad things until you realize oversleeping enabled you to cuddle with your spouse longer, the rain cooled you down after lunch, and you only spilled the food because you were laughing with your best friend.

 

  • You’ll Become Less Materialistic – When you focus on the positive, it becomes clear that it’s not things that make you happy or successful – it’s experiences. As you realize that your life becomes so much richer and then, of course, you feel more comfortable and experience your life as successful.

 

  • You’ll Be Less Likely to Suffer from Burnout – If you’re aware of yourself and stay mindful, you can avoid experiencing burnout in the first place. Taking the time to record your gratitude lets you concentrate on the good parts, which can calm you down and let you place your focus where it belongs.

 

  • You’ll Experience Better Physical Health – People who can turn their focus to what’s good in their life are more likely to exercise, eat right, and stay mindful about their health.

 

  • You’ll Sleep Better Every Night – Getting everything out on paper before bed is a great time to focus on gratitude. You’ll fall asleep faster as your good mood will result in reduced anxiety.

 

  • You’ll Feel Less Fatigue – When you sleep better at night due to less anxiety, you’re naturally going to feel more well-rested and sharp during the day.

 

  • You’ll Feel Healthier Due to Suffering from Less Inflammation – Sleeping better and being less anxious has great effects in a positive direction on body-wide information thought to be one of the driving factors in disease.

 

  • You’ll Be More Mentally Resilient – Not having your mind clouded with all the negativity of the day is going to help you bounce back when things do go wrong. When you can turn your brain toward what’s good about something, you can usually get back on the path faster.

 

  • You’ll Be More Patient – Not being on edge due to anxiety and bad thoughts will also increase your patients with others and yourself too. After all, there is often something good you can take from almost everything, eventually.

 

  • You’ll Have Better and More Solid Relationships – People like being around those who are more positive than they do people who are always on edge and anxious. If you really want to build strong relationships, focus on the positive more.

 

As you can see, being grateful carries many benefits that will make your entire life better. No one is asking you to be thankful for a bad situation, especially something beyond your control, but you need to look at what is working in your life, analyze why that is working, and then do more of that. The best way to do that is to look for things to be grateful for each and every day.

 

 

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Your Lack of Focus Is Getting in Your Way

Are you constantly struggling to get your work done? You start one project only to find yourself tapping away at another, then the next two minutes, you find yourself doing it again but on something completely different. Even with a to-do list, you can’t seem to get on track and find the focus to finish your tasks. It’s easy to do, but you must change your bad habit before it gets in your way.

 

Your lack of focus is affecting your business success in the following common ways:

 

Leads to Poor Productivity and Quality of Work

When you don’t have the right focus and concentration on your work, it leads to mistakes and poor decisions as you don’t have the clarity you need to work at your best.

 

Leads to Inconsistent Habits and Results

You need innovation and creativity to stay relevant and competitive—all of which could be stalled or lackluster without proper focus.

 

Uses Valuable Resources Incorrectly

Ultimately it depletes valuable time and financial resources that could better be used somewhere else. When you don’t do your best the first time, you’ll leave behind mistakes.

 

If you have trouble with focus, here are five things you can give a try right now:

 

#1: Reoutline Your Intentions

One cause of lack of focus is that they forgot what they were going after. Even worse, they chose goals that were unrealistic and didn’t relate to who they really are. It’s easy to lose track if you really don’t want it.

 

#2: Craft A Vision Board

Create a board of pictures, drawings, or objects that inspire your ideal life and dreams. In five years, what are your expectations about your life and your business? Even better, what are you working on in your business right now that will make the most impact on your success as you envision it? Add that to your vision board and put it somewhere you will see every day to encourage you to get right back on track. Often a lack of focus is due to an unclear vision of the future.

 

#3: Play Brain Games

Make it fun and play memory and concentration-building games from Lumosity. Lumosity provides many fun games that include a specific section to improve your focus. The idea is to exercise your brain just like you would do other parts of your body at the gym.

 

#4: Change Your Environment

Create an environment that influences movement and positivity. As you work on different projects or goals, change the setting to fit.

 

#5: Go to Bed

Are you constantly yawning or getting blurry vision? Then you need to get some sleep. If you don’t have the right amount of sleep, you won’t be capable of concentrating.

 

As you can see, focus plays a crucial role in the actions you take for your business and life. Without it, you easily leave behind a messy and disorganized company.

 

Stay More Focused with These Five Simple Steps