You think this is that same old story, don’t you? Where a guy turns around his life-like a hero and then sells you how he did it. Nope. I had no relationships, my career was in complete breakdown, and my mind was completely taken over by confusion. All my efforts to improve went in vain because I procrastinated upon every plan I created for myself. Eventually, the reason was that there was no one to force me to stick to important day-to-day chores and I had little or no self-discipline to keep myself on track. I spent most of my daily time, which should have been used to study for my upcoming professional certification exam, reading books I bought from a nearby library. Clearly, I wasn’t motivated enough to spend time doing things that were important. I knew what my goal was. I wanted to change myself from inside. I knew that everything I saw outside was because of how I was inside. I wanted to study regularly, stop procrastinating and give my best effort. I wasn’t even giving my best effort. Around summer 2010, I came across a few good books I should credit to for the blessed life I live now. One of them was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Here are some of the most important lessons I learned from Nap Hill. Over the next one month of my practice of these principles, I found tremendous inflow of inspiration and concentration. In a way, I would meditate for around 10-15 minutes. Side effects were that I could sleep pretty well and get up early regularly. It’s all about practicing again and again and staying persistent. I created a personal development plan to organize my routine activities, I tried to not procrastinate and keep in as much discipline with the routine as possible but I kept bouncing in between order and chaos. I made sure that even if I procrastinated, I completed enough to convince myself of having done something at least so that the motivation kept flowing. These are just 5 interesting and noticeable things I practiced to begin with. But, a huge part of my order went to understanding the relative benefit. Over the upcoming months I figured more things out of the book, I practiced more. If there is something that benefits you and you find a task that favours that benefit, you’ll want to do it more. What I wanted was to stop being lazy and adapt to an active routine and regularly work towards my goals. But I guess following rules can’t be ignored if one wants to get his life on track. If I’ve done it, you can too. It isn’t rocket science. And I used a time management activity one of my teachers used to advice. I’d forgotten it long ago but during one of my meditations, it appeared before me out of nowhere. Here is what you can do. Take a paper and list down your daily activities one by one. Now, the next step is to divide you current daily activities in three categories. Category 1 – Activities that will improve my life in the future. Category 2 – activities that aren’t really necessary but I like doing them. Category 3 – Activities that get my time wasted and should not be on this list. Now, make as much effort to perform the category 1 activities as possible. Don’t worry if you can’t ignore the unimportant but make sure you try your best and along with these, you’ll have take up some great activities in your life and you’ll add more over time. And as you get appreciated for what you’re doing and what you’ll become for improving yourself, you’ll want to do it all more. I didn’t have much certainty in the beginning and I also found this stuff absurd and pretty boring. But, around 10-15 days later, I actually began to notice some difference in how my mind perceived those things. My habit of procrastination was suddenly taking a reverse turn. I had a sudden inspiration when I wanted to finally lift my course guides and peek inside. The rest is what happened over the course of next two months, and over the next two years. To conclude, make sure your intentions are utterly clear, you create a personal development plan and stay persistent. The rest follows…almost automatically. Featured photo credit: Elegant blonde woman walking in a large grace field via Shutterstock
