Make life easy for yourself!
Guess what, it’s easier than you think!
I’m going to make this quick (and easy) and start with a story. For weeks now I’ve been wishing and pleading with myself to drink a fresh juice every day. The way I see it, drinking your veggies is a cool way to pack them in. Here’s the thing though; I get up and train 5 times a week in addition to work, to Spanish lessons, to friends… there’s just no time to juice unless I wake up before 5am and that is just not happening! So here’s what I did instead which most of us end up doing; I ended up berating myself.
It’s so strange how we end up punishing ourselves even though circumstances play an aspect in our behaviour. More about that in another post. Back to the story;
I was sharing my dislike towards celery juice and how difficult I was finding to make it with my dear friend Derryn;
“Not only is it disgusting but I have to get up early to make it!” I complained.
She instantly and matter of factly replied;
“but Lis why don’t we have a juice party on a Sunday afternoons so you can make it for the week and you can just make yourself another flavour?”
Well d’uh, of course! It was one of those moments when you feel like the heavens open up and the light shines down. How ridiculously obvious. I’d never thought of that before.
So for the past two weeks on a Sunday, we’ve spent an hour (post MotoGP and F1 of course!) catching up and making 5 juices that we freeze in our respective homes ready for the week. Derryn with her beloved celery and me with a delicious concoction of carrot, orange and ginger. Soooooo each morning I take one out the freezer and ‘voila’ I’d had veggies before lunch! In fact I’ve even used my juices as training ‘boosters’ instead of the usual synthetic performance drinks. Speaking of training, did I mention I meet my trainer Warren Bronner at Sunninghill twice a week at 6am? It’s not negotiable and I love it! It makes my life easy because I don’t have to think about what to do and I get to have fun whilst training weights; and that’s never happened before!
The whole juice discovery made me so excited, I began to think of all the ways I do and could make my life easier.
If you think about it, there are two simple ways we can make life vastly easier for ourselves; one is to shift perspective and the other is to fool ourselves out of our normal patterns of behaviour. For some reason I’d only ever imagined making one juice at a time. The radical shift in perspective was to make 5 and freeze them. Seems pretty simple and it is! Made me wonder that there’s probably a host of other areas in my life in which a small shift in perspective could change my world. Equally it’s quite astounding at home fun a juice catch up sounds (and is!) as opposed to the practice of making juice. All I need to do is figure out all the other ways I can dupe myself into life changes with zero effort.
Here are some of the ways I do make life easy for myself;
- Cycle with my best maatjie Nats – who doesn’t want to spend 4 hours with their best time at a time?!
- Pack a salad for lunch – then I’m free to have whatever I feel like for dinner
- Organise a weekly walk with my neighbour Adele – it’s cheaper than coffee and better for both of us!
So this started me thinking of the ways I could make life even easier for myself!
- Watch Netflix in Spanish as opposed to English which should help me with my Spanish
- Have a coffee with someone new each week from a work perspective to keep learning and to contribute value to their lives
- Have separate accounts for each of the areas of my life I want to save for (after all it doesn’t cost me more) e.g. home, studies and dreams I.e. a trip to F1 or motoGP.
- And a couple more:-)
What if there were a host of new ways to make your life easier? Chop onions into your eggs to give you an extra veggie, charge your phone in another room to avoid scrolling through Instagram, have an exercise mate, combine seeming chores like nails or shopping with a friend, organise a debit order for your savings…. and so it goes. It really comes down to what’s important for you and why. Then just make it a little easier. Suffering is so last century.
The thing is that easy life hacks don’t need to be solely with respect to one’s personal life either. I mean look at how dashboards have done away with time consuming reporting? Keep a live dashboard so you can see where you’re at. Use a project management tool like Monday.com (one of my personal favorites). Talk to your colleagues in a huddle (no one sits:-) instead of email or meetings…
Anyway I just wanted to share because I feel like in the crazy world in which we live, we need to make life easier for ourselves.
Wishing you the most fantastic week!
