14 Powerful Ways to Improve Your Life
We’re all looking for the holy grail to improve some aspect of our life. The step-by-step plan or blueprint that never fails.
Formulas and plans can only go so far. Ultimately life improvement or success rests upon the person implementing or following the holy grail.
As long as you’re breathing, there should be something in your life you’re working on improving.
If you’re stuck and feel like you can never figure out the secrets, then start with the following 14 ways.
Apply these principles, and not only will you crawl out of the hole, but you’ll never get back in again. Your life will improve and reflect that which you desire.
Your future is in your hands.
I’ll be sharing several posts over the first few weeks of January to help you start (and create) your year in the most powerful way. Join our free email community so you don’t miss an update. Lots of free planning checklists, itinerary guides and insider secrets included.
1. Ask for feedback
How on earth can you improve your life if you don’t know what to improve?
Sometimes we have a great idea – the widening girth, the tight chest, the failing relationship are usually glaring signs. We also don’t know what we don’t know – that’s when we have to turn to others for their feedback to help.
I listened to a podcast interview the other day with author, Michael Ellsberg and he spoke about how his life changed when he finally got over himself enough to listen to feedback and see it as a way to strengthen his character and improve his skills.
Notice I call it feedback, not criticism. They can be the same thing, except criticism doesn’t have a positive connotation, unless you put the word constructive in front of it.
Don’t fear for it. Request it. Start with trusted friends and mentors. Tell them you want their honesty. Ask for their feedback on whatever area of your life you want to improve.
2. Work on yourself
Self-growth, self-help, self-improvement, hippy dippy la la.
It makes me inwardly giggle when I hear people writing off self-improvement. It doesn’t make sense. Life is about growing and improving. We aren’t born with the answers, why not allow ourselves the grace to improve?
I’m an avid reader and devoted self-growth student. There is absolutely no way I’d be living the life I am now without this total commitment to working on myself.
It’s opened me up, helped me become stronger and better, kinder with a bigger intention to do good things for the world.
Don’t fear the hippy dippy la la. Jump on the train. Start with one book!
My recommendation is: Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, by Dr. Wayne Dyer. He is my teacher and I read something of his almost every day.
I’m already seeing a HUGE difference in my perspective and life improvement.
Relevant: How to change your life in 15 minutes a day
3. Give up your excuses
Give up your stories and excuse, they are debilitating. They put us into victim role and convince ourselves that we are hopeless and hapless.
You are not.
You can improve your life and you are capable of so much more than you realize. Give yourself a chance.
Make the commitment for the life improvement you want. Say you’ll do whatever it takes. And then tell the excuses to go away, that you’ll jump over any hurdles that come your way.
One of the questions I get asked over and over again, is “How can I do all I do?” I’m not saying that time is not a limitation for me. Of course, it is, but it is for everyone. I just don’t allow the “I don’t have time” excuse to stop me from improving my life.
Anthony Robbins says,
“With a dis empowering story, failure is nothing less than guaranteed. “
4. Embrace change
I’m guessing you kinda like change if you are a traveler. Change is the only constant we have. Learn to slip into the flow of life, go where the ebb and flow takes you. It’s not survival of the fittest, it’s those who can adapt best to change that will thrive.
One of the reasons I love to inspire and encourage people to travel more is because they get so great at adapting and loving change – the ability to let go and try something new and remove attachments to all things.
Your life will improve considerably when you can let go and swiftly move to the new you and the new direction.
Don’t fight it – it’s simply evolution.
Relevant: How to achieve your goals and change your life for good
5. Embrace the struggle
You cannot improve your life without going through change. You cannot go through change without head-butting struggle.
Struggle is proof that you’re growing. It’s how the caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. It wouldn’t grow strong wings capable of flying if it didn’t’ struggle out of the cocoon.
How awesome is that?
Embrace the struggle.
How is it helping you to stretch and grow? What kind of wings is it helping you to develop? And where can you fly to once you’ve moved through it?
6. Don’t fear the shadows
The dark side. Go into it with courage.
We all have shadows – the overwhelming doubts and fears that control the path we walk upon. Often they do it unnoticed and very subtly. We think the best way to get rid of them is to ignore them or run. But, quite simply it’s just to turn around and face them.
“Why are you here? What is it you are trying to teach me?”
Once you start that conversation you weaken their hold on you.
You will improve your life when you learn to uncover the lessons in the negative, and befriend the shadow side.
7. Move in the direction of your dreams
It doesn’t have to be through pole vaulting leaps, turtle crawls will do too if that’s all you can manage.
Be clear on what your dreams are, believe you can achieve them, and walk confidently towards them.
Understand why you want the dream. It’s a powerful fuel that will drive you forward and help you overcome all the hurdles trying to stop you from improving and achieving the dream.
With each new step, ask yourself
“Is this moving me away from or towards my dreams?”
Then you know if it’s worth finishing the step or changing directions.
8. Improve your relationship with money
We spend a lot of time improving our health, our relationships and then we come to the money and we run and hide.
Possibly from the bills stuffed under the bed. My life changed dramatically when I decided to stop ignoring it and immersed myself in learning all I could about its relevance and value.
Why do we have to improve our relationship with money?
Because the majority of our problems in life stem from a difficult relationship with money. It’s the biggest cause of marriage breakups, and is the number one reason I hear over and over as to why people can’t travel more, spend more time with their family, have better health or live their ideal life.
It’s time to get real.
Money does matter. I’m not saying it will buy you happiness, although there are studies that prove people who have more money are happier because they have more CHOICES!
It is my very firm belief – grown from my own personal experiences and years of study, that unless you value yourself and what money represents, it won’t come play with you.
That’s awesome news because it means the power to change that relationship is in your hands!
9. Connect with nature
Without being connected to your gadgets.
It’s usually on my long walks, with just the breeze on my face, the trees shielding me from the sun and the waves lapping to shore, that my best ideas come to me.
Nature opens up the space for improvement. It’s a pure source of energy, it’s free and available for us to use at any time we want.
It will help you unwind and relax, improve your memory and creativity, and reconnect with what is important to you.
If I were you, I’d even hug a tree or two. Just tell me that doesn’t make you feel good! (It’s even the best way to help you overcome jet lag)
10. Improve your confidence
Confidence is key. To everything.
When I look back on my life – the successes, the failings and the missed opportunities, the one constant connected to all of that is confidence.
I didn’t act on my idea to start a travel blog for three years because I didn’t feel I was good enough!
Confidence is not something reserved for special people, it’s something we’re all born with. We just lose it once we gain an awareness of what others do and what failure is.
Except we see failure in the wrong light – not as a lesson and a progressive step forward, but a sign that we’re not good enough.
We lose the spelling bee, we fail a maths test, we’re rejected by that cute boy, we don’t get the job we want, we miss a credit card payment, all these things chip away at our confidence until soon enough we start second guessing our every decision and whether we’re really worthy of anything.
Work on your confidence and relearn how to gain it.
Strangely enough, confidence usually comes from doing those things we fear most. By proving to ourselves that we are better than what our minds, or other people, might tell us.
Again, travel was an incredible portal to help me improve my confidence. Turn up in countries with little money to your name and you see discover how capable you are of turning things around.
Creating my own business and doing things each day that scare me and feel so out of my depth have improved my confidence once I’ve come out the other side unscathed, with new insights and success.
11. Experience love and joy
These are our two highest emotions.
If you can live from these states as often as you can, your life will improve. It’s a pure energy and vibration thing. All you have to do is understand what or who helps you to feel this way and do more of it. Actively seek these out when you feel a little down.
It will change your state, which will change your experience, which will improve your life.
12. Change your energy.
My friend Belinda Davidson says change your energy, change your life!
After being a student of her school for three years, I completely agree. It’s probably one of the easiest thing to do on this list.
Here are the different ways to do this:
1. Physical – work on cleaning out your body. Have a healthy diet, get adequate sleep, exercise often and cleanse regularly. I not long ago finished a 30 day body cleanse and I’ve got a lot of potions and pills I frequently take to keep my body clean so the energy can flow freely.
2. Mentally – Ensure you are only consuming information that raises your vibration. Turn off the news and choose to hang around supportive people who celebrate you rather than tolerate you. Clean mental energy is essential.
3. Spiritual – Meditate daily (it will help keep your mental and physical energy clean too). See energy healers who can clear your blocks and get your chi flowing again. Clean your chakras.
Your chakras are the energy points of your body and control all aspects of your life. If one is blocked, your life will reflect that area that is blocked.
For example, if your throat chakra is blocked, you’ll have difficulty expressing yourself. It’s life changing to understand this.
13. Get help from those who have what you want
Who are you learning from? Whose advice to you regularly ask?
These are really important questions to ask yourself. As we’ve learned from the ways above, you have to take responsibility for your own improvement.
As I was writing this post, I came across a section of Tony Robbins new book, Money, Master the Money.
I’m reading it because I want to learn how to manage and invest my money smartly. Who do I choose to learn this from? A financial advisor who doesn’t have success with his own finances or Tony Robbins and all the successful and billionaire investors he interviewed?
Tony says that, 80% of success in life is psychology and 20 % is mechanics.
Let’s count the other 13 tips in this post the 80%. The rest is when you turn to the strategies and techniques that successful people have proven work.
So, what areas of your life need improvement? Who do you know of that has mastered that aspect of their life?
Learn from them.
If you bring the 80% to the table and learn from them, you’ll improve your life. It’s a given.
14. Travel More
I can’t think of anything that will improve your life more than travel.
It allows you the space and freedom to change and easily redefine the kind of person you want to be.
It will also open your mind, build your confidence, break down your barriers, think outside of the box, learn to depend on your own smarts, and be willing to reach out of your comfort zone to try new things and make new friends.
It makes you feel so connected to life and child-like awe and wonder. That’s only a few of the benefits too.
The reason we started our travel blog was because we knew how much travel can change and improve your life, and we wanted to help as many people as we could do more of it, so they could experience the same.
