12 Easy & Smart Ways to Improve Your Daily Life Massively
When people wonder how to improve their day-to-day life, many may think they need to turn their lives around and perform a full life makeover.
However, that’s not true at all.
Performing these small but significant activities daily can:
- boost your mood and your energy levels
- make you smarter
- reduce your anxiety levels
- help you live a happier life
- and bring abundance to your life.
The best part? You can start today.
If you want to improve your daily life, check out this list.
Don’t wait long before you start implementing these simple but life-changing habits.
12 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life
1. Practice gratitude
I love journaling, and I’ve been practicing gratitude journaling for years now, and the results have been impressive.
I feel a lot happier and calmer than when I first started, and things improve a lot in my business and personal life when I’m consistent with the habit.
One thing I remember about my first journaling sessions is that I had a lot of anger inside. Sitting down with my journal meant writing about how angry, disappointed, frustrated, and overwhelmed I was.
But then I kept doing it and learning about other types of journals, and that’s how I learned about gratitude journaling.
Turns out I’m not alone in enjoying these benefits.
According to research, gratitude journaling can help you:
- overcome toxic emotions,
- appreciate others more,
- and improve your levels of attentiveness.
Take a piece of paper or a journal and a pen and write down three things you feel deeply grateful for, and see gratitude’s magic work on you.
2. Watch your breathing
We may think that breathing is a thing that kind of just… happens.
We don’t need to control it, right? Our own body takes care of it “automatically.”
Well, if that’s you, you’re wrong.
Breathing correctly is something you need to train yourself to do because if you’re like most people, you probably have some terrible breathing habits like taking short breaths or holding your breath.
According to research, breathing better means:
- improving your mental clarity,
- sleeping better,
- strengthening your immune system,
- and reducing your stress levels.
As with any other thing in life, practicing daily will make you a master of the subject.
Take long, deep breaths and feel your lungs filling up. Exhale and repeat.
3. Read non-fiction books
Yes, you’ve probably heard this one a thousand times, and if you haven’t built a reading habit yet, I’m hopeful that if you see it one more time, I’ll convince you to start today.
Now, I’m not talking about reading Harry Potter (no offense).
I’m talking about reading non-fiction books about topics that interest you and can help you learn something useful and make progress toward something you want to achieve.
If you want to make progress in life, you’ll need help from other people, and there’s no better way to access someone else’s knowledge than reading a good non-fiction book about a subject you’re interested in.
Remember, there’s an endless number of lessons to learn in every area of your life, and reading books on those areas will speed up the process and save you a lot of time and effort.
4. Set daily intentions
Do you want to make real progress in a specific area of your life?
Whether it’s work, relationships, health, or a passion project, you need to take small steps every day to get where you want to be and build habits that last.
Start your day by setting a daily intention about what you want to achieve that day.
Write it down, and make sure you work towards that.
Doing this daily will prevent you from feeling lost and bored.
5. Wake up as soon as your alarm goes off
This one’s hard, I know.
However, since your mornings can actually set the tone for the rest of your day, you won’t want to let laziness defeat you, don’t you?
Try waking up before dawn (or as early as you can handle) for a set period (let’s say 5-7 days).
Use that extra time to work on your side hustle or passion project, and by the end of that set period, assess how you feel about waking up early and at the same time each day.
Waking up at 5 a.m. every day to write and work on my blog until 6:30 a.m. has allowed me to start and maintain this project no matter what life throws at me during the day.
6. Declutter and organize
According to the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, a cluttered environment limits your ability to process information.
What happens is that the number of objects you see while you’re working and the actual task you’re working on compete for your brain’s attention, resulting in less focus on the thing you’re doing.
Before you get to work, especially if you work from home or if you’re a student, take 10-15 minutes of your time to declutter your desk or sweep the floor.
Organizing your life, both in and out, can have amazing benefits while living and working in a cluttered space:
- increases your stress and anxiety levels
- decreases productivity
- encourages bad eating and spending habits
- and even triggers respiratory issues due to all the dust accumulating in cluttered homes.
Besides, decluttering makes you feel happier and calmer when you’re home.
Throw away objects that aren’t serving you anymore, like pens that ran out of ink or empty bottles of product.
Do a digital decluttering session too:
- Unfollow that Instagram “influencer” that makes you fall into comparison traps
- Delete those unread emails you’re never going to read
- Unsubscribe from that email list
- Delete that Evernote note you saved seven years ago.
7. Drink enough water
Did you know that our bodies are mostly water?
That’s right. Around 60% of our bodies are water.
Drinking enough has terrific benefits, like helping your body flush waste, preventing kidney damage, and delivering oxygen throughout your body.
Surprisingly, many people don’t drink enough because they simply forget or because they wait until they’re thirsty to gulp down that cup of water.
The best method is to keep a large bottle full of water wherever you go.
Make sure you fill it in the morning and have it by your side when you’re working or studying.
Having it on hand will help you drink more, and drinking more water will, in turn, make you smarter and look fresh!.
8. Eat more fruits and veggies
If you want to live a fulfilling life, you need to take care of your body.
Giving your body what it requires to function correctly:
- boosts your mood,
- helps you heal faster,
- and improves your life as a whole.
Besides, eating enough fruits and vegetables can reduce your diabetes and cancer risk.
Find ways to add them to your daily life, like throwing finely chopped veggies on your scrambled eggs or eating a piece of fruit after lunch.
Forget about canned or frozen fruits and veggies and prefer fresh ones instead.
9. Show people you care about them
Taking care of our relationships is as important as prioritizing our health and working on our business venture or freelance business.
That’s why it’s important to take some minutes of our time to show people how much we care about them.
There are many ways to show people you love them:
- you can text them and let them know you’re thinking about them and want to know what they’ve been up to lately,
- you can schedule some time off to take a cup of coffee with them
- or you can just tell them you love them.
Doing this daily will keep your relationships healthy and will prevent you from becoming isolated.
10. Be mindful of distractions
Our phones are a double-edged sword.
Even though they can make our life easier, help us connect with others easily, and even increase our productivity, they can also make us develop the habit of using them compulsively.
As a result, we may end up developing cell phone addiction.
Being addicted to your phone can have severe consequences like
- anger,
- tension,
- depression when you’re not using it,
- headaches,
- neck pain,
- and car accidents.
So, limiting your phone usage can keep you safe, more mindful, and more productive.
If you want to make the most of your day, limit your phone usage to 1-2 hours max.Make sure those hours are not immediately before going to bed or after you wake up.
To limit your phone usage, I highly recommend two apps:
- Forest. My all-time favorite. Plan a tree every time you’re not using your phone! Stay focused, and be present.
- My phone time. (If you’re an iOS user, try Moment) A couple of years ago, when I used this one for the first time, I realized I was spending THREE HOURS A DAY on Instagram. It was eye-opening.
11. Meditate and practice mindfulness
Ever since I read The Power of Now, I’ve embraced meditation and calmness as the ultimate goal in life.
This book delves into the benefits of living in the present moment and into how harmful it is to spend the whole day thinking about things that already happened or things that haven’t happened yet (and probably never will).
I’m guilty of not keeping the habit of sitting down to meditate for more than three days straight, but I do practice mindfulness on a day-to-day basis, which is a form of meditation.
Simply put, mindfulness consists of training your mind to focus on what you’re doing right now, in the present moment.
Whether you’re doing the dishes, reading, driving, hanging out with people, watching a movie, working, or whatever, the present is everything you have.
We tend to do all this stuff on autopilot while thinking about the past or the future.
12. Exercise
Last but not least: exercise.
This is a no-brainer, and you’ve probably heard it a thousand times before, but in case you haven’t started yet, I’m hoping that if you read it this one more time, I’ll finally convince you.
Research shows that exercising:
- boosts your serotonin levels as well as your brain sensitivity to that hormone, which boosts your mood and relieves feelings of depression and anxiety;
- makes you look better, which in turn will make you feel better;
- reduces the risk of suffering from chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease;
- improves your skin because exercise stimulates blood flow, which protects your skin from aging;
- boosts your brain health;
- helps you sleep better.
No matter which kind of physical activity you’re into.
Whether it’s weight-lifting, running, swimming, pilates, yoga, or whatever… make time on your day for workouts at least four times a week.
You won’t ever regret it.
The Bottom Line
It’s vital you learn how to improve your day-to-day life for that significant transformation to take place.
You’ll need to start implementing small but powerful habits daily that’ll take you where you want to be.
In case you do none or a few of the things on this list, pick the one that seems easier to you right now and do it for 30 days straight to build the habit.
If that activity makes you feel better and you see results, it’ll be easy for you to make it part of your day.
Then, little by little, start implementing new ones.
If you try to do them all at once, you’ll probably feel frustrated and abandon the whole thing, so don’t fall for the I-want-to-do-it-all-now trap.
