MY 5 SIMPLE LIFE HACKS

1. LESS TALK IS BETTER

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt  

- Abraham Lincoln

You're not learning when you're talking. You can only learn or understand something when you are listening to what others have to say.

While in conversation the advantage goes to the person saying less and listening more!

"There are none of Man's problems that can not be solved by sitting alone in a quiet room"  

- Anonymous

 

2. HAVE A MORNING ROUTINE

 

How you wake up each day and your morning routine (or lack thereof) dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days - which inevitably creates a successful life. 

-Hal Elrod 

Morning routines are in equal measure about what you do, and what you don't do. The bottom line is for you to find a morning routine that helps you set up your optimal mindset in the morning that will help you springboard into the new day while excluding things that will adversely affect your mindset as well. How and what type of things you do each morning will depend on you and what will help you the most.

Here are the elements I have adopted for my morning routine that have a positive effect on my day;

CHANTING

I have a morning chanting routine that helps me focus for the entire day. 

Your body is a bit like one of those old transistor radios that required you to turn the dial and search for the station you wanted. 

The repetitive sound of the mantra creates a vibration that calibrated your body frequency and helps you start the day harmonized.

WALKING

I'm very lucky that where I live in Bangkok has several waterways (Klongs) nearby. I try to walk there each morning at a brisk pace for about 50 minutes. 

I choose walking over jogging because it's easier on my body and I enjoy the opportunity to take in the sights around my neighborhood each day. 

WATER

The first thing I do each day after waking up is to drink 1 liter of water. The benefits I have experienced doing this are; 

• You seldom get thirsty throughout the rest of the day 
• Many of us are teaching tennis on-court all day in the sun. I noticed from the very beginning of my morning water drinking routine that my water reserves seemed to last all day (of course I took frequent drinks on-court as usual). before starting my water drinking routine I used to experience unquenchable thirst in the evenings after work. I would be drinking non-stop to try and cure what was obviously mild dehydration.  Once I adopted a morning water drinking routine my evening thirst issues disappeared immediately.  
• Your skin will thank you
• It wasn't long after starting my morning drinking habit that I saw the relationship between water consumption and skin quality. Suddenly dry skin disappeared and my skin looked healthier compared to before. Your skin is really dependent on having plenty of water reserves to draw from throughout the day, and the best time to stock up your reserves of water is first thing in the morning!
• Those headaches will disappear
• I used to suffer from headaches during the night, something that I couldn't explain at the time but I now realize was due to dehydration from my day on the court. Since starting my water habit I have not experienced a single headache.

3. READ (A LOT)

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.

-Dr. Seuss

Try to look at your mind as being highly impressionable. Subjecting yourself to the wrong things in the morning can lead to unwanted consequences in the future.

Take TV as an example. If your first action in the morning is to wake up in the morning and turn the tv on to check the news, you're definitely setting yourself up for some mind-altering stuff!

Both CNN and Fox News are going to present you with totally opposite views of world events, and the difference between the two networks is getting greater all the time. Therefore, if you watch either network long enough in isolation, your view of the world will not only be altered that day but also into the future. 

Unbiased and fair reporting has gone, possibly forever. News networks produce a product (point of view) for a specific audience and it's their job to sell that product at the expense of balanced news reporting.

Reading books is different. It allows you to decide which topics you are exposing yourself to.  My personal favorites are mostly self-help books and books dealing with sociology. 

I also subscribe to an online app called Medium Daily Digest. I initially got to choose the topics I wanted to receive when I signed up, and every day thereafter an email from Medium pops up in my inbox containing short stories that help both to inform and educate me on my chosen topics. They usually only take 4-8 minutes to read so they don't take up too much valuable time.

I also try to have one "real book" I'm reading all the time. This is usually a book that teaches me something new or presents a different point of view. My book of choice at the moment is The Ten Types of Human by Dexter Dias

The other thing I love about books, particularly non-fiction books, is that you always have them available for reference later, and shelves full of books look great in any room also!

4. YOUR HEALTH IS YOUR RESPONSIBLITY 

When you have your health, you have everything. When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all. 

- Augusten Burroughs

I guess I've been lucky in life because my chosen occupation demands a certain level of fitness. Even as I get older it's still important to me that I can continue to keep a rally going with my studentsand thsat I can maintain the many hours on court required.

There are 3 aspects of my health that I focus on. My sleeping habits, what I eat, and making sure I get an appropriate amount of exercise each day.

In my opinion, it's important to make 3 elements a part of your day rather than supplemental to your day. If I was going to do exercise during the day only when it felt right (it often never feels right starting exercise), or only eating food that tastes good (let's face it, the food that tastes the best tends to be the worst option for your waistline) then I'm not going to have the consistency in my daily habits that will help me reach a level of health I'll be happy with.

 

SLEEP

Are you a 'night person, meaning do you do your best stuff late in the night when most people are asleep? It might have been those times when you needed to finish urgent assignments late at night as a student, and the energy to do so usually came to you after 11:30pm and allowed you to keep working productively into then small hours. Or that surge of energy you get late at night whenever you are with your friends socializing when moments before you were ready to sleep.

Do you want to hear the truth? There's no such thing as a 'Night person', There's a period of your sleep each night that is devoted to restoring and repairing your body. That period of our sleep kicks in around 10:30pm, and because it requires some energy to perform this function, the body is programmed to supply energy at that time. 

Therefore, that surge of late-night energy you were using to complete your school assignment or to continue to party with your friends was a naturally occurring phenomenon that happens to everyone. The problem however is that if you are constantly using that late-night energy surge to do something other than restoring and repair your body, you're going to age much quicker and eventually encounter health problems.  

With all this in mind, I aim to get to bed no later than 9:30pm to set up a productive next day. 

 

FOOD

A close friend of mine lives by the saying 'never consume anything that comes out of a factory.' It's brilliant but extremely difficult to live by every day.

What is possible however is for us to try and eliminate as much processed food from our diet as possible. The more we can strive to achieve purity in our diet the better off we will be.

Here in Thailand, there is a 7 Eleven convenience store on every corner. There are two 7 Eleven stores are within 100m of my front door! That's a lot of temptation when I get home from work hungry or need something to nibble in the evenings. But the problem is that nearly everything in a store like 7 Eleven is not going to be good for you over the long term.  Everything in a 7 Eleven store is attempting to get you addicted to either sugar, or fat, or both!

For the good of your health avoid buying processed food and diligently monitor what goes into your body because big food companies are constantly looking for a way to get you hooked on their product.

EXERCISE

We often have a love-hate relationship with modern technology.  Modern technology has taken us further away from some of life's basics, particularly our need to maintain a regular form of exercise. 

Children now grow up living a much more sedentary lifestyle than even just a few short years ago. In 2016 the average internet user was online for 126 minutes per day. By 2019 that number had climbed to 153 minutes, and this year, the year of COVID-19, it's conceivable that we will easily eclipse anything we have seen so far.

And where are these same internet users getting that time from? They're borrowing time from other essential daily activities such as sleep time and exercise. Many young people around the world are on a pathway to illness, due to the way their day is structured around the internet, at the expense of good health practice.

For over a year now I have used a smartwatch to help me track my steps (my goal is 10,000 steps each day), my distance and heart rate while jogging, and the quality of my sleep each night. My smartwatch helps to keep me honest each day and provides me with that little bit of competitiveness that motivates me to continue my exercise routine. 

5. NURTURE POSITIVITY

A change of feeling is a change of density

-Neville Goddard

There is nothing in life more important than the people you are around daily. They say that you are the average of the 5 people you associate with the most. Think about that. Which 5 people are you around the most and are they the type of people that inspire you to do bigger and better things, or are they constantly trying to pull you down and smother you with their negativity? 

While it's true that you need to seek out people who can support you in your work or your life mission, it's also true that often you need to isolate yourself so that you can devote yourself to your task without the interruptions and 'baggage' other people tend to bring with them.

Your task is essentially to create a group of people around you who can support you while avoiding those types of people that will hold you back.