What small changes in lifestyle have the biggest impact?

 

The best change to my lifestyle that had the biggest impact and changed me multifold was stop hanging out with people who were less competent than me. As the famous quote goes - Show me your friends I'll show you who you are!

If you find yourself comfortable in a crowd (say your bed-share space or your friends clan or even your own house!) move out! Grow your wings. Be in the company of people who are more competent than you.

When would you know people around you are less competent than you?
simple the minute you know you're no longer doing anything new and no longer learn from your group of people around you.

Just step a mile away, be in their company over a brief friendly chat or mere acquaintance.

Whom do you associate yourself with?

Begin associating with people who are buzzed about doing things, writing, painting, calligraphy anything that's off the cow path. People who are constantly striving to create the next minute and not coast along the hours and days ahead.

You know they don't bother if a peer is jealous or if spouses are gossiping! Simply because they don't have the time for such trivial things!

You can find them depressed only if they have the next minute empty and nothing to do. That's how we need to mold ourselves into. When we know what's going to be on our plate, we will stop worrying about other things. We got to plan a plan.

I was a workaholic, who worked 18 mad hours a day, dropped by home to just eat sleep and wash, spent weekends with laundry and grocery shopping and free time was driving around the sea coast and fighting an ugly divorce for over four years.

A year later to my divorce, I found my man and remarried, courtship bloomed like one of a thousand moons! When we married and started living together, I found myself like a cave woman! I didn't have any great passions to share with him, the only good things I could share with him was my books and what I read! I could not hold myself and speak two sentences with him without having to refer the all knowing google.

The worst fear in life would be to lose your marriage the second time.

A sin needn't be infidelity. Being idle in itself is a sin! Laziness is one of the seven deadly sins! In this age and space when you can draw an infinite library into your kindle it really is a deadly sin to just sit idle.

It was/is my husband who's pulled me to what I 'am now.

To be passionate in life.

To be able to draw infinite amount of information and the only thing to do is to keep your eyes and ears open.

I realized how my friends too play a role in this, I began socializing more with friends who had meaningful things to share rather to learn!

I never got comfortable at whatever I was doing. I began painting, I really didn't know if I could ever make gentle thin strokes! but I picked it up, learnt a couple of strokes from my husband and later took to videos from you tube. I'm now volunteering at a library, helping the aged deal with technology!, help being a reading companion to kids and make posters for the library's workshops. Thanks to exploring photoshop and illustrator during my awfully available free time! I now feel guilty to say "free time" There is nothing free in this world! then how on earth can time be free??

I am not doing anything off the beaten path, but at the most, I know I'm not spending 18 hours of managing e-mails, power point presentations and showing different slices of data on excels and access. That only remains a part of my skills now. But not the main job I do. The main job I do is to build my capabilities. I now know what I can create out of the next 60 seconds. I now realize the importance of what crucial things one can make by sitting 2 hours alone with a computer and internet.

I wouldn't say social networking is bad, or criminal waste of time (unless you're just coasting along getting to see what others are up to in their lives!) you do learn a lot, social websites only brought people and communities closer, to make or break is in our hands.

I moved away from people / friends who put me a comfort zone. When my husband's accompaniment changed my life not by just status or filling in the missing link of love, but a paradigm shift to my character. I realized there is so much more to do as a person, before even being a good wife.

I'm doing that, by god's grace I'm cruising with my husband who is a constant learner and is one who'd be heart broken if he ever was left with a mobile app of some crashing saga! He'd rather stay awake to put those pieces together and see if he can make an analogy out of it! If you're not with a spouse like him, you can change to be one and make your spouse feel like me. Or be that friend who can help a lost forsaken coaster plan the next minute of their lives.

One of the best ways to improve your lifestyle in my honest opinion would be to spread your wings and be in the companionship of achieving people than the mediocre coasting along clan of birds. Soar higher, grab a bit of everything, after all you're a tiny little speck in the grand scheme of things, there's still more to see and to learn.