A 20 Year Old's Success Habits I MMNTM

A 20 Year Old's "Success Habits"

4/23/2019

In no way, shape or form am I here to telling you or show you how to be financially successful as I am still in college and am no where near it myself.

But, as I have been doubling down on cultivating solid habits this past year, I thought I would share some of them that have helped me the most, in certain areas of my life.

College is stressful, your 20's is stressful and heck, life is stressful, but I have started to find ways that have helped me personally develop more confidence and embrace more of the day to day journey rather than looking ahead to find happiness and success.

When I talk to most people they always say something along the lines of "I will be happy once I graduate and get a solid job" or "Once I buy my house I will be more happy" or "When I am finally in a solid relationship I will be more happy."

Guess what though?

Once you graduate and get a job you are going to be solely focused on moving up the ladder in the company so you will never take the time to actually be happy, you will just chase that next goal. When you finally buy that house, you might be stressed with all the work it takes to keep it up or you may look at your friends house and see that it is better than yours and you will want that house then. Or what happens if the relationship doesn't work out? Are you just going to be sad until the next person comes along?

The way we should really look at happiness and success is that if I craft the best version of me, then I will start to attract these things into my life. For example, say you are sad and not doing anything because your significant other broke up with you and say that continues for 6 months to a year. You are not going to attract another, potentially better suited person, into your life because nobody wants to be around someone like that who is constantly sad and complaining.

But, if you made the best version of yourself and were accepting of where you are in life, starting to enjoy the day to day successes more, you will start to gain confidence and attract people as you are more enjoyable to be around.

All of these things that I talked about above start with your habits as your habits run your life. You are like a machine and the habits guide that machine, whether you like it or not and whether you are aware of it or not.

This took me a while to figure out but once I did I pulled myself out of a deep sadness, as well as started enjoying the journey of life a lot more as there will always be another goal to chase once you reach yours. Stop looking for happiness in the future.

image: https://www.alinaislam.com/healthy-habits/

My Routine

Looking back at some habits I had, I really don't know how I was getting anything done during the day and I definitely know why I was as sad as I was.

I was sleeping in late, thinking that I was still being productive and eating crap because it was easy and not focused on myself at all. I had held all of my happiness in what other people thought of me and when my girlfriend broke up with me (which lead to these bad habits), I was lost and really had no meaning or happiness anymore.

They say time heals all, and that's slightly true. Time allowed me to get a little better but more importantly time allowed me to realize I needed a shift in habits and mindset.

Today I focus on my energy, cognitive function and mindset right when I wake up and then the most important tasks of my day, first thing in the morning. Then at night I use that time to reflect, meditate and finish my routine for cognitive performance.

All of these will be broken down in the following sections, I just wanted to give a little overview first.

Habits That Helped My Mindset & Happiness

These are some of the most near and dear habits to me as they have pulled me out of my sadness and ultimately have made my days so much more enjoyable.

The habit that has helped the most with this is my meditation in the morning. In the morning, meditation (even just a quick 5-10 minutes) helps you organize your thoughts, feel grateful and clear up your head.

There is a reason that meditation is becoming very popular, especially with CEO's of larger companies, as it helps prepare you for the day and get you in the right frame of mind. It helped me clear up sadness that I was starting my days with and create positive energy instead.

When at all possible, do this morning meditation outside, you will not regret it.

Next, taking a walk for 20-30 minutes each morning has done wonders for my mindset because when we are sitting in front of a screen all day, we never get the chance to be in nature except on the weekends and being in nature can help clear our thoughts and calm us down.

While you are on that walk, make sure to ditch the music and listen to a podcast as this is a perfect time to absorb some information. This was especially helpful to me because when I started listening to more podcasts, especially about self help and psychology, when I was sad I was realizing why I was thinking the way I was and it was giving me a clearer picture in my life. This largely contributed to my happiness and development out of that period of my life and that is why I almost never miss a walk, even on the rainy days (these might be better because it builds mental strength and shows you not everyday is easy).

Finally, also focused on mindset here, a cold shower right away in the morning has helped significantly with this because every single day it sucks, but you know that that is going to be one of the hardest things you do each day and it builds crazy confidence.

Habits That Helped Increase My Energy

When you are in college especially, energy is the one thing that we can't get enough of, or at least that is what I thought.

After long days, I would sleep for 8 hours and still feel super tired the next day but I just assumed that was "how it goes." That is not "how it goes," as I started looking into better sleep I found a few things that have helped me get better sleep in less time.

The first being to block out harsh blue and white lights in the evening hours, these wake up your brain and don't help you sleep. Start with only using warm lighting in your house when possible (maybe add a few lamps) and then you can even install a software on your computer called f.lux (for free) that will add a more warm feeling to your screen and take out all of the harsh lights.

If you have an iPhone (probably Android as well) you can turn on "night shift" that will give your phone screen a warmer and less harsh light when you are using it at night.

Staying on the phone topic for a second, sleep with your phone on airplane mode so that you don't get woken up by it during the night, for a dumb notification, and ruin your sleep.

Hitting on something from the previous section, a nightly meditation has also greatly helped me clear my head and get a better sleep in the long run. For any type of meditation, it takes some time to get used to but it helps greatly once you start regularly doing it. There are also free guided meditations on YouTube that are actually very good.

Sleep isn't the only way to increase your energy though, it just greatly helps. A cold shower in the morning helps, obviously, as well as eating a healthy diet. When you are feeding your body the right foods, you start to clear up "brain fog" as well as feel much more energized and less drowsy during the day.

Habits That Increased My Cognitive Function

This is a pretty unique thing that not enough people, in my opinion, focus on. It is definitely a little more challenging than other habits (and can cost a fair amount of money), but wow is it worth it.

If you really want to learn why these things work, and more things that work, check out Dave Asprey's "Bulletproof Blog" as he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars testing and researching this stuff.
Click here to go to his blog >>

For me, I focus on meditation, taking a supplement as well as eating certain foods that help my mental function. This includes everything from better memory to better problem solving and even clearer thinking so I can articulate ideas better.

I also have apps on my phone such as Wordscapes, Lumosity, Left vs Right and Dual-N-Back that all help challenge the mind and increase your performance.

Everything is explained in Dave's blog, so go listen to the expert about it!

Habits That Improved My Business/ Side Hustle

I would never leave this section out as some habits have helped me build skills that have helped in school, business, work, etc and not just how I feel during the day.

The first and most important thing I have done is to start doing the hardest things in the morning. As the day goes on, I noticed my energy was less and less and if I pushed the hard things off until later at night they were not getting done or they were not getting done effectively. When I tried doing these harder tasks later at night, they took me longer and the work was of lesser quality.

Another thing that really helped me was constantly trying new things and expanding my comfort zone. We all have a comfort zone and very few people actually push it, we may think about pushing it but never do. Just start doing something new like writing that blog, making those videos, cold calling, learn the guitar, etc. Just expand your comfort zone and this will in turn expand your skills.

Thanks for the read guys, hope you are killing it this week and stay tuned for tomorrow's blog around those of us in school (or even work) for the best habits that have started to help me there!

See ya tomorrow,
Taylor

MMNTM Blog