Do you feel that your life is no longer yours?
Does life feel hard and at times miserable?
Do you feel that you are spending a lot of your time working and going nowhere?
Maybe you feel tired, underrated and skint. A lot of people do.
Living costs are going up, but wages aren’t and people are working longer and harder to simply cover their bills. They are nearing burn out… but they must go on… dragging themselves out of bed just to keep the wolf from the door.
Life becomes a cycle of work – sleep – work and wages – debt – wages.
If you are feeling fed up with it all and need to do something about it then here are our 5 tips to…
- Reclaim back your life
- Take control of your finances
- Regain your happiness
- Put a smile back on your face
- Put a song in your heart
- Live a happy life of peace and security
Five Steps To Take Back Control Of Your Life
1. Have A Budget
Having a budget is one of the best ways to control your finances.
When you have a budget you know how much you are spending and how much you have coming in each month. It’s vital that you know how much you are spending. You should always know which are the essentials like food and bills and those which are not such as takeaways, treats, and entertainment.
Having a budget means that you can make sure that you make only decent purchases and that you are not simply buying things on a whim.
Humans are emotional buyers. People purchase items on impulse because of the emotions they are feeling at that time. Very few people buy using their heads.
You need to become a head buyer and not an emotional buyer.
Buying things that you can ill afford, is very detrimental to your finances and can cause all kinds of issues and problems at a later date. You never know when you really need money. The boiler or the car may break down and that big splurge on clothing back in April which you hardly touch won’t seem like a good buy when you can’t afford the repairs.
When wanting to make a purchase, you should ask yourself…
Do I really need this?
Do I need this or is it simply something I want?
Will I survive if I don’t buy it?
One thing you should consider when you are spending money on the non-essential items is the time it took to earn that money. It really helps if you see money as time and not money.
What I mean by that is, that for you to earn the money that you spend, you have to give your time to someone else. You exchange your time for money. As an employee receiving a wage you earn money by giving your employer your time, and they pay for that time you spent working for them by giving you money.
You exchanged your time for money so when you buy a coffee, a cake, or some kind of snack from a sandwich shop which you really don’t need, you are actually paying for that with hours.
Think about the food you throw into the bin.
You buy vegetables and perishables from the supermarket, it goes off and then you bin it. That is your time being thrown in the bin.
It isn’t money that you are using. It is your time, and time is precious.
The one thing you need more of is spare time and personal time. If you spend less money then you need to earn less. Now that’s not so easy when you’re working for an employer, if you are contracted to work 40 hours then you have to work those 40 hours a week. You can’t simply do 10 hours less one week. You can enjoy having more money though if you still reduce the amount you spend on non-essential stuff.
When you’re working for yourself though, you can reduce your hours and spend more time doing the things you enjoy. (That is if you choose the right way to make money when self-employed… more on this later, please keep reading.)
When you have a budget and you know what money is coming in and how much is going out, and you are on top of your spending, you can use any extra money you have to help pay off any debts that you may have.
It is important that you try and pay off any debt that you have as fast as you can. This is key to taking back control of your life.
Any debts that you may have, you must pay those off first because if you decide to put money away into a bank account instead and pretend that you have savings, you will lose money. And as we know, money is your time.
The reality is that you’ll be paying more on interest on those debts, than you will be earning on those savings.
So it always makes sense to pay off any debts as soon as possible.
When you have a budget you can make sure that you are spending only on the essentials, maybe a little bit on entertainment, but on the whole should be putting more money into paying off any debts and working towards becoming debt free.
Being debt free is one of the most important factors for a happy and controlled life..
2. Eat Healthily and Exercise
It is very important that you eat as healthy as possible. You should reduce the amount of sugary rich foods that you consume because they will have a negative effect on your health, on your immune system and on your mental state. This will all have a negative effect on your daily life and your productivity.
It is well documented that eating healthily can have a huge benefit to your mental wellbeing and your body as a whole.
The foods that you put into your body which are rich in sugar and carbohydrates, make a person sluggish. They also have a negative effect on a person’s mental clarity. You are not achieving the best results that you can because of the food that you eat.
There is a well known saying, you are what you eat and it’s true. Basically if you eat crap sugary foods, then you are going to feel crap and have crap life results.
People are so protective when it comes to their cars, they wouldn’t dream of putting diesel in a petrol car so why expect the human body to be any different. At least a car can be repaired easier with replacement parts and money.
Sugary rich foods are linked to many health conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and several cancers. After smoking, the second biggest cause of cancers in the UK is obesity. No one gets obese without eating sugary crap food and drink and consuming copious amounts of it.
An unhealthy and diseased person cannot have total control over their lives.
Try fasting, it reduces the amount of food which goes into your system and you do not need to count calories. Focus on eating better food and you will lose weight (if you need to) without trying and feel a whole lot better.
It is important that you try and get some form of exercise even if you are not a gym bunny or into exercising in general. You need to do something to keep you fit and healthy. If you dislike exercising then you want to go and find something you enjoy doing, like going for a walk, dancing or going for a bike ride.
Those who have a dog will probably get their exercise by walking the dog on a regular basis, which is great… but there are those who don’t. There is a rather large and unfit looking gentleman living not too far from me. He regularly brings his dog to exercise on the grass land across the road. He lives less than a minutes walk from the land yet he drives the dog here and then while the dog is running around, he leans against his car smoking a fag.
Taking back control of your own life means taking control of your health and wellness too.
If the more physically demanding forms of exercise are not for you, go for a walk, or maybe take up something like tai chi or yoga. These are really good because they are a form of moving meditation and are great for your mental wellbeing.
Exercise is vital to a healthy body and it’s great for sleep and is great for productivity.
It is the lack of productivity which is often the biggest downfall for most people. It pushes them down into a life which becomes a prison of their own making. A prison they cannot escape from.
There are many kinds of exercises that you can do at home. I’ve mentioned tai chi and yoga, they are perfect for doing at home if you have a bit of space.There are other exercises that you can do when you have 5 minutes spare.
Even just doing squats when you’re brushing your teeth, or do a few star jumps while waiting for the kettle to boil. You can walk or run up and down the stairs several times a day to get the heart beating and burn off some excess energy and fat.
It doesn’t need to be a full on hour long gym session, gentle exercise is better than nothing. But you do need to keep your body healthy and functioning properly if you want to reclaim your life.
3. Get More Sleep and Meditate
Doctors and scientists are all in agreement that a person who isn’t getting around 8 hours of sleep is causing their body damage. Lack of sleep has a negative effect on a person’s body and their mental state.
This is not good news for anyone who has conditions like M.E. or fibromyalgia where they are in constant pain which makes sleeping a struggle. They are usually fatigued and need sleep but sleep eludes them. It is a vicious circle. But for the rest of us, we can decide to get more sleep… or at least try.
Scientists say that a person needs to have at least 6 or 7 hours sleep. If you can do the full 8 hours, that’s brilliant, but if you cannot, at least aim for having 6 hours minimum of good sleep. If that means having to go to bed early then do so. One of the best ways to get an early night and go to sleep early is to not watch TV in bed. Go to bed early, maybe do a bit of reading but make sure it’s nothing overly stimulating.
You won’t get much sleep if you are reading a few chapters of the latest zombie story!
There is a half substitute for sleep, and that is meditation. Now I’m not saying that meditation is as good as sleep, but if you are struggling to sleep then you should consider taking up meditation because meditation is really good for the brain, for the mind and the body.
Meditation has been shown to have all the brain waves working at the same time. When you are sleeping one set of brain waves is more active than the others and while awake it’s the opposite. With meditation all the brain waves are functioning together so you are asleep and awake at the same time. Meditation is incredibly refreshing for the brain.
With meditation, you relax and calm the mind and body. It is perfect for stress management. You focus your awareness on your breathing, a physical item such as a picture or a candle flame, a mantra, or parts of your body, and silence the mind.
You do not need to sit for hours meditating to get benefits. No one is asking you to become a Zen Buddhist Master. 5 to 10 minutes a day will do. If you can take just a few minutes from your day to make meditation a habit it can and will have a huge positive effect on your life.
With meditation the idea is to stop thoughts from taking control of your attention.
Do not try and stop thinking when you’re meditating, the idea is to allow your mind to focus on something else and when thoughts come into your mind, you just do not get involved with them. You allow thoughts to drift back off into the ether. The whole purpose of meditation is to focus your mind on one thing and one thing only.
Eventually, if you practice regularly, you’ll be able to allow your mind to quieten and be still. You will become mindful of what is happening in and around you, you become aware of your thoughts without having to get involved with them.
Thoughts will come and go, like a giant media player on constant shuffle. You will see images, you will have memories, you will hear sounds and voices, there will be smells, there will be all kinds of mental activity going off in your mind like fireworks.
The art of meditation and mindfulness is simply to not allow yourself to get seduced by those thoughts and be pulled into a spiral of thinking which can be detrimental to your calmness and your happiness. Getting involved in prolonged negative thinking patterns can be very detrimental to your health and very damaging to your life in the long run.
4. Watch Less Television And Do More
This one is quite self explanatory.
People enjoy watching the telly, myself included. I am a huge fan of Sci-Fi and British dramas, especially crime dramas. There is plenty to watch. We have access to NetFlix, BritBox, and Amazon TV. We are spoilt for choice. There is probably too much choice really.
There’s a lot of great dramas, films and reality TV for people to get lost into when they get home from a hard day at work. But the problem is that TV can rob people of a good future.
What’s worse is that very few people realise that.
Watching too much TV means that people are not doing the things they need to do to improve their life, build a better future or simply change the circumstances that they are currently experiencing.
If you are in a bad financial situation where you need to earn money, watching excessive television is not going to help. It won’t help earn the extra money needed to get yourself out of that current situation. Now, before you shout at me, I know you know that. I am not trying to insult your intelligence, but the problem lies in switching the television on itself.
Once the gogglebox is on, it is distracting. People get so absorbed into the progammes they have on, even if they are not fully enjoying them, they simply forget about their life situation and forget to go and do something better instead. It happens to me too.
People generally watch between 4 to 6 hours of TV a day, and that time is something that could be used being more productive and engaging in acts which would be more beneficial to a person’s life.
For example, that 4 – 6 hours could be used for reading books. Books which could be educational. A person could learn a whole new set of life changing skills instead of watching reruns of Star Trek or people argue in Albert Square.
I have swapped watching the morning news for reading and as soon as the good lady goes to bed, I turn off Family Guy and do another hour of reading before bed.
In fact, reading itself iseducational, if you have wanted to be a writer, reading more will help you to write better.
Instead of watching the telly you can write, you can paint, you can go to classes in the evening, you can listen to podcasts and audiobooks, you can study an online course, you can exercise. You can do a lot more with your time if you’re not watching TV.
People enjoy watching TV, it’s a comfort for them. It can take away the pain of having to work a job they don’t like or work with people they cannot escape from. TV is a drug which anaesthetises an unhappy life. However, the sad truth is that by watching so much telly regularly they are keeping themselves stuck in the unhappy life they are trying to escape from.
People watch far more TV than they need and it is often that one thing that holds them back and stops them from becoming successful and taking back control of their own life.
The people who stop watching TV in the evening generally do go to bed earlier resulting in them getting more and better sleep. They often get up early in the morning too and have a longer and better day. They become more productive and have more meaningful lives.
5. Become Your Own Boss And Make Your Own Money
One of the most important steps to taking back control of your own life is to sack your boss as they say. Get rid of the day job, or at least, your dependence on money from one source.
Taking control of your finances and your own work means that you can control your time better and you can decide as and when you work and what you do… and how much you charge and earn.
Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, life is hard when you do not have money. Our society is set up around money. We pay our bills with it, we buy food with it, we buy entertainment with it… we use it for everything.
Money isn’t bad, it can’t be, it’s just money. It is a tool which can be used to make our lives better. Money is a universal tool. The more we have, the more we can buy and do.
To Get Your FREE Copy Of How To Stop Working And Make A Million Pounds Instead by John Harrison CLICK HERE:
Money gives us security and peace of mind. When we have plenty of it that is… when we don’t have much… then life becomes really hard.
Being skint in the middle of winter is no joy when the boiler suddenly stops working and then to lay the boot in, work suddenly dries up. I know, it happened to me many years ago when I was working as a joiner.
People who have jobs, are generally working from pay packet to pay packet. Living month to month.
There is a saying, the word job J-O-B means…
…just over broke.
A person who is employed and working for other people, is very rarely going to earn more than what they need each month, unless they are on a fantastic wage.
Basically a person who has a job is very unlikely to become wealthy.
Very often many people who are employed run up some kind of debt. Whether it is credit cards or loans, a lot of debts come from families struggling to survive and keep a roof over their heads.
People love to think it comes from irresponsible people splurging out on holidays or products they cannot really afford or need. They love to blame people for being bad spenders but it’s not always true… statistics show that a huge amount of debt comes from people simply trying to live.
They struggle to get out of debt because the money that they earn each month is simply not enough to cover living costs and debt repayments. There is rarely enough to pay extra towards debts meaning that their debts become long term shackles which are hard to shake off.
Taking Control Of Your Income
When you become your own boss, or you work for yourself, you can decide what you do and when you work. It sounds easy doesn’t it, and it can be, but the biggest problem is that most people who try to take control of their own income do so by choosing a wrong career.
They often choose to do something which they know they will love and enjoy, which is great as it can make doing the work easier… to a degree, but it can also become a prison of your own making.
Why?
Well, unless what you choose to do is a premium service which costs little to do and requires little of your time, you can be working hard, working long hours and spending a lot or money trying to earn money.
You need to decide carefully about the kind of work you’re going to do.
For example:
A joiner requires a van, a workshop, insurances, and a hell of a lot of tools. I know… I have been there.
It is a lot of hard work.
Not only do you need to do the work people are paying you to do, you need to find future work and that requires you measuring up jobs, taking phone calls and working out quotes and estimates. Add the invoicing and TAX paperwork, you can end up working twice as many hours than you actually get paid for.
I myself have… and I know of others in the building trade who have worked very late in the evening pricing up jobs and doing paperwork just so that we can spend at least 6-8 hours the following day getting the actual work done.
Occasionally midnight became the marker to stop and go to bed.
In the video below I look at opening a coffee shop… another romantic business. Looks great on paper… but is it really that good for making money and reclaiming your life back?
To Make Money Or To Earn Money? That Is The Question
Becoming self-employed and becoming your own boss can be extremely hard if you get it wrong.
Ideally, you need a system, a method or a set of skills which will allow you to make big returns on the least amount of effort.
In the video below we discuss the five points that a person should consider when they want to work for themselves or if they are looking for a part-time job or a second job to generate extra money.
The 5 Crucial Points For A Perfect Money Making System
- Requires very little upfront or ongoing expenditure unless you are leveraging money itself.
- It doesn’t require too much training and learning.
- It requires very little actual work… especially hard physical work.
- Requires very little of your time.
- The returns are the highest possible.
Maybe I should throw in a 6th point and that is… can you replicate it and create more than one income stream? Multiple-income streams are the way to wealth and security.
So when you are looking for a way to make more money, whether it’s going to be full-time, part-time or just a second job you need to consider those 5 points. You would do right to find work which gives you the most returns for the least amount of work, using the least amount of tools and time.
One such job is Letter Writing. This is a skill which anyone can learn, requires nothing more than a good laptop and internet connection (a tablet and smartphone could do) and the returns on the work and time can be astronomical.
With one letter which took an afternoon to write John Harrison made over £5 million… there are loads of multi-millionaire letter writers… and the reason is that there is a HUGE demand for letter writers and copywriters.
If you write sales letters for your own products then you build up a portfolio of income streams.
If this interests you then click the link below to learn more:
http://www.streetwisenews.com/OLR/
