ten things we must do.....ARCHANA WANTS TO FOLLOW

10 Things You Should Do Everyday for a Happy, Meaningful & Good Life - Combined
Art of Living: Personal Development and Spiritual Growth

(For ease of reference, this is a combined post of parts 1 & 2 which were written and published a few months ago).

Our good buddy Lazy Yogi Ponchie had just read a great blog on Meditation ;-), where the author had revealed the secrets of how to live a happy, meaningful and good life and the highly inspired Yogi Ponchie immediately went about implementing the recommendations — in his own special way of course. The article, he read, explained that the secret to a happy and fulfilling life was to live life one day at a time. Not only that, the author had provided his thoughts on what 10 activities one should include in one’s life on a daily basis in order to accomplish this. Here was how Ponchie spent some of his day, which he felt met the requirements laid out in the post.

5:00 am: Ponchie checked the time and smiled 5:00am Woo Hoo! The recommendation was to wake up early, but since waking up early was impossible for our lazy yoga friend, he had decided instead to stay up all night. Thus, he would be awake during the early morning hours and be able to take advantage of this most spiritual time of day.

6:00 am: Ponchie headed to the Gym to get his daily recommended sweat. He spent the next hour in the sauna.

7:00 am: Ponchie listened to a meditation tape in his car on the way back home from the gym, thus meeting the most important criteria for doing his daily meditation practice.

8:00 am: Ponchie watched Sunrise Earth on Discovery by sitting very close to the television… spending time with nature… done.

9:00 am: Ponchie called his dad and asked him to pay his credit card bills and help fix the leaky faucet in the kitchen. He told his dad that this had to be done today itself, since he was eager to meet the requirement of "completing your daily affairs" as had been suggested… that was easy.

So here we are, with Pochie at the half way mark of meeting the daily activities that the article laid out. Let’s summarize this article that has so profoundly inspired Mr. Ponchie. Essentially, the secret to a Happy, Meaningful and Good Life, the article said, was to live one day a time. This did not mean not to plan, it meant not to obsess with the outcome. Put money away in the retirement fund, enroll in an MBA program, start a daily fitness routine, launch a new blog, sure do all these things, but don’t focus on the results. Instead, just go about the business of life by living each day as well as you can. In addition, the article continued, try to incorporate the following 10 activities into each day, as they would go a long way in expanding your spiritual and personal growth and ensuring that you really maximize your human potential. In part 1, I will list 5 of the 10 daily suggestions that were made and here they are…

1. Wake up Early: This gets the day off to a great start. The early morning hours are full of spiritual energy and prana (life force) and are an ideal time for your daily sadhana (meditation, yoga or other spiritual practice).

2. Sweat Everyday: If possible try to break a sweat everyday, and a sauna does not count. This means to get some form of exercise and keep the body in tip top shape. The body is not you, but is the vehicle through which you live and worship, so treat it like a temple and take care of it.

3. Daily Meditation: This is the most important criteria. If you have come to the Mastery of Meditation website, something is stirring within. This invitation by the Divine should not be taken lightly. Not all receive the invite, or at least not all are aware of the beckoning, so if you are being roused from the dream by the gentle hand of your Divine Nature do everything you can Wake Up!

4. Spend Time is Nature: The spiritual path can be described in 1 word – CONNECT. That one word describes all the Vedas, Gita, Upanishads, Bible, Koran, Tantras, etc. One of the best ways to connect is to be with Nature intimately. Hopefully the author will write an article on this topic of Connection as well as is it a very interesting and powerful concept :-).

5. Complete Your Daily Affairs: Don’t procrastinate, don’t delay, don’t put off what needs to done. The old proverbs are very wise. "A stitch in time saves nine" and "Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be done today". Life, the moment, provides challenges to you and when you meet them, life opens up. If they linger, they are like blockages, they prevent your life from moving forward. Your inner voice will constantly remind you what needs to be completed. Heed this suggestion and you will be surprised at the rewards.

In part 2 of this series I will go into the last 5 suggestions for what should be done everyday in order to live a happy, meaningful and good life, and we will also see how the rest of Lazy Ponchie’s, I mean Yogi Ponchie’s, day went.

Part II

In part 1 of this series we followed lazy and crazy Yogi Ponchie through the first half of his day as he looked to complete the "10 must do everyday activities for a happy, meaningful and good life" that he had just read about. In part 2 of this series we will explore the final 5 daily recommendations and see how Yogi Ponchie manages them in his own unique way. In fact, I will just outline how Ponchie spends the rest of his day and see if you, the reader, can guess what requirement he is trying to meet by his activities.

We left Ponchie at 9:00 am when he was convincing his dad to pay off his bills and help with with household chores. Once he managed to pull that off, here is how he spent the rest of his time…

10:00 am - 10:00 pm: A very tiered Ponchie, from having stayed up all night, locked his puppy in the bathroom and hit the sack.

10:00 pm: Ponchie spent 2 minutes reflecting on how well he had slept.

11:00 pm: He called up his dad and asked his father to be grateful for being allowed to pay his credit card bills and for being asked to fix his leaky faucet.

12:00am: He chugged down 2 bottles of wine.

1:00 am: He struggled hard to stay awake again, so he could once be awake for the early magical part of the day.

There you have it. The last 5 activities Yogi Ponchie indulged in, in order to complete the last 5 "must do everyday activities for a happy and successful life." Any guesses? Here are the suggestions from the author and how Ponchie thought he was meeting them.

6. Spend Some Time Alone: Each day we should try to make some space for spending time alone. Not only that, we should spend this time not in entertainment. In other words sitting alone watching TV, or surfing the internet, or locking your puppy up in the bathroom and going to sleep does not count. One should try to just be alone without excessive stimulation and of course be Awake. When one is alone in this way, not escaping into some entertainment, it will give one visibility into the self in action. This is essential if one is to be a Light Onto Oneself.

7. Do Your Daily Accounting at the End of the Day: This is a wonderful meditation to adopt into one’s lifestyle. It does not require much effort to do and the rewards gained from this simple technique are enormous. At the end of the day spend some time and reflect back on the day chronologically, from the time you woke up to the present time. Look back and see how you acted, what you said, how you said it, what you felt, what you thought etc. Especially reflect on situations that posed a challenge or were emotional in nature. Were you overly reactive, did you respond too quickly, did you really listen, were you honest and forthright? So much self-knowledge can be gained by this simple accounting method. I cannot over emphasize the value of this meditation, so do your daily accounting. It will help balance your life, prevent incomplete emotions from spilling over into the subconscious mind and give you tremendous insight. Yogi Ponchie actually did this correctly, but since he had slept all day, there was not much for him to reflect on.

8. Do at Least One Good Deed: Everyday do something good for someone else. Do something thoughtful, kind, generous. Greed, aggression, competitiveness, arrogance, ambition are so widespread, take a moment and contribute to the energy of thoughtfulness, generosity, compassion, humility and giving. Do it without focusing on the reward. My grandfather would daily, randomly and secretly give some money away to the poor who he would encounter on the street. Just because it was a nice thing to do. Our Yogi friend thought giving his dad a chance to do a good deed counted as doing a good deed — nope that is no good.

9. Get Some Entertainment: You need to relax and enjoy yourself daily as well. You will find that when you don’t endless pursue the pleasure principle all day, the time when you do indulge, is so much more fun and enjoyable. You will really be able to laugh and be happy. You will be full of joy and humor. Try to not go overboard during this time and chug down bottles of wine like our buddy, but do spend some time just in healthy entertainment everyday as well. It is important for your mind, body and spirit.

10. Do Something Difficult: Everyday you should take on the challenge of doing something which is outside your comfort zone. It is easy to live in a cocoon, with a do not disturb sign on the door, but then chances are you are not growing and are instead falling into a pattern of reactive living. So have courage and take on the challenge of doing those things which you know deep inside you need to do, but have been able to cleverly avoid. It does not have to be running the New York Marathon, it could be as simple as making a difficult phone call, to turning off the TV, to volunteering to change the stinky diaper. Ponchie struggled to stay up all night as his difficult daily deed, but perhaps the challenge he should have undertaken, was to go to sleep on time and wake up early instead.

So there you have it. The 10 activities you should do daily to have a happy, meaningful and good life. So take one day at a time the best you can and include in it these 10 pearls of wisdom. All another can do from the outside is guide and inspire you, the actual work you have to do yourself. So its time to walk the walk…

PAST.............

I’m in my early-getting-on-to-mid forties, and even though I come from a long-lived family, that means that I’m probably somewhere around the middle of my life. I have approximately the same amount of past as I have (likely) future. Sometimes, it seems like I have a tremendous lot of it. When it gets to the point where you can talk about events of 20 years ago and that was when you were a young adult, it hits you – much like that moment when you meet a teacher, or even worse, a doctor, who’s younger than you.

Your past

The past is an amazing resource. It contains some wonderful moments and some brilliant lessons. But it also contains a lot of stuff I don’t need any more.

My wife and I recently cleared out our garage. We threw out some things we brought with us when we moved more than five years ago, and hadn’t looked at since – and some of it had moved with us five years before that, and some of it had moved out of my parents’ home with me (where I hadn’t looked at it for years previously) and only been touched since when I moved house. I still had class notes from high school which I hadn’t ever read over since I passed the relevant exams.

Part of what that exercise brought home to me was that, on the inside also, I’ve been carrying around a lot of stuff which was unexamined and unneeded, just because I’d always had it.

Those boxes of irrelevant paper, and the occasional useless object, were anchors tying me to my past. Now, I kept a lot of stuff as well – all my creative work, all my photographs, some cards with notes in them from people who appreciated me, reminders of a few good moments. But most of the really valuable memories stay with me without any mementoes.

Unfortunately, so do some of the negative memories. I don’t need a photo or a journal entry to help me recall moments of rejection and disappointment, or stupid decisions that I later regretted.

Social media

Recently, like a lot of other people, I imagine, I’ve been reconnecting on Facebook with friends from years ago. In many cases, I haven’t seen then in 20 years or more (there it goes). They’re middle-aged too. Most of them have married (some of them whose first weddings I attended have remarried, which I’m sad about), most of them have had children, they’ve worked at, in most cases, I know not what jobs, there’s a 20-year gap in our knowledge of each other. Some of them look almost exactly the same, while others I wouldn’t have recognised if we passed in the street.

What we have to connect us is shared memories, and perhaps a mutual regard for the people that we were and still, to some extent, are. And yet I’ve changed a lot in that time, almost beyond recognising myself, and surely some of them have too.

One of the challenges of this kind of reconnection is that there are people in your past who were difficult, who you didn’t have positive regard for, and some of them also have Facebook accounts and are in touch with the people you did like. One of my friends recently sent me a friend suggestion for a woman we both knew at the time we first met. That was an incredibly difficult time for me, and although my friend wasn’t involved in the negative aspects of it, this woman was. I won’t go into detail, but basically she made a bad situation worse through what I still consider extremely poor leadership. And even though I’ve done a lot of inner work around both that situation and the issues within myself that led to it, after 20 years I’m still not interested in reconnecting with her.

Exercise to let go of that anchor

I’ve been thinking of this as a fault, a lack of forgiveness, a failure of imagination (I’ve changed a lot – perhaps she has too? But I just can’t imagine her being someone I’d get on with.) But the other way to look at it is this: that’s a part of my past I want to leave behind, not reconnect to. Just because I’ve had it for a long time doesn’t mean I have to keep it in the garage.

Imagine a large ship. Maybe a cargo ship, filled with hundreds of containers.

It’s anchored to the dock.

Now imagine that it’s slipping its mooring and gently starting to move. The dock falls behind into the mist. It’s on its way to a new destination.

That was the image that came to me when I thought about the topic of letting go of the past.

Now go back to that image. Close your eyes (when you’ve read the next bit, obviously) and imagine yourself as that ship, and some dark part of your past as the dock. You can unload some containers there, if you like.

Now let go the mooring lines and watch the dock disappear as you steam off on your new adventure.

You don’t have to go back to that port if you don’t want to.

100 WAYS TO DEVELOP YOUR MIND: ARCHANA LIKED IT

I was originally inspired to do this by Dragos Roua who wrote a great post 100 Ways to Live a Better Life and who was inspired by Mike King in this great post 100 Ways To Be A Better Leader who was inspired by Armen Shirvanian: 100 Ways to Show Boldness who was inspired by the maniac who started it all Luciano Passuello and his post Tackling Any Issue With A List Of 100

So here I am with 100 Ways to Develop Your Mind

1. Do the Thing You Fear the Most.

If there’s one thing that will change your thoughts quicker than anything else, it’s facing your fears.

2. Stand up For Yourself

A lot of people have difficulty in standing up for themselves. The first time you do it can be very empowering and your thoughts about yourself will change forever. See Dealing With Confrontation

3. Stop Talking

It’s great to be silent for just a little while. Our thoughts turn inward and we begin to appreciate ourselves just a little more.

4. Strengthen Your Strengths

Sometimes we focus too much on trying to strengthen our weaknesses when we should be concentrating on strengthening our strengths.

5. Take A Walk Around an Art Gallery

You might not appreciate art or participate in it but it’s great to see the thoughts of others on canvas. It can give us a tiny glimpse of what goes on in other people’s minds.

6. Blindfold Yourself for a Day

Walk in the shoes of a blind person for 1 full day, it will forever change the way you think about life.

7. Stand on a Chair for 5 Minutes Per Day

Building self discipline is a great way to take control of your mind and your thoughts. If you just get up and stand on a sturdy chair your mind will be wondering what the hells going on and try and force you to get off the chair. Disciplining your mind is a great way to start changing your life. See Self Discipline

8. Dance When There’s Nobody There

It’s a strange sensation to dance on your own, although when I have done this I look like a dog having a seizure, nonetheless it’s a great way to let go of your inhibitions.

9. Give Money to Someone Unexpectedly

Whether it be on the internet, or in the street, just give a larger than normal donation to someone. This again is liberating and your thoughts about money will change for a few moments (that’s all it takes to start the process of changing your life.)

10. Strengthen Your Thoughts About Yourself

Reinforce your thoughts about your good points. If you are good at talking to people, tell yourself this often. If you are good at maths, tell yourself often. This has the benefit of reinforcing and strengthening your self image.

11. Take A Risk

Life would be boring without ever having taken a risk in your life. Do something that you didn’t want to do because you thought you wouldn’t be any good at it. This totally smashes the boundaries of your comfort zone and your life could change forever. Read This Post by Robin Easton

12. Talk To A Stranger

Again this is breaking our comfort zones, but just saying hi to stranger in the street or good morning can have an enormous impact on your day and the person you said hi to.

13. Walk Around The House Naked

I can almost feel the shock at this. I don’t mean when you’ve got guests in, I mean when everybody is out. Lock the door and totally liberate yourself and your thinking of what’s right and what’s wrong. I wouldn’t advise doing it all the time, but from time to time, it’s a great feeling.

14. Read A Book By An Author You Most Avoid

reading books by authors we avoid gives us a chance to take control of our minds and lets us see another side to our thinking. We’ve got to ask why we avoid them in the first place, is it something within us that we are avoiding?

15. Write An Article About Yourself

Imagine a newspaper has asked you to write an article of 1000 words or less about yourself and your life and they want to know what motivates you in life, now write the article. This helps put your life into some perspective and gets you thinking about your childhood and growing up.

16. Stop Contact With Your Down People

If you have people in your life who constantly drag you down, or are negative all the time, drop them. Honestly drop them from your life, you are not serving them and they are not serving you and they are dragging your thoughts down. Read This Post by Dan And jennifer

17. Believe In Yourself

A lot of people believe their life has been pre-destined and there’s nothing we can do to change it – absolute rubbish. YOU are the only person who controls the universe, yes I did mean universe. Your universe is different from mine so you control your own universe, think about that and start acting upon it.

18. Meditate Every Day

Another powerful thing that has the power to change your life and your thinking for good. Retreating into your mind for a few minutes every day will do you a power of good.Read How To Meditate

19. Ask For A Discount

When you buy anything from a shop that is over $100, ask for a discount. Tell the salesman you’d like a 10% discount on the item. Most people are so afraid of doing this but it’s a great way to empower yourself and let go of another inhibition, what’s the worst that can happen?

20. Risk Embarrassment

Imagine if you had seen the person of your dreams on a bus, or at the store and you didn’t do anything about it how much would you kick yourself. If this happens to you, do something about it, don’t keep it hidden. Just say to them you thought you would come over and say how attractive they looked and felt you had to tell them. You never know what will happen and how much your life could be changed. Obviously don’t turn into a weirdo and do it with every good looking person on the street.

21. Work Toward, What You Think, Is An Impossible Goal

If you work toward a goal without expectation you don’t care about the outcome as much. When you don’t care about the outcome, you don’t have as much expectation.

22. Practice Gratitude

We all know what we don’t have in our lives because we spend a lot of time wishing we had them, but are we really thankful for what we have? Spend time every single day being thankful for the good things we do have in our lives. read The Post at ZenHabits on Gratitude

23. Do Something Nice And Don’t Tell Anyone About It

We tell others about our acts of kindness to let them know how nice we are and to seek approval. If you keep your act of kindness to yourself without ever telling anyone the feeling of positive energy lasts much longer.

24. Share Your Skills

Everybody has a skill of some kind. When you share it you not only have the power to help others, but you enhance your own skill by owning it.

25. Don’t Talk Just Listen

Enhance your listening skills by not talking when someone is speaking to you. Resist the urge to speak your views when someone is talking to you, just listen to them and ask them more open ended questions at the appropriate times. This has two benefits: a) You can really listen if you are not formulating the stories in your own head when someone is talking b) you will make the other person feel great as you are actively listening to them.

26. Write Your Future Life Story

Start from the age you are just now and start writing your future life story as you’d like it to be. Be as outrageous as you want and just write about your ideal life and how you interact with it. Words on paper are powerful and can help shape your goals.

27. Give Someone A Gift For No Reason

We always assume someone buys us a gift for a reason whether it be a birthday, christmas or special occasion. Buy someone a gift just because you know they would like it.

28. Pass On Your Good Books

If you’ve read a book and it changed your thinking or life in some way, pass it on to someone else who might benefit.;

29. Spend More Time With Your Kids

Your kids will grow up very quickly, spend as much time as you can with them.

30. Forgive Behavior

The way we behave doesn’t necessarily reflect our true thoughts. Remember this when someone acts out of character and behaves in a way you don’t approve of.

31. Allow Yourself To Be A Lazy Git

We are so used to filling our time with useful things to do and being productive we have forgotten the art of laziness. Being lazy is good every ONCE IN A WHILE and it allows our mind to slow down and relax.

32. What Is Your Best Quality Today

Every morning for 10 seconds just state, out loud if you can, what your best quality is. Try and change it every day. This reinforces your strengths and weakens your perceived weaknesses.

33. Write A Comment

If you visit a blog you like, leave a comment and join in the community of people. Or, if there is not much of a community, be part of starting it.

34. Tell Your Friends And Colleagues How Good They Are

If a friend or colleague does something good, tell them how good they are at that particular task. This reinforces someone else strengths or strengthens their weaknesses and makes them feel good about themselves.

35. Make A Video Of Yourself And Post It To Youtube

Why on earth would you do this? Just because you can!

36. List All Your Worries

Make a list of every single worry you have at the moment. You will notice that you don’t have as many worries as you thought. Worrying consumes our thinking and we think our whole life is one big worry. When you get it down on paper it’s extremely surprising that you don’t have as many as you’d thought.

37. Work On Each Worry In Turn

Now that you have all your worries listed. Go through them and start acting on them in turn. If you find worries you cannot act upon it means there is nothing you can do to change the outcome of that worry, so forget it, why waste mind energy on something you cannot control at all? Read This Post for More Info

38. Read About Successful People

If you want to change your thoughts and change your life read about people who have already done it and use them as guides.

39. Tweet Your Moods

If you use twitter why not tweet your moods daily and see if there is some kind of pattern after a few months.

40. Stop Watching Soaps

Soap operas actually have the power to alter your state of mind. People get so caught up in the emotions of the soap that they experience what the actors and actresses are doing.

41. Have A News Break

What would happen if you never read a newspaper for a week? nothing at all, your life wouldn’t change, you wouldn’t run out of things to talk about, you would still be as up on the world as everyone else. Newspapers sell because of their doom and gloom, read it and you are buying into it.

42. Do Something Spontaneous

Jump on a bus without looking at the destination, book a holiday, take time off work, take your partner away, buy your kids a gift; do anything and make sure it’s out of character, (expand that boundary).

43. Write To An Author

Authors are people just like you and I and they love getting feedback about their work. If a book touched you in some way or changed you, take time to write to the author and thank them. Don’t look for a reply, just thank them.

44. Follow your instincts

We don’t trust ourselves nearly enough as we should. Follow your instincts more and pay attention to the signals your body is picking up and see where it takes you. You might find that your conscious brain gets in the way of your body signals a lot of the time. Read This Post for More Info

45. If You Find Some Money Give It To Charity

If you find money in the street don’t pocket it, give it to someone who is homeless or better yet buy them a meal with it. If it’s a suitcase full of money, that’s obviously a different story.

46. Your Thoughts Really Do Have Power

When you realize this, it will change your thinking in so many ways. I can’t tell you that it’s true you have to experience it for yourself.

47. Always Admit It When You Have Made A Mistake

Don’t blame others or hide behind someone else. Hold your hands up and admit you made a mistake, no matter what the consequences are. You will be much more respected this way. However, don’t take the blame for others.

48. Do Something Every Day To Improve Your Mind

Learn a new word, do an anagram puzzle, sudoku your mind, read a book, read a stimulating blog post, anything that will help your mind just a little. Just a little turns into something huge.

49. Change Your Thinking Style

If something is not working out, try and change your thinking style and come at it from another angle. This is true of everything in life.

50. What Do You Really Want To Do In Life

You will find most people cannot answer this question simply because they are plodding along with life. When you know what you really want to do with your life then your life takes another path. read This Post by Dragos Roua

51. Pass On Your Knowledge

Knowledge is for sharing, let others know what you know if it’s appropriate.

52. Ask For What You Want In Life

If you don’t ask you won’t get. Asking for your wants puts it out there. I mean literally ask and metaphorically ask. When you want a big house or a mansion, ask out loud and send it out there. When you want the smaller things in life, ask for them from people who can give you them. Always pay it forward.

53. When Someone Does You A Good Turn Pay It Forward

If you receive a compliment, thank the person and look for an opportunity to give someone else a compliment. If you receive a gift, give a gift to someone else at an opportune time.

54. Always Have A Good Breakfast

We underestimate the power of food to keep our brains healthy and our minds alive with energy. If you don’t eat that much, make sure you have a good breakfast to set you up for the day. Read this post on eating by Vin Miller

55. What Would People Say About You If You Died

This is not a morbid thought, but I often think about what people would say about me at my funeral. The thing is the ones who might say something bad, I can’t really not invite because I’ll be dead. However, the important people are ones I would care about most and I would like to develop my life’s values based on what people would say about me at my funeral; he was a caring man, he was a family man, he always told the truth no matter how hard it might seem, he had integrity etc.

56. Sing Your Heart Out

I love to sing, I hopeless at it, but I love it. We have a radio station over in the UK called gold http://www.mygoldmusic.co.uk/ and it plays music from the 60s, 70s and 80s and I sing at the top of my voice as there is always something on that’s good. My sons are not very pleased about it though

57. Love The One You’re With

Always let your partner know how much you love them by telling them and showing them. This way your mind is focused on them for at least part of the day.

58. Pacing Whilst Studying

This has helped me a lot over the years. I paced my way through university. My theory is that the body and mind is being stimulated with the exercise you are doing whilst walking, this makes the blood flow. Blood flow to the brain help you to study and remember.

59. Make New friends

Whether it be online or offline. Keeping yourself busy socially is stimulating for the mind and lets you see the world from others peoples perspective.

60. Make Love Regularly

Releasing the feel good chemicals, endorphins, into your bloodstream is a great way to stimulate the mind. I have to admit to feeling much more creative after making love.

61. Listen To Music

This stimulates the mind and can have tremendous benefits for your thoughts, therefore your life. I love listening to Baroque music whilst driving at night, I love rousing rock driving during the day and dance trance music at the weekend whist driving

62. Listen To A Book Instead Of The Radio

Getting downloadable books from Amazon.com or Audible.com is a great way to spend long journeys and learn something at the same time.

63. Have A Sleep In

I am not a big fan of sleeping longer than I have to, but sometimes it’s great to lie in bed for a few hours longer than normal. It helps the brain recuperate.

64. Turn Off The TV

There’s nothing more brain numbing than having the TV on all day every day. Exercise your mind and read a book, or at least watch something educational. Read this post by Vin Miller

65. Look For Evidence Of Your Beliefs

This will develop your mind and your critical thinking. If you look for evidence of your beliefs such as ‘what is the evidence that sea water is blue or green’, you’ll discover some great information on during your research.

66. Take Micro Naps

Taking a micro nap for 10 minutes a few times a day does wonders for your brain energy.read this post on Micro Naps

67. Travel Often

Travel really does broaden your horizons especially if you really get into the local food and culture.

68. Tidy House Tidy Mind

There really is nothing better than clearing your house or office space to clear your mind. When the house is not tidy there is always a niggling at the back of your mind. When the house, office and workspace is totally clean and tidy it frees your mind to concentrate on work or your family at home. read this post at DumbLittleMan

69. Exercise Your Mind Not Just Your Body

We all know the benefits of exercising the body but exercising the mind by doing crosswords, maths puzzles, playing chess, reading, anagrams, sudoku etc, all help to increase the minds capacity for learning.

70. Read Philosophy

the beauty of philosophy is that there is no right and wrong. However, reading different philosophers views about the world will stimulate your mind. Read this post by Tim Ferris

71. Ditch The Credit Card

We have forgotten how to wait for the things we want in life, if we see something we like we want it now and using a credit card is too easy. Make the object of your desire more precious by saving up for it. This will discipline your mind as well as your money spending habits.

72. Watch A Motivational Video On Youtube First Thing In The Morning

This is a great way to start the day. Just type in motivational into youtube search box, sort by view count and watch a few videos.

73. Keep Up To Date With New Theories

Whatever field you are interested in keep up to date with new theories and discoveries. New theories in psychology are especially interesting albeit quite thin on the ground.

74. Take One Action Toward Your Goals Every Day

Your Self confidence, self esteem, and goals can only be reached by taking action. The more action you take the more your mind will help you to keep going.

75. Never Let Your Mind Go Out Of Fashion

Keep up to date with the latest research on health, beauty and intelligence. Only those whose thoughts keep searching will stay intelligent for life.

76. Confronting Your Stressors

Whatever you are stressed about the most tackle first. The less stress you have the less your mind has to cope with. Tackle the biggest stressors first and work your way down.Read this post by Jonathan Wells

77. Drink Coffee And Tea

Despite evidence to the contrary coffee and tea have been shown to help the brain. Antioxidants and/or caffeine may help fight the onset of Alzheimer’s by 30-60% drinking 30 cups a day is obviously not good but 3-5 cups per day is okay.

78. Carry Yourself With Confidence

People can tell by the way you walk if you are confident or not. Walk with purpose and have a purpose to walk. Read this post by Brandon Lindell

79. Make Up Your Own Mind

When reading or listening to the news, do your own research and make up your own mind. The government and large corporations, whether deliberate or not, is a propaganda machine feeding you information to manipulate your thinking.

80. Take Up Yoga

This is meant to be one of the best ways to relive stress and exercise both mind and body.watch this video to get you started

81. Change Your Hands

Practice doing this with your less dominant hand. If you are right handed start doing things with your left hand and vice versa. If you are ambidextrous, start doing it with your feet

82. Eat Plenty Of Fish

There is an abundance on new evidence that eating fish is great for our brains and keeping them healthy.

83. Reduce Your Alcohol Intake

I had to say this, I am an addiction worker. Don’t cut it out just reduce it to the recommended safe level.

84. Quit The Smoking

Yep it can be one of the hardest drugs to give up but it is worth it. I feel so much better for giving up smoking and have a lot more energy than normal and my mind can function a lot better.

85. Practice Deep Breathing

Getting plenty of oxygen to your brain is key for a healthy mind, deep breathing can help with this.

86. Get A Dog/Cat

If you live alone why not go to one of the pet rescue centres and get a dog or a cat. People who have pets are shown to be less lonely, more active, and show fewer signs of stress.read this article by elizabeth Scott

87. Break your Pattern

If you are the one who always goes shopping swap the routine with your partner. Or if you always go to a particular store, change it and go to the same store in another area. Do anything to break the patterns you have in life. This way your mind is kept more active.

88. Try New Food

We have trained our palettes over the years and have gotten used to eating certain foods day in and day out. Try new foods and train your palette to eat better foods.

89. Stimulate Your Brain By Going To A Concert

Whether it be a rock concert or am orchestral concert, getting out and hearing music live and being with people who enjoy the same music stimulates your mind and your emotions.

90. Join An Internet Group

Join an internet discussion group to further your education on topics of interest. Want to start a business? join a group and get ideas for best practice. Want to know more about tropical fish? join a group. This educates your mind, gives you ideas and lets you meet people who are interested in the same topics as you.

91. Volunteer To Help Others

Volunteering is a great way to give back to the community and help others learn the skills you have. Even if you don’t think you have skills you can still help someone out in your community just by talking or doing their shopping for 1 hour per week.

92. Read The Tao Te Ching

Has to be one of the best books, in my opinion, for developing your mind. read this blog byNaoto Matsumoto

93. Practice Patience

Waiting in queues, traffic jams, on a telephone call can be very frustrating sometimes. If you use the time to develop your mind and focus on your goals your frustration will dissipate very quickly. Use free time like this constructively instead of getting angry and putting yourself in a bad mood.

94. Practice Divergent Thinking

This is the practice of looking for multiple solutions to problems or issues that arise in your life, whether they be at home or at work. Don’t judge your solutions just put them down on paper until you can’t think of any other ways. get others involved in this as well.Read this article on divergent thinking

95. Put On A New Hat

Edward De Bono wrote a book called Six Thinking Hats in which he proposed you to put on a different, mental, hat for each area of your life. For example you put on your parent hat when talking to your kids, you can also put on your child hat for playing around with your kids. mentally putting on different hats allows you to better go in and out of different roles in your life.

96. Stop trying To Multitask

Multitasking can’t be done except with unconscious processes such as walking and talking. If you try to consciously multitask like make the kids lunches, have a telephone conversation and try and get the kids ready for school it can’t be done nearly as effectively as doing each task separately. Multitasking stresses out minds and helps to produce bad results. read this article by Dave Crenshaw

97. Write A Short Essay On The Books Your Read

Doing this will keep your mind active and helps your to read in a different way as you are analyzing books instead of just reading. this way you retain more information and in a few years time you don’t embarrass yourself by saying ‘yeah, that was a great book but I can’t remember what it was about.’

98. Allocate Time For Worrying

If you are a recovering worrier and you need some help, allocate a certain time each day to worry about everything. Once you’ve done the time of worry, leave it until the next day.

99. Stop Faffing And Just Do It

Faffing is the art of doing small things to avoid completing a bigger task. I am constantly getting on at my son and saying ‘Stop faffing!’. We spend too much time faffing instead on concentrating on the task at hand. Read this Article at Lifehack.org

100. Read The Dictionary

Learning a new word every 2 -3 days will increase your vocabulary by 120 – 170 words per year.

101. Always Over deliver On Your Promises

If you say your going to do something, don’t just do it and get the job complete, make sure you over deliver on everything you do.

GOOD THOUGHTS ABOUT LIFE : ARCHANA LIKES THEM

The most destructive habit	Worry
The greatest joy	Giving
The most endangered species	Dedicated leaders
Our greatest natural resource	Our youth
The greatest “shot in the arm”	Encouragement
The greatest problem to overcome	Fear
The most effective sleeping pill	Peace of mind
The most crippling disease	Excuses
The most powerful force in life	Love
The most destructive pariah	Gossip
The most incredible computer	The human brain
The worst thing to be without	Hope
The deadliest weapon	The tongue
The two most powerful words	Can do
The greatest asset	Faith
The most worthless emotion	Self-pity
The worst thing you can lose	Self-respect
The most satisfying work	Helping others
The ugliest personality trait	Selfishness
The most beautiful attire	A smile!
The most prized possession	Integrity
The most contageous spirit	Enthusiasm
The most powerful communication	Prayer

To the world, you may be just one person;
but to one person, you may be the world!

Measure wealth not by the things you have, but by the
things you have for which you would not take money.

50 GOOD THOUGHTS : ARCHANA LOVE THEM LIKE THEM

1. It is not what you do for your juniors/subordinates/children that are important. It is what you teach them to do for them selves.
2. The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.
3. A successful man is he who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him! Learn to accept criticism proactively and with grace.
4. Your success is determined by what you are willing to sacrifice for it.
5. No one will manufacture a lock without a key. Similarly the God does not give problems without solutions. Only we should have patience and courage to find them.
6. Success is not the key to happiness. But happiness is the key to success.
7. Do not complain about others. Change yourself if you want peace. It is easier to protect our feet with shoes than to carpet the earth.
8. Do not only be close with someone who makes you happy. Be close with someone who can not be happy without you. It may make a lot difference to him at least.
9. Bill Gates never did LaxmiPooja but he is the richest man. Einstein never did SaraswatiPooja but he was the cleverest man. So just believe in hard work.
10. You can tell whether a man is intelligent by his answers. But you can tell a man is wise by his questions.
11. Slow down and enjoy life. It is not only the scenery you miss by going fast but you also miss the sense of where
you are going and why.
12. The only thing I like about stones that come in my way is: once I pass them, they automatically become my
milestones.
13. Luck is not in your hands. But work is in your hands. Your works can make your luck but luck can not make
your works. So always trust yourself.
14. Love is a gift. If you receive it, open and appreciate it. If not, don not worry. Someone somewhere is still
wrapping it for you.
15. Birds that live in a lake will fly away when the lake dries. But the lotus that grows in the same lake will die with
the lake. So recognize the birds in your life.
16. Coincidence decides to whom you meet in life. Your heart and your mind decide with whom you want to stay in life. But only destiny decides who gets to stay in your life.
17. Everything in life has a beautiful ending. And if it is not beautiful, then be sure, it is not the ending.
18. MORNING means one more inning given by the god to play.
19. A person who surrenders when he is wrong is honest.
A person, who surrenders when not sure, is wise.
A person, who surrenders even if he is right, is a HUSBAND! :-)
20. I can not say whether things will get better if we change, what I can say is that if we want to get better, we need to change.
21. Leave something for someone…never leave someone for something because in life something may leave you but someone will always live with you.
22. Too often we underestimate the power a touch, a smile, a kind word, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the power to build a life long relationship.
23. God has deposited Love, Joys, Prosperity, Peace and Laughter plus all kind of Blessings in your account. Use without limit. The PIN code is : PRAYER!
24. Three best things:
A little seed in good soil
A few cows in good grass
A few friends in tavern
25. One meets his destiny often on the road he tried to avoid it.
26. With lies you may go ahead in the world but you can never come back.
27. The road to a friend’s house is never too long.
28. When the heart is full, the eyes overflow.
29. There is none luckier than he who thinks himself so.
30. The truth may walk around naked, but the lie has to be clothed.
31. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
32. No one knows what he can do until he tries.
33. God gives every bird its food but does not always drop it into the nest.
34. Do not choose for any one what you do not choose for yourself.
35. It is better, in times of need, to have a friend than to have money.
36. As you do to others, they will do to you.
37. Little children – little joys
Bigger children – bigger sorrows
38. A good name keeps its brightness even in dark days.
39. An inch of gold will not buy an inch of time.
40. A light heart lives long.
41. Personality has the power to open the doors, but it takes character to keep them open.
42. The person who likes you more will trouble you more. But when you drop a tear, they will fight the world to stop that tear.
43. Those people whom you miss in your happiness are the ones whom you love. But those people whom you miss in your sadness are the ones who love you. Do not forget them.
44. Success is not a matter of being the best and winning the race, it is a matter of handling the worst and finishing the race. Be positive.
45. A man does not start turning old when his hair starts graying, but when his enthusiasm towards life and its joy start dropping. Just keep checking your age!!
46. A honey bee visits 2 million flowers to collect 500 mg of honey. So our workload is nothing as compared to them. Be cheerful and keep working.
47. It is not that some people have will power and some do not. It is that some people are ready to change and others are not. Believe in yourself and change for betterment.
48. Everybody says that mistake is the first step to success. But it is not true. Actually it is the correction of mistake.
49. Winners recognize their limitations but focus on their strengths.
Losers recognize their strengths but focus on their weaknesses.
50. We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.