5 Hacks for Making Life Easy
Life hacks are great! Who could resist simple tricks that make your life easier? These 5 hacks for making life easy are, as the title implies, designed to do just that; make life easy.
To be clear: We are not talking about cutting cinnamon rolls with floss, fixing flip-flops with bread clips or making wine ice cubes (although I do like that one!)
We’re talking about hacks that have an impact on how you go through your daily life. Hacks that help you deal with stress and anxiety, hacks to make you happier and hacks for achieving your goals.
These are my favourite hacks that you can implement in your daily life to make your life easy.
1. Mindfulness: Stop and Breathe
Mindfulness is the ability to be fully aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions in the present moment. It’s nothing too complicated. Just bring your awareness to what you’re experiencing at the moment via your senses, or to your state of mind via your thoughts and emotions, and you are being mindful.
Being mindful can help you direct your attention away from negative thoughts and feelings, and approach your tasks with better focus and energy.
There are many methods for practising mindfulness, for example breathing methods, guided imagery, and meditation that aim to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.
But the simplest way to be mindful and “life hack” number 1 is: Stop and take a deep breath. It’s the quickest and simplest way to connect with the moment, release stress and gain more focus.
- Close your eyes
- Take a deep breath in
- Hold your breath and count slowly to three
- Exhale slowly through your mouth
- Repeat three times
- Observe your thoughts and feelings: What does your mind dwell on? Do you feel tense? Stressed? Anxious
- Keep breathing slowly and relax your body and mind
- Open your eyes
Done!
Whenever you feel stressed, anxious or overwhelmed in any way, just stop and take a deep breath. Be mindful for a moment and you’ll be good to go.
2. Relieve stress - gain clarity
Stress is a completely normal reaction designed to get you through challenging situations.
The problems start when we live such hectic lives that it causes us stress all the time.
Being late from a meeting can cause the same primitive reaction as coming face to face with a lion on a savannah. It’s understandably not very beneficial for your well-being in the concrete jungle.
Prolonged stress causes all sorts of health problems too. Learning to relieve stress is therefore a fundamentally important way to live an easy life.
Life hack number 2 deals with relieving stress in a matter of minutes.
Try the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT or tapping is a method where you tap specific points on your body with your fingers. This tells your central nervous system to ease off and relax and it seems to work quickly and very effectively.
Tapping is very easy and quick to learn. Just watch the instruction video and you are ready to go. There’s even a handy app for your phone to help you get going.
(No affiliation).
3. Focus on your goals by asking the right questions (is this working?)
For personal growth purposes and for achieving your goals in life, the most important question to ask yourself is:
“Is this working?”
It is a simple but amazingly powerful tool for guiding yourself towards the best version of yourself that you can imagine.
So life hack number 3 is asking yourself constantly “is this working?”
In relation to what you say you want to achieve, is it working what you are now doing?
By asking yourself this question constantly you will be making life easy. How?
Well, for example, you say you want to lose weight, but you don’t go to the gym and eat whatever you feel like. In relation to your weight loss goals, is it working?
Another example: You say you are fed up with your job and find it exhausting and meaningless. Yet you do not do anything to change that. You don’t apply for new jobs or look for opportunities to start your own business. You grind your way through the days complaining about your job. Is it working? In relation to your goals in your professional life, is your daily grind working?
In any area of your life, do the following:
- Get clear on your goals. What do you want your life to look like? You can read more about goal setting here
- Assess your current situation. Write down what you are doing now in each of the areas where you have goals.
- Reflect on your current situations vs. Your goals and ask yourself: Is this working? Is what I am doing now getting me any closer to my goals?
If the answer is yes, keep doing what you’re doing.
If the answer is no, change what you are doing.
Pretty simple right?
4. Be playful and laugh
Have you heard the saying, “life’s not all fun and games?”. I call BS on that. Life is supposed to be fun. Bringing fun and games back to your life can be very beneficial for your physical and mental well-being.
I used to work with children in a kindergarten some years ago and it became obvious to me that fun and games are a natural part of us. Children express with great joy the fun aspects of life, such as dance (movement in general), the joy of art and music, mysteries (especially fairy tales) and the wonder that life holds.
We should give more thought and make more effort towards bringing this out more in ourselves rather than trying to restrain what is natural.
Life hack number four: Be more playful and learn how to laugh out loud.
Just as you can learn any skill, like a new language, juggling, or being grateful, you can practice and learn to be playful and have more fun.
Being playful means finding amusement, humour, joy and entertainment in your daily life.
5. Foster your connection with nature
When spending some time outdoors, you may have felt the benefits of nature – maybe even an intuitive connection to it.
Any stress melts away, you are more aware of your surroundings and how you feel, and you feel invigorated.
Connection to nature boosts our immune system, creativity and feelings of joy.
Nature feeds us and provides for our needs, but it is also fundamentally important for our mental well-being. We all know deep inside that it is vital for us to have a connection to nature.
Well, I’ve got some good news for you. You can gain the benefits of being out in nature in just two hours per week.
Here’s hack number 5: Spend time outdoors and practice noticing nature wherever you go.
Follow these three tips to gain the benefits that nature offers us.
1. Spend time in nature, preferably outside of urban areas, but in a pinch, the local park will do just fine. The time spent should be a minimum of two hours per week. You can do this all at once or in smaller increments during the week.
2. Maintain a sense of connection to nature at home and at your workplace, by bringing in plants and/or pictures of nature. If you need a break at work, consider spending a minute of it watching a video or a picture of nature.
3. Practice noticing nature wherever you go. This will help develop a sense of connection to nature.
Bonus Hack: Making life easy by looking at it differently
If you are looking for the best way for making life easy, try turning your whole world inside out.
In other words, take on a new perspective of the world and your place in it. Start with how you feel and who you want to be.
With that perspective, everything around you will fall easily in place, just the way you want it.
Your perception of things is everything. How you look at your life determines the way your life will be like.
Your perception (point of view) determines how you think, and how you think about things determines what you will come to believe.
As you may know, your beliefs control your life (mostly subconsciously).
Therefore changing your perception will allow you to change your beliefs – which in turn will change your life.
If you see yourself as a victim, unable to change anything about your life, you will disempower yourself and truly be at the mercy of the circumstances around you.
On the other hand, if you see yourself as the creator of your own life, you will have the power to decide how you feel about those circumstances and choose a new approach if you don’t like what you are experiencing.
Do you want a new perspective on life? Read all about it in my free ebook below.
Conclusion
Try making your life easy (or at least easier than now) with the help of these simple “hacks”. These 5 hacks for making life easy are designed to have an impact on how you go through your daily life.
Ideally, these hacks should help you:
- deal with stress and anxiety
- be happier and achieve your goals.
The “hacks” you should try are:
- Mindfulness: Stop and breathe
- Relieve stress – gain clarity with EFT tapping
- Focus on your goals by asking the right question: is this working?
- Be playful and laugh
- Foster your connection with nature
Try one or more and see what kind of difference they make in your life.
Disclaimer
The entire contents of this blog are based upon the opinions of the author. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only. The information in this blog is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health care professional before trying any of the products or methods based on this content. I cannot guarantee that you will be free of stress, anxiety or depression, or that you will be happy. I simply want to share with you what I have discovered during my twenty years of seeking happiness and what has worked for me may not work for you.
