Making life A Little Easier When You Have A Disability

A key focus of my blog is Health and Wellness. Living with a disability can have its challenges depending on the nature of the disability. Regardless of what it is though, it’s not the end of the world and there are things you can do to increase your quality of life. The following contributed post is entitled, Making life A Little Easier When You Have A Disability.

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Having a disability, no matter what it may be, can have a huge effect on you as a person. What many people don’t realise is a disability doesn’t have to be something they can visibly see. People can suffer from chronic pain without even indicating to anyone else they are in need of help. People can suffer from a mental disability as well as any physical symptoms. So we must all remember to be aware of this when thinking about such subjects. With that in mind, here are some of the ways you can make life a little easier when you have a disability. Or perhaps you can take this on board if you know someone who is struggling.

Image source – Pixabay – CC0 License

Make changes in the home

The first thing anyone can do is make a change in the home. This may be to just help yourself or others. It can be as simple as keeping things in easy reach or accessible. It might mean changing the layout of your home and having a bedroom or bathroom downstairs. You might want to consider calling in companies who can fit special access to the upstairs. Making things accessible in the home will make life that little bit easier. Examples of this could be a lift to get you to each floor, or a chair lift that can take you up the stairs. Grab handles in bathrooms and kitchens and also help with different furniture.

Add some normality

There is a real need for you to ensure that there is normality to your day and one of the best ways to do that is to try and consider keeping things working, and also to encourage others struggling to get back into the workplace. Letting employers know the circumstances is vital, so that changes can be made to help. If you feel that you can’t return to the job that you once did, then you could reach out to Disability Employment Providers and perhaps start a new journey on a different career path. Life can go on with some sort of routine and working environment.

Stick with routine

It is also important for you to stick with a routine. Your lifestyle may have changed quite a lot, but that doesn’t mean to say that you can’t develop a new routine to suit your new normal. It is also something to encourage others to do if you feel they are struggling, isolating themselves or even spending a lot of time on their own. A routine can be a simple as going to the shops on certain days, heading to work, having food and visitors. Stick with something that works for you and embrace it as much as you can.

Enlist the help of friends and family

Sometimes it can be in our nature to not want to share our problems with anyone. Through fear of being a burden to someone. But in this instance, this is the wrong thing to do. Telling friends and family your situation can make things much better for you. They can help by visiting, picking things up or offering cooked meals on a day that it might be a struggle. The family doesn’t care about materialistic things, all they are bothered about is your well-being. So let them help. It might be worth offering your help out to others if you notice that they seem to be struggling in silence.

Make things easier on your finances

Some people with disabilities are entitled to additional funding. Of course, this might not be for everyone, but it is always worth checking what you may be entitled to. Perhaps your disability has caused you to leave your job or unable to earn any money. This is when the government can step in and help you out. Perhaps you need a carer; this is again another situation where funding might be available. However, some people don’t agree with having help. It is all down to your opinion and how you feel about it.

Accept the help on offer

Finally, don’t be afraid to accept any help you are offered. This might be through the hospitals for extra care and medical attention. This might mean funding or advice about getting back into the workplace. It might be as simple as your neighbour offering you up some food. Don’t be too proud to accept help. If the shoe was on the other foot wouldn’t you be the one offering? Don’t be afraid to make life easier on yourself.

Let’s hope these suggestions and ideas help you or someone your know that may need help to make their life a little easier.

5 Signs You Need To Think About Improving Your Health

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success and a key focus is Health and Wellness. Maintaining and improving your health, is a key component to a successful and prosperous life. The following contributed post is entitled, 5 Signs You Need To Think About Improving Your Health.

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Image by skeeze from Pixabay

One of the hardest things to do during your adult-life is to think about your health. Although you may feel as though you don’t need to make any changes when it comes to staying on top of your health, there are lots of reasons why you should be making it your main priority. Whether you’ve had a recent health scare or you’re experiencing lots of health-related issues, you need to ensure you’re doing all that you can to look after yourself. With that in mind, here are 5 signs you need to think about improving your health:

  • Someone In Your Family Has Suffered From Bad Health

If you have someone in your immediate family who you know has suffered from health problems that are hereditary, you need to think about whether or not this can impact your future. Although it is not written in stone that you will have the same issues, you need to think about what you can do to prevent them from having a serious effect on your life. If it helps, it might be worth speaking to your doctor about any preventative measures you can take. To find out more about hereditary illness, you can visit this site here.

  • You’ve Had A Recent Health Scare

If you have had a recent health scare, it’s definitely a sign you need to be doing more to look after your health. Whether this means improving your diet or ensuring you get regular exercise, you need to be sure you’re doing everything you can to live a healthy lifestyle. For tips and tricks when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, you can visit this site here.

  • You’re Experiencing A Lot Of Issues

If you find you’re experiencing a lot of major (or even minor) health issues, it’s definitely time to start thinking about what you can do to improve your health.

Although some issues cannot be helped, there are lots of things you can do when it comes to working on your overall healthy lifestyle. Whether that means working with a macrobiotic counselor or finding yourself a personal trainer, you need to ensure you’re making changes for the better.

  • You Want To Improve Your Overall Health

One of the most obvious reasons to improve your health is because you want to start leading a healthier lifestyle, of course. If you have started to notice that you’re spending a lot of time eating out and drinking, or you think your exercise routine is starting to slip, taking the time to look at the potential changes you could make could be the motivation you need to live a healthier lifestyle.

  • You Want To Encourage Others Around You To Be Healthy Too

Finally, if you want to encourage your friends and family to live a healthier lifestyle, you need to look at whether or not you’re being as healthy as you can be first. After all, you may find that you need to lead by example in order to encourage them.

Are you worried about your health? What lifestyle changes could you make to ensure you’re being as healthy as you can? Let me know your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

The Knowledge Of Life Sports Give Us

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success, and a key focus is Athletics/Sports. While we tend to think of sports in terms of the professional level, there is a lot of knowledge that the they teach people even if they don’t make it to that level. This knowledge transfers into the other areas of life. The following contributed post is entitled, The Knowledge Of Life Sports Give Us.

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Little did you know it, but when you were involved in a sport you were being taught life lessons. Whether you were a football player, baseball player, soccer player or even some kind of racing driver, you were in the school of harsh lessons and personal growth. When we’re young we don’t take it that seriously but as we grow older we see some of the similarities in sport to the thing we go through in life. A double play can be screwed up in a tight baseball game, because someone who was thought to be mentally tough ended up choking under the pressure. The ball might have slipped out of their hand or they perhaps lost their focus. These are things that happen in life to us all but in very different ways. Not folding under pressure at key moments in your life and being mentally ready for hard or intense times is just part and parcel of the lessons we learn.

The style of outlook

All of us in life, carry some kind of style. No we’re not talking about fashion or perhaps the way you walk. We carry a style in life of our approach to situations, we carry a carefree or a cautious mindset wherever we go. In certain situations the people who will think strategically will end up thinking further than those around them. For example, you are trying to out a mortgage. Many banks will actually offer smaller rates for a short term contract that then suddenly rises in price. In sports we learn to not think about how much energy we might have at the beginning of the game, but how much we’ll have at the end of it. Thus our training and our mindset are focussed on the long term goal. Someone with this kind of mentality would rather take a long term mortgage with smaller rates or a short term loan with high rates. This kind of outlook maintains financial independence and self-reliance.

Reading other people

Without a doubt the psychological aspect of sports is coming more and more to the fore. We are now seeing that the most successful players in the world, always engage in some kind of psychological battles with their opponents. Whether it’s Sebastian Vettel from F1, Tiger Woods from golf or Christiana Ronaldo from soccer, they all do it. If you are very in tune with sports you will be able to see which team is going to win even before they play against each other. You can use this knowledge of reading other people to earn a living when you work with a company like payperhead247.com. They can help you set up a business in which you can make money from games and the sport you yourself love and watch. Many other people just like you are know about the teams in depth will also be able to have a chance at putting their money where their mouth is.

Sport always teaches us things we don’t really know about until we are older. Things like reading people and using that to help us in life, or approaching challenges with a long term mindset for example.

How Do You Live Your Best Life?

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success and a key focus is Health/Wellness. Everyone wants to be happy in life. Some of us however do things at times inadvertently do things to hurt their qualities of life. The following contributed post is entitled, How Do You Live Your Best Life?

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It’s a cliche to say that you only live once, but it’s important to keep in mind that, like most cliches, it’s also true. There is, we imagine, no sadder feeling than reaching the end of your life and understanding that you didn’t quite do things as you intended, that you didn’t quite reach your full potential. The best remedy for this is, of course, to make sure you don’t end up feeling that way. Live your best life while you have the chance! But of course, that’s something that’s easier said than done. Fortunately, us humans have acquired plenty of nuggets of wisdom that can put us on the right path towards a happy and fulfilled life. We take a look at some of the key areas and actions to focus on.

Source: Pexels.com

Know The Rules, Don’t Blindly Follow

You’re pushed into a system that encourages you to get a job, buy a house, have a family, and all-around stay on the well-trodden path. However, there’s still a lot of freedom within the system! To live your best life, you’ll want to be aware of the rules and your limitations/possibilities, and out your own spin on how things are done. Everything is possible. If you don’t feel like the path you’re lead down is the right one for you (say, all the talk is of an office job when you want to work outside), then go your own way.

Your Immediate Surroundings

You’ve got to be happy where you are! If you’re not, then all the professional and personal success in the world will be unlikely to make up for the plain and pure fact that you don’t enjoy your surroundings. By this, we mean the place where you’re living (the house, the apartment), and also the area of the country. If you’re struggling to identify with the interests and way of life of people around you, or you feel like you can’t be yourself for whatever reason, then take a look at moving. Millions of people move to a new state each year: it’s not as momentous as a decision as it’s sometimes made out to be. While it might take a little getting used to, in the long-term you’ll be grateful that you made a move if it allowed you to flourish.

Who You’re Hanging Out With

People tend to think that they’re independent folks, and they are to an extent, just not to the extent that they believe. We’re all much more influenced by the people we spend the most time with than we realize! Indeed, they say that every person is the average of the five people they spend the most time with. So take a look at who that would be in your case, and figure out in which direction they’re taking you. If they’re pushing you to be the best that you can be, then there’s no problem. If they’re pulling you down, then that’s another matter. It’s important to be loyal to the people in your life, but equally, you have to know when to cut the cord and look after yourself for a while.

Your Work and Career

If you asked people what would be the one thing in their life that they’d love to give up, the majority of answers would be “work.” And that’s understandable, because most people dislike their jobs. However, there isn’t the option of simply waving goodbye to employment — only lottery winners get to do that. So if you’re going to spend decades working, then you may as well take some time to find your calling. You’ll enjoy your job much more if it involves doing something that you inherently enjoy. Plus, weekends become a whole lot more when you’re not battling that Sunday feeling because you dread going to work on Monday.

Giving Back

It’s not all about you. Your hopes and dreams and happiness will be your main priority, but it shouldn’t be your only priority. You’ll feel more fulfilled if you help others in one way or another. While it might not seem like something that’s traditionally fun, Keep in mind that studies have shown that doing charitable work and helping others has a noticeable effect on our happiness levels. It feels good to do good, basically. It doesn’t really matter what it is, either — so long as you’re engaging in a selfless act for the benefit of others, then you’ll feel good. Plus, it’ll be pretty special to look back on your life when you’re older and know that you did something to push the world in the right direction.

The Basics

We tend to complicate our lives. If we break our needs down to the basics, then you’ll see that we don’t need all that much — but we do need them, especially if we’re going to go on and do more important things. The basics, which can include exercise and eating well, will provide the platform from which everything else can develop. It takes next to no time to prepare a healthy, tasty meal in the evening (check out some twenty-minute recipes), while exercise doesn’t have to involve spending an hour in the gym: it can be whatever you want to be, be it squash, cycling to work, climbing, or kayaking.

Source: Pexels.com

Carry on Learning

You might think you’ve got everything figured out, but the truth of the matter is that you, well, don’t! Because no-one does. Many people spend the bulk of their first two decades in education, and when it’s over, seldom take the time to learn some more. There’s a lot of value in taking a course, reading, or simply staying curious throughout your life — you never know what pearl of knowledge will come your way.

Act Like Good Things are Coming

Life can be hard, there’s no doubt about it, but it’s important that you’re not getting too down when the low moments arrive. They will just breed more low moments! Whenever possible, act like good things are coming. They probably are.

How To Plan For A Career Change Later In Life

A key focus of my blog is Career Discussions. There quite a few instances where people start one career and then decide that they want to do something else later in life. While it isn’t uncommon there are things to consider when changing your career. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Plan For A Career Change Later In Life.

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Unlike in the past when it was expected that people would go to college and study for a career that they would work at until they were able to retire, things are now changing and it’s becoming easier for people to change their careers – even after they’ve been working in them for a while, so if you’re currently feeling like you’d like a change of pace in your career, but don’t know where or how to start, then in this post we’re going to share with you how to plan for a career change later in life.

Decide what you want:

The very first step to making any big change in your life is by deciding what it is you actually want because in order for a goal to become reality, you really have to be aligned with it on an emotional level and not just pick something out of thin air that you think sounds goos, so really deciding what it is you want in terms of your new career is going to be the easiest way to start planning to make it happen.

Be realistic and flexible:

Of course, it’s all very well and good for us to tell you to just follow your dreams, and whilst that is something you should always be looking to do, it’s important to remember to be realistic, practical and flexible. Not the most sexy things to think of when going after what you’re passionate about, we know, but it’s going to make life a lot easier. So, for example, if you’re approaching retirement age, have been working as an engineer designing AdBlue tanks your whole life, but have always wanted to work as a DJ, then perhaps it’s not going to be the most viable career choice at this point in your life, so a better approach would be to maybe take this up as a hobby and take some classes so you can still have that as part of your life and have fun with it.

Look at your skills:

To follow on from the above point of being realistic, knowing where your strengths and weaknesses are in terms of what kind of career you’d like to have is also very important. That’s not to say that just because you don’t have skills in the area you’d like to work, it’s impossible to work there – you might just have to go and get some further qualifications and gain those skills, or instead look to focus in an area where you do have the skillset available already that you could apply or transfer from your exisiting career.

Start researching:

Once you’ve identified what you want to do and if it’s going to be a realistic option for you, then it’s time to start the research part of your plan – researching what you actually want to do and how you’re going to make it happen. Research will include things like looking at the job market, looking at what skills you’d require and what you’ll have to do in order to get them, and it can also include things like looking to see if you’re better to look for jobs in other countries or cities if the market in your home country isn’t the best right now.

Take action:

Of course, a plan is nothing more than a plan if you don’t take action to make it happen, so taking action is definitely crucial to making your goal a reality, and it’s important to know that although research is something that’s important to your plan overall, it’s not something you should be getting too caught up in because many people end up stuck in the research phase and never actually move beyond this, which is obviously not the point.

The idea is to research the essential parts and then take from that what you need in order to get to the next phase and bring the plan to life.

We hope that this post was useful in helping you determine what steps you might need to take if you’re planning a career change later in life, but also so that you can see it’s definitely possible and that you really only need to follow a few steps to stop yourself becoming overwhelmed with the process.

There’s nothing wrong with starting a new career from scratch later in life, and having a simple plan in place is really going to make the process a lot easier and faster for you so hopefully you can get started now and not worry about whether or not you’re ever going to be able to make it happen.

Choosing Who You Want To Be In Life: The Influences

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success. The people who we influence us when we’re young, and who we allow to influence us when we get older, have a lot of power. Your influences can impact your success in life. It’s therefore important to understand whose influence to follow and whose to avoid. The following contributed post is entitled, Choosing Who You Want To Be In Life: The Influences.

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You only get one life, so you have to live it. Those are the words we hear all too frequently when it comes to our actions and lives. But yet do we really take those matters into our own hands? The truth is, when it comes to life, be that our careers, our relationships and the choices we make for the things we do, we are often influenced. Sometimes we seek out the influence and the inspiration, other times we simply don’t see it happening under our very noses. There is nothing wrong with being influenced, as long as we can say at the end of the day the choice that was made was done with our own best interests at heart. With that in mind, here is a little discussion around some of the influences we can all face today.

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Influences from family

When it comes to choosing the life that you want one of the biggest influences in your life will be your family. This might be fathers or mothers wanting you to go into the family business, or it might be parents just wanting better things for you and then pushing you in a particular direction. While we don’t always want to hurt our families feelings, it can be hard to stand up to them if you have a different journey you want to take. You might also want to be aware that often conflict between families when it comes to business can happen, people like Belinda Stronach has shared some of the issues that she’s faced with her family. It happens, and while they will be a big influence in your life, they won’t be the only voice that matters.

Social media influence

So many people use social media these days, and often a big 70% of people will check their social media feeds at least once a day. So that means that you are being influenced by what you see before you even realise it. There is a lot about people sharing things online these days, and there is a lot of perfection put out there. This is where you get influenced into doing something, buying something or acting in a certain way. It’s part of lives now, and we don’t realise how much of an impact social media has on it.

Peer pressure

You will be influenced by your peers. Fact! At school you are influenced by acting in a certain way, from the phrases that you say to the things that you do. In work, you will still beindluecc by peers and work colleagues that are doing well in their field. It is there all the time, but this is when it can feel like peer pressure, so it is important to understand when it is a positive or a negative influence on your actions.

What we see on TV or in films

Finally, we are influenced by what we watch. People will watch a boxset on law, only to want to be that person or do that job. People will watch a documentary about living in a certain part of the world, only to want to live there. Holidays get shared on TV, what people wear, what people think. It is impossible to not be influenced by it.

Let’s hope this has made you more aware of the influences in your life.

Simple Ways To Better Yourself

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success, and two of its key focuses are Career Discussions and Health/Wellness. Not everyone enters the world with the proper tools for success. If you’re falling short in a given area, and want to reach the next level, it’s important to know which steps to take. The following contributed post is entitled, Simple Ways To Better Yourself.

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Everybody in the world wants to be the best version of themselves – that’s a given. When we’re younger, we all think about how our lives are going to turn out. We think about how our personal lives are going to be and how our work is going to go. Some people out there have been switched on from the get-go and don’t need any extra push to help them reach their goals. There is a group out there, however, who have entered the real world and haven’t exactly hit the heights they imagine – for one reason or another.

If you feel that you’re currently in this category, then don’t worry. Self-improvement is a hefty process, but there aren’t too many distressing factors that go into it. Let’s talk about a few ways people can improve themselves significantly.

Organised

Being a more organized person will improve anyone’s life in pretty much every aspect. Think about it: if you don’t have a plan or a routine, you’re just going along with whatever task you have next – and that could lead to a big piled-up mess. If you add structure to your life and keep yourself disciplined, it’ll keep you balanced.

Face Your Flaws

Being able to recognize that you’re a flawed person is one of the most underrated skills in the human psyche. If you’re unable to realize where your issues lie, then you may take a huge hit on your confidence once someone outdoes you in a specific piece of work or life. Being able to notice that you’re not able to do something is also helpful as you can get the help needed from others. A great leader knows how to take the backseat for a while.

Change Career

You may feel you have plateaued in your current adventure. Perhaps a way of better yourself you would be to unlock skills in your arsenal that have been previously shut away. Maybe you feel like you’re better suited to a completely different type of job? Why not do something you’ve always wanted to do? If you’ve always been interested in the aviation world, then you could join a professional pilot program and see if you flourish in something that you’ll enjoy. Keeping things fresh is a good way to progress in life.

Exercise More And Eat Better

Living life with an inactive body and a terrible diet will only increase your sluggishness approach towards everything in life and make you more stressed. Making sure you keep active will naturally give you more of a boost. Eating the right foods will aid this boost, too. Drinking a lot of water will help your body and mind out also as dehydration is a significant cause of frustration.

Be Positive

Finally, we’ll talk about the idea of viewing things more positively. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but being able to shut out the negative thoughts will improve your life a lot. You will be able to pick out the good bits in everything and lead a happier life – leading to a more optimistic approach to new challenges and opportunities.

Unlocking Confidence In Your Daily Life

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success. Often times, success in our lives is greatly dictated and influenced by our mindsets and personal beliefs. Likewise, a lack of success is caused by mental programming. The following contributed post discusses this and is entitled, Unlocking Confidence In Your Daily Life.

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Everyone would say that they would like to be more confident, as it is clear that it leads to a more productive and fulfilling life. But it is one thing to want this, and quite another to actually know how to go about making it a reality, and that is a distinction which can really make all the difference in the world. Nonetheless, everyone is capable is learning to be more confident, and it begins by focusing on what it is that you tend to do with your mind. The secret to being confident is understanding how to think about it, as well as how to approach hurdles and problems in your daily life, in a manner which breeds more and more confidence within yourself. In this post, we’ll look at a few of the mindset qualities which can help you to feel and become genuinely much more confident in no time at all.

Anything Is Possible

First of all, you will want to try and develop a sense and feeling of anything being truly possible. Although at first it might seem as though this is not true, or that it must be hard to think this way, actually it is not quite as difficult as you might think, and the truth is that most things are much more possible than people tend to think. The problem is that by assuming that things are not possible, you make it truer, and the same is true of the opposite. You can start with very small things for this, everyday annoyances which you would usually feel have no real solution. For instance, it is always possible to get out of a parking ticket – check out GetDismissed, for instance – or to get away with being given your coffee for free. Try it out, and see what you can manage, and then you can start to build it up.

Growth Is What Matters

Of course, you are going to face setbacks, so it is the way in which you approach those problems that determines how confident you are likely to feel and come across, and therefore what kind of a life you are likely to live. And you will find it considerably easier to deal with whatever problems you might have if you can focus more on growth than anything else. If you can say that a problem at least caused you to grow, then you will find that this leads to a much more positive way of looking at things, which in turn allows you to feel much more confident in yourself in the future, for you won’t be fearing failure quite so much. This is powerful, and it’s well worth looking into as best as you can.

Help Others, Help Yourself

Finally, there is much to be said for the process of helping others in your life. Apart from just being a nice thing to do, when you go out of your way frequently to help others, it tends to have an effect of making you feel better about yourself, and this will lead to an increased confidence in no time. This is hugely important, and it can’t be overlooked.

4 Reasons Why You Should Take Focus and Specificity Seriously in Your Life

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success. One of the keys to being successful is focusing in your goal and not becoming distracted. Approaching your life with focus and specificity can all but ensure you success. The following contributed post is thus entitled, 4 Reasons Why You Should Take Focus and Specificity Seriously in Your Life.

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Image via Pixabay

It’s generally pretty common for all of us — at least at certain times in our lives — to be somewhat chaotic, disorganised, and to lack specificity and focus as we go about fulfilling our day-to-day obligations and moving towards what we hope will be prosperous and meaningful futures.

While it’s understandable, however, to fall into this kind of pattern every once in a while for a limited amount of time, allowing yourself to go through life in a permanent haze of unfocused vagueness, can be absolutely devastating to your ability to live a fruitful, uplifting, and successful life.

If you listen to many of the more influential coaches, advisers, and commentators on personal and professional growth and success out there, you’ll find that there’s a commonly recurring theme that focus and specificity are essential to success and happiness alike.

Here are just a few reasons why you should take focus and specificity seriously in your life.

Often, being precise in how you handle matters can forestall later troubles and complications

It likely won’t take you too much time spent reflecting, to notice that there are just certain things in life which require a high degree of attention, specificity, focus, and care, in order to turn out right.

If, for example, you are installing a new complex network infrastructure at your workplace, failing to have a data cabling installation expert on hand to perform — or at least, oversee — the procedure, is likely to result in some pretty serious trouble if not immediately, then certainly a short way down the line.

When all is said and done, many of the problems that we encounter in our lives — including many of the most pressing and difficult to come to terms with — happen as the result of the fact that we failed to perform our due diligence at the onset of a given project.

In fact, the same is often even true of our interpersonal relationships. When marriages break down, for example, it very often happens as the final straw in a long and drawn out process, during which one or both parties failed to attentively and specifically address the issues that they saw arising in the relationship, when it would have been possible to handle them without them devolving into major crises.

Whenever you’re dealing with something that really matters — you should be as focused and specific as you can in handling it. That focus and precision can often forestall serious problems and complications down the line.

Time is limited, and to achieve meaningful things, it has to be leveraged effectively — therefore, failure to focus can have catastrophic consequences

It can be pretty disconcerting, to say the least, to reflect on your own mortality. And yet the hard reality of life is that life itself is finite, and we each only get a certain amount of time with which to do everything we want, forge meaningful relationships with other people, and leave something behind that we’re proud of.

Of course, it should go without saying that achieving meaningful things, and doing meaningful work, is difficult and requires a high degree of focus, specificity, and attention.

When you see people who are very successful in a given area of life, it is typically the case that they have been extremely focused and disciplined with their time, and have dedicated a major chunk of their waking hours to that particular field.

Allowing yourself to exist in a chronically chaotic and unfocused state, on the other hand, only means that your time, and your opportunities, disperse as a result, and that you end up with nothing meaningful to show for things as a result.

Of course, this is a nightmare scenario for most of us. So, for the sake of achieving something meaningful and uplifting with your life, it’s by far in your best interest that you leverage your time and energy effectively, and spend them on the things that matter most.

Being specific and precise in your words and in the formulation of your goals and intentions, can keep your actions in line with your true values

It would be difficult to convincingly argue that living with integrity isn’t one of the most — perhaps the very most — important thanks in life.

No matter what hardships you’re facing, or whatever other goals you may have, if you always abide by your own moral code and stay true to your values and principles, it’s possible to live life in a way that makes you proud of the person you are, and justifies and counterbalances the struggles in life, too.

On the other hand, people who betray their morals and principles for anything else, such as in order to make more money, are always figures of scorn and contempt for the rest of the world — and usually for themselves, too.

Of course, people often go against, or at least fail to live up to, their own values, not due to conscious choice so much as the fact that they just weren’t thinking very clearly about things.

If you always put an emphasis on being specific and precise in your words and in the formulation of your goals and intentions, you can exercise a much greater degree of consciousness over the way you’re conducting yourself through life, and can live with significantly more integrity as a result.

Specificity may force you into a more action-oriented mode of living, which in turn has various benefits

A lot of people are, so to speak, essentially addicted to abstract hypothesising on any number of different topics.

Sometimes this is conscious and intentional, but very often it’s just the consequence of failing to make coherent plans and to construct effective strategies for implementing those plans.

By always holding yourself to the principle of specificity, you are more likely to work through the details of your plans and goals in a systematic manner, and to turn them into things that can realistically be actioned.

The result of this — a more action-oriented mode of living — can, in turn, have various benefits, not least of all greater productivity.

3 Software Programs and Apps That Can Improve Your Life, Rather than Steal Your Time

Two of the major focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Technology. While there is a danger in becoming too consumed by the new technologies available to us, many of them can help improve our lives. Which ones are particularly helpful? The following contributed post is thus entitled, 3 Software Programs and Apps That Can Improve Your Life, Rather than Steal Your Time.

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Image via Pixabay

The modern world is rich in technology so advanced that it would have been unimaginable to the average person even just a few short decades ago.

No matter what our interests in life are, and no matter our jobs and hobbies, it’s possible to vanish down a bottomless rabbit hole of endless information, stimulation, and entertainment, at the drop of a hat.

But while many modern technologies have brought with them immense benefits — such as the ability to communicate with our loved ones on the other side of the world, or to acquire a Windows 10 pro key and create an entire business structure within days — there are plenty of downsides to be wary of.

There are predatory companies out there, and exploitative apps, games, and software programs that have been designed to hijack our consciousness and trap us in a psychological feedback loop.

Here are some examples of software and apps that can help you to improve your life, rather than just serving as a timesink.

RescueTime — to reduce procrastination and enhance your awareness of how you’re spending your time

If you’re even just so much as slightly inclined towards procrastination or a disorderly lifestyle, having a computer with an internet connection is something akin to leaving a hungry child unattended in a candy shop.

Human attention is easily hijacked by novelty, probably because in ancient days, noticing novel information could mean the difference between life and death. Is that odd shape in the pushes a vicious wild animal, or a tasty meal?

These days, Google, Youtube, and social media offer a never-ending stream of novelty, meaning we easily fall into a cycle of endless surfing.

RescueTime is a service and software program that can help to free you from that vicious cycle of procrastination and enhance your awareness of how you’re spending your time. It combines an activity tracker, with a web blocker, report system, and more.

Beeminder — to help you stick to productive behaviours and avoid unproductive ones

We are all largely defined by our habits, and we tend to revert to our familiar behaviour patterns whenever we zone out a bit or are put under stress.

For that reason, it’s a very good idea to carefully focus on developing productive behaviours, and avoiding unproductive ones. Repeated often enough, good acts become good habits, and bad acts become bad habits.

Beeminder is an innovative service that allows you to set habit goals, which you then commit to with your money. Every time you stray off course from your desired habit, you pay exponentially more in penalty fees.

You Need a Budget — to give you a clear bird’s eye perspective of, and control over, your financial life

Good financial management can be tricky, especially when it’s so easy to buy all kinds of glossy, attractively-advertised products online with a couple of mouse clicks.

You Need a Budget — also known as YNAB — is a budgeting tool build around the principle of “zero-based budgeting” and “giving every dollar a job”. It’s relatively straightforward to use, and it can give you a crystal clear perspective of what’s happening with your financial life.

That in turn, of course, gives you a lot more power over your financial life.