We go to work automatically, sometimes not really thinking about what we’re doing.
We fall into a routine that, while comfortable, doesn’t fully satisfy our need for creativity.
In today’s society, success is often confused with achievement.
While the latter is ephemeral, like a suspended moment in life, success is much more a state of mind.
So you can have success without success.
Success echoes a whole way of thinking that motivates your daily life, from fulfilling your desires to achieving your professional goals.
It’s a way of life.
So how do you adopt a healthy lifestyle that’s geared towards success?
What are the keys to achieving it?
We give you 10 things to think about in this article:
1. Work-life balance: a major pillar
2. Get to know your priorities
3. The entourage, the main pillar of a life
4. Sport and diet, two motors for success
5. Positive thinking: a healthy attitude in all circumstances
6. Log off
7. Your lifestyle habits, essential to your development
8. Aim for instant productivity
9. Living in the moment
10. Increase motivation
Read them, reread them as you like!
1. Work-life balance: a major pillar
Did you know that only 12% of executives say they are happy with their lives in general, according to a Work Happy study?
This worrying figure points to a lack of motivation at work: an unstimulating environment?
Daily disappointment?
No, it’s all about balancing your private life.
It’s mathematical : if you’re happy at home, you’ll be happy at work, and so on.
When we’re passionate about what we do, we tend to blur the boundary between our personal and professional lives when we’re conscious of it?
Our family, our children or our life partners may not understand this and feel neglected without us even realizing it.
To avoid the apocalypse, we need to know how to juggle the two.
You can set up working hours as if you were working in an office, and when you’re finished, you can return to your private sphere.
Above all, it’s imperative to make a real break between the two, whether in your thoughts or in your topics of conversation.
Work, and by extension your career, is an important pillar of your life.
It’s where you exist.
We don’t ask you how old you are, or what you do with your free evenings, but what you do for a living.
As well as being a source of pride, the work you do has social and socializing virtues: it’s how you find new groups of friends.
Also, work is a personal endeavor that doesn’t meet a primary need.
You need it to feed yourself or do something, but it’s not the universe of everything.
So finding the time to develop your skills, while balancing them with your personal life, is a major challenge.
2. Get to know your priorities
Piloting your life means getting to know yourself so you can make the right decisions on several levels: friends, lovers, professionals, personal…
Experience is the best ally for this.
Have you ever tried to make a dream come true without first thinking about your strengths and weaknesses?
It’s simply impossible.
Knowing what kind of person you are, what you want in your life, is precisely what will guide your decisions.
So, your first pillar in life is none other than yourself.
When you encounter difficulties or doubts, who is the first person involved?
You, of course.
Knowing how to react to grief and disappointment is therefore first and foremost a matter of working on yourself.
Start by identifying your character and personality through simple exercises:
- Make a list of contrary adjectives, and choose the one that seems to fit best.
- Think of all the events that have been a driving force in your life
3. The entourage, the main pillar of a life
Quite commonly, we sometimes call our partner or best friend a “pillar”, in other words, a person without whom we couldn’t get on in life.
This is due either to an excellent understanding or to shared experience.
Why are our surroundings so important?
Simply because it represents the stability we need to move forward, the persuasive force that comforts us when morale is low.
The entourage is seen in different ways, depending on each person’s experience:
- For some, the pillar is the family circle
- For others, it’s their friends and family.
- For still others, it’s their professional environment.
In general, it all depends on the type of difficulty you’re experiencing.
If you need to talk, you’ll turn to friends, whereas if it’s life advice, your parents or family circle will be preferable.
That’s why it’s so important to be able to count on someone, whether it’s a colleague or a manager, in the event of a problem at work.
But what’s even more important is to be able to combine these three types of entourage into a single relational pillar.
4. Sport and diet, two motors for success
Success is a subjective concept, implying that each person sees the term through their own prism of reflection.
For some, a great success will be an academic achievement, while for others it will be the attainment of a promotion or the completion of a project.
For others, success is an everyday occurrence.
It’s about small victories over things you didn’t feel you could overcome.
To listen to opportunities and achieve success, it’s important to be in the right “condition” to do so.
Sport and diet play a key role in your daily success, for several reasons:
- Sport releases endorphins for well-being and inner happiness
- Diet is essential to your inner balance
These two elements will have a major influence on your lifestyle: adopting a healthy lifestyle means first and foremost respecting your body.
Indeed, haven’t you already heard how seriously these two points need to be treated?
Your body needs energy and resources to keep going, and so does your mind.
Paying attention to what you eat, seeking to absorb the right energy fuels, these are attitudes that will give you the strength to move forward every day.
By extension, sleep is also a key to success: what could be more productive than a rested mind and body?
You’re right: nothing else!
Turning your lifestyle towards success means above all respecting the rules of hygiene and well-being, both physical and mental, that will enable you to achieve sustainable projects.
5. Positive thinking: a healthy attitude in all circumstances
All lifestyles are based on habits, a leitmotif that’s dear to you or echoes something you’ve experienced.
One of the healthiest ways to live is to adopt an optimistic, positive attitude in all circumstances.
Have you ever woken up in the morning with that heavy, borderline depressive feeling that takes the motivation out of your day?
This is the kind of thing you have to fight against by adopting a healthy lifestyle.
Having an optimistic, positive mindset is a great way to get through the tough times of everyday life.
It means seeing the “glass as half full”, instead of being “half empty”.
This requires a lot of hard work, as human beings are shaped to complain.
For example, you can do this type of exercise:
- When you want to complain or say something negative, identify the reason for the problem or annoyance.
- Express it, but counterbalance it with a positive argument
- For example, if you want to complain about the price of coffee, tell yourself that on the other hand, it’s just as good as the bakery down the street.
You’ll see that, little by little, your negativity will escape the daily grind.
This positive lifestyle will influence your life.
This healthy attitude is also what will lead you to success: positivity and optimism are as much emotional and relational qualities as they are soft skills, giving you the leverage you need to achieve your goals.
6. Log off
Meditation is a way of disconnecting.
But sometimes we need to disconnect from the tools that surround us.
Once a week, allow yourself to be off-line.
Switch off all electronic devices: cell phone, computer, TV and even radio!
Without a source of information, you distance yourself from the turbulent world of H24 news, connectivity and perpetual availability.
Take advantage of this day off to reconnect with the present.
Do some DIY, do some gardening, play, go for a walk, do some sport.
There are so many things to do in the real world that we forget in favor of the connected, virtual world.
After these days off, you’ll feel revitalized.
Carpe Diem is not just a maxim, it’s a necessity for every human being.
Time flies, it’s an anxiety.
The only solution is to seize the moment without fear.
Allow yourself to enjoy it before it’s gone.
7. Your lifestyle habits, essential to your development
You undoubtedly have many goals to achieve, both personal and professional.
That’s why you need to develop habits that will help you structure your thoughts, actions and decisions.
To ensure that they are all geared towards success, start by trusting in your ability to evolve.
Nobody is born perfect.
No one can succeed naturally: you have to understand your mechanism, how it works and how the world works, and identify your goals, before you can achieve them.
So make listening to your environment an essential habit for your success: listen to others, listen to the job market, listen to your instincts.
From there, you’ll be more open to the idea of lifelong learning geared towards success, based on :
- The inspiration some leaders provide
- The benefits of continuing training, to stay at the top of your field
8. Aim for instant productivity
Instant productivity is the idea of being proactive all the time: if you want to succeed, don’t stay in your corner, don’t mope, just move forward!
To do this, you must :
- Have confidence in the future, in yourself, in your abilities, by getting to know yourself better.
- Escape procrastination by seeing every moment of your life as an opportunity to move towards your success milestones.
- Have a mental plan in mind: where are you going?
- Make decisions based on this plan, and keep going!
Failure is not only allowed, it’s highly recommended.
It’s a unique opportunity to learn how to achieve success at all costs, giving you real strength of character.
You think about the little things and the present moment slips away.
Enjoying the present moment can be relearned.
It’s an attitude that modern life has truncated, but that doesn’t mean it’s lost forever.
Act now to live your life better.
9. Living in the moment
It’s pretty incredible to be out of time, don’t you think?
Well, not at all.
That’s what most people do.
They are out of time, because they never consciously anchor themselves in the present.
They either remain nostalgic for the past or look forward to the future.
The result? They’re never there, now, here.
It’s a futile quest to cling to a past we can neither change nor relive, and to fantasize about a future we can’t foresee.
What to do to get out of it?
Take a step back from the stresses of everyday life.
We always think we have something to do.
In hot countries, it’s not uncommon to see people sitting on benches, watching others and time go by.
This is a bit of a shock to the Western eye, which wonders: why are they wasting their time?
One thing’s for sure: they don’t lose it, they enjoy it!
What’s the value of time if you can’t stop and watch it go by?
Even being bored is a recommended activity for stimulating creativity.
By being bored, you let your brain look for creative solutions or make all kinds of associations of ideas to keep itself busy.
Once a week, take the time to sit on a bench in a park or on the street and watch life go by.
Observe people, breathe, listen to snatches of conversation, watch animals go about their business.
It doesn’t have to take half a day.
Just take 15 to 20 minutes.
It’s calming to watch the world move around while you stand still.
You anchor yourself in the present as never before, without doing anything.
Every day, make the most of the little things that give life a special flavor: the sun on your face, a smile on your commute, the song of a bird, a song you like, a little cat frolicking in the sun… anything that pleases you is cause for joy and a smile.
One of the causes of dissatisfaction and preoccupation with the future is that we always want more.
But don’t you already have enough to look forward to?
Let’s be more pragmatic.
- Are your daily food requirements covered?
- Are you loved?
Who do you love?
And do you love?
Who do you love? - Do you live in a safe, comfortable place?
How does it make you feel?
What do you like about it?
You already have a good basis for rejoicing in what you have.
Let’s move on to more delicate territory.
As for your health, are you in good health?
If not, does this prevent you from taking action on a daily basis?
Value what you have.
Simple, crucial things like good health, the ability to eat what we want, and moreover what we love, must be valued at their true price: they are an incredible opportunity that not everyone enjoys.
Material objects are important because they make life easier, but without them life is possible, and not necessarily unpleasant.
Value the rights you have too: a roof over your head, the ability to say what you think in public without fear, the freedom to go, the freedom to love who you want.
It may sound simple, but it’s not for everyone.
10. Increase motivation
There are two ways of accepting a challenge, as it’s more and more regularly anglicized, and which sounds, indeed, more fulfilling and positive in Shakespeare’s language.
The first, with enthusiasm and dynamism: Oh great, I’m going to be able to learn new things, try out this method, and so on.
That’s a good attitude!
The second, with fatality and fear: what if I can’t do it?
What if it’s too difficult?
What if it’s too hard?
If this is your case, your level of apprehension is cutting your motivation at the root…
And that’s a shame, because you’re setting yourself up for a bad time, when this could be the opportunity for you to grow, to learn and, in short, to have an enriching, non-traumatizing experience.
Motivation is largely mental and can be programmed.
Self-persuasion is very effective when you look at things negatively…
Well, in a positive sense it works too!
Take stock of your previous challenges. Did you finally overcome them?
Yes ?
Well, you see, you can do it!
Yes, but… beware of “buts”.
They often hide an excuse that isn’t always valid, and above all they hide an unacknowledged fear or an unassumed rejection.
A bad experience leaves its mark, and the fear of repeating it too often immobilizes us.
Sometimes we miss golden opportunities out of fear!
What a shame…
Cyrille Ercolani, Mentor.
