Quick Tips to Help Change your Life
We are Ray and Ruby, better known as R & R, and have made significant changes to our lifestyle in the last few years and learned great life lessons along the way. We are still learning, by the way! We think that sharing our challenges and lessons encountered in our journey can help you as well. And therefore, we are continuing to develop R & R Digital Lifestyle as a means to inspire everyone on how to create an awesome lifestyle. We are enjoying living “ A Simpler Life.”
Making changes to your lifestyle in order to live your dreams calls for a lot of hard work, commitment, and oodles of thinking things through. You are likely to meet challenges at every turn in your new life, and yet, deep down, you know you are doing the right thing. You are getting ready to live your dream, whatever that may be.
So, here are some of the most essential tips that came in handy for us when we took our first, tiny steps toward making positive changes in our life.
Declutter – Clutter is an accumulation of all the things you keep and hoard in your home, body, and mind that add little or no value to your life. Clutter decreases productivity and efficiency as you waste time and energy searching for things day in and day out.
Additionally, clutter can cause physical harm in the form of fires and health hazards caused by overgrown mold and dust over items that have not been cleaned for months or even years on end.
Decluttering not only clears space but also reduces stress as the activity makes you feel in control of your life. Also, decluttering and cleaning your home gives you a sense of accomplishment. As a lot of people say “less is more,” believe it!
Even if you don’t intend to make any changes whatsoever to your current life, decluttering is an exercise you should indulge in regularly anyway, say once every six months. And, if you are looking to make changes in your lifestyle, then decluttering typically should be your first step. Here are some tips that helped us declutter our home:
● Make a list of all your rooms and the clutter hotspots.
● Do one space or one room at a time, and make sure you have completion dates for each room/space.
● Create your own sorting system so that you can sort and combine items as you find them. An excellent sorting system that works for most of us is to categorize things into ‘keep them,’ ‘get rid of them,’ and ‘store them.’ This way, you are compelled to look at each element and put it into one of these three categories. The more items you have in the ‘get rid of them’ category, the better it will be for you!
● And don’t forget to get rid of the items either by selling, donating, or any other convenient method. For example, we held a 3-week garage sale and were able to get rid of a lot of things and create some cash in the process!
Our book, Declutter, has more information and help on this process.
Choose your friends wisely - When you decide to make changes, especially the life-changing ones, then the biggest influencers will be your friends and close family. It is not going to be easy for many people to understand your need and desire to alter your lifestyle, and therefore, you are likely to face multiple resistances from your friends and family.
It’s not as if your friends don’t love you or care for you. However, making significant changes calls for a lot of physical and mental boldness and strength. Since most people don’t have these crucial elements, they are going to frustrate your progress, unwittingly adding to your baseless fears and anxieties.
Therefore, when you make changes, choose your friends wisely so that you move ahead with your plans instead of stalling them. Identify like-minded and positive-thinking people to share your ideas of a new lifestyle, and use their encouragement to thrust forward on your path.
Plan your routine tasks – A significant portion of your life goes toward doing routine tasks. So, when you decide to make changes in your life, these mundane but essential jobs have to be taken care of.
To give you an idea, when we decided to replace our home with a Motorhome and get onto the road, these routine tasks were our priority:
● Paying bills
● Managing emails
● Contacting friends and family
● Getting a PO Box in place for snail mail
● Banking transactions
In the same way, look at your current life, and see what routine or important tasks you need to take care of. One element that worked brilliantly for us is going digital. Digitization and technology have made life far more straightforward than it was a few decades ago. Nearly all bank transactions can be done online. Emails are, of course, known to everyone around the world, including to people in the remotest corners of the world.
The big challenge is to build trust in technology, especially when it comes to money and banking transactions. We have been doing nearly all our financial transactions online for many years now, and we’ve never faced a problem yet. The few issues that did crop up were suitably settled by the banks! So, it makes sense to move out of traditional bricks-and-mortar banking methods and embrace digitization for added convenience.
Treat challenges as learning opportunities – Expect many challenges in your path to making changes. It is essential to treat every challenge you come across as a learning opportunity instead of being bogged down by it. For instance, when we decided to make inspirational YouTube videos, we didn’t know a thing about shooting videos.
But, we chose not to be deterred by the lack of knowledge. Again, thanks to technology, knowledge is available at the tip of your fingers. So, get online and find solutions for all your problems because we now know that solutions for every challenge exist. Otherwise, ordinary people like us would not have made it this far in our new lifestyle.
A story about how locks and keys are made was truly inspirational for us in understanding and appreciating this problem versus solution issue. Did you know that keys are first made, and only then the locks are designed? So, keys or solutions are already in place. When we find a lock (or problems), we simply need to connect it to the right key that is lying around somewhere. We just need to explore and look harder!
Be patient – The law of attraction really worked for us. It was not some hocus-pocus two-cent magic. We learned that the law of attraction is the way of nature. So, if we want something badly enough, the universe will use all its resources to fulfill our desires. It is up to us to recognize these elements that are working in our favor.
So, keep your desires alive, and work towards making them a reality. The universe will find ways to help you all through the journey. For example, when we first started our new lifestyle, one of the earliest challenges we faced was how to create an email account, and we found the entire process a bit confusing. But, we needed to get that account in place.
Interestingly enough, we met a complete stranger while having breakfast in a little café, and it turned out that he was happy to help get our account up and running. See what we mean? The universe finds a way. Just keep the desire and your faith!
Start today - Another big challenge that we faced when we started our lifestyle-changing journey was that of procrastination. We would put off some tasks simply because they looked complicated, and it felt like it would be a long time before we needed the completed task for our new lifestyle.
An example was selling our truck. We knew that if we started traveling full-time in our Motorhome, the truck was not going to be needed. But, we kept putting off selling the truck without any rhyme or reason. Maybe because once we took that step, it would be a sign that many more decisions would have to be made and acted on to continue on our new journey. Similarly, we knew we had to give up our house as keeping it, and the motor home was not just financially impractical but also physically so.
One of the earliest lessons we learn was to avoid procrastination and to start working towards the dream NOW. It doesn’t need to be in one big step. It could be something small like looking up YouTube videos or articles on the Internet about what we would need to be able to truly commit to the new lifestyle we wanted.
This small step will push you to take the next small step, and so forth until you reach your goals. So, recognize when you are procrastinating and avoid the obvious traps. Set goals and implement them.
Be open to change – Expect your body and mind to resist change (because it is a natural thing to want to remain in a familiar place instead of trying something new). This expecting approach will empower you to overcome your resistance to change. However, if you are feeling awesome and truly happy in the place you are, don’t bother to make changes. For others, it is essential to remember that making positive changes in your life is in your hands.
The trick is making changes for a purpose. Make time to ponder and think. Ask yourself why you want a change in your lifestyle. What are the elements missing in your current lifestyle? Do you want those missing elements really badly? The answers to these kinds of questions will give you clarity on the purpose of your lifestyle.
And finally, we learned that happiness is a choice. Regardless of what happens in the external surroundings, each one of us can choose to be happy instead of being sad! Choose happiness and let the universe to find ways to create happiness for you and your loved ones.
Here is a link to our YouTube video where we discuss the above in greater detail.