Transcripts
1. Welcome & Introduction: Welcome to this
Skillshare class. Live your best life. One of my heroes of many years, Jim Rhone, said, we
have two choices. We either make a living
or we design a life. Over the course of
this class together, we're gonna be looking at
how to move from where we are right now
to a better place, a different place, and a place
that is more in line and more in tune with our
dreams and our goals. And those things which
are lighters up when we have the opportunity to do
them or to experience them. There is so much
pressure on us to live the life that other
people expect for us to pursue the career that other people almost
choose for us as we leave school and
college and we go into the work environment, I'm
sure you've heard it. Get a good job, build a career, find a great organization
to work for, and all sorts of good
things will be yours. As a result, it's ever
so easy to wind up in a job that you are
not passionate about, that doesn't fulfill you. It may pay the bills, but it leaves you empty and longing and wanting
something else. And the stress
from being engaged in a job that
doesn't fulfill us, that doesn't give
us satisfaction and emotional reward literally
can be a killer. The lessons here with a live your best life are those that I have drawn from one of my
books, simple self-help. And my intention here is
to share those ideas. And over the course
of half a dozen practical and easy to implement exercises and action steps
that you can make progress, that you can
determine changes in your life which bring
about good benefit and good opportunity from
acting on them as soon as you possibly
can live your best life came to me first as
a series of ideas long before it was turned into a manuscript called
simple self-help. I was frustrated. I was extremely stressed and overwhelmed by pressure
in my work environment. And that led to a real deep look at what was happening
and why I felt things were going downhill very fast in the
wrong direction. I want it to make a change. I started to look at the
areas of my life and think, okay, this is important to me, but I'm completely
neglecting it. This is crucial to me, but I'm not giving
it any attention. Or by looking in detail at
lots of those areas where I felt I was not only
behind the curve, but I didn't know that
there was a curve. I were so far behind the game. I was able to slowly over time, take back more control, find the things that I wanted to do and put more of those in my diary to cut out
lots of activities. And the time waster is
there were a drain on my energy and brought no benefit to my
family and loved ones. My hope here is that
you can take on board some of these exercises
for yourself. Apply the techniques and the potential
opportunities for change, your personal situation and your individual circumstances. And that you can over
a period of time, see that there will be
strong benefit that comes to you from an implementation
of such ideas. And acting upon the
practical techniques shared here in this
Skillshare class. When we're stressed
and burnt-out, the last thing we do is remember
to look after ourselves. Those around us who
we love and spend our lives with can
also get drawn into our sadness and depression and anxiety that comes to us. When we're exhausted and struggling to know
a way forward. We can chase what seems
important at the time, only to discover
when we actually accomplish that particular
goal or that activity. That actually it didn't servers, it didn't bring us
joy or happiness. If there was a gain or a result, it was fleeting instead
of long-lasting. And so with live your best life, I want to share with you the following ideas and
exercises so that you can create sustainable results and point
your life in a direction that is meaningful
and fulfilling. What do we do? Where can we go? How can we find results
that bring about greater benefit and
lasting happiness? It's in the being
and in the fully recognizing those
experiences which serve to uplift and help and inspirers that we find
greater happiness. I firmly believe that there
is another way to look at the whole idea of
work-life balance. I think that could be dreadfully black and white as an issue. And instead, we need to make it colorful and interesting
and to bring into your life those opportunities
and experiences which will enrich us and make
us better for ourselves, as well as those that we love. My approach throughout
this Skillshare class is very much one of
simple self-help, putting up ideas, sharing techniques
that you can put into practice so that you can
personally live your best life.
2. Where Am I Now?: This is very much
your primer to think about the things that are happening in your
life right now. The situations that
you find yourself in, the circumstances which
are afflicting you or which you feel
you're bouncing up against and struggling with. And to give yourself a really
simple and comparative way of scoring one
against the other. By going through this
very simple process, you can take ten minutes or you can take half an hour according to what thoughts come
up during the exercise. You can use this
to start to create your very first ranking of the situations and issues that are occurring in your life. In order to assess them and
look at how you can take action with those activities and decide which ones you want
to keep or to amplify. What's that you want
to push away and reduce the impact of in
your day-to-day life. Looking at my notes, what
they said to me as I'm frustrated with the
internal politics, but I loved the scope
for creativity, the team working
opportunities or something I really enjoy and thrive upon. I enjoy the steady salary, but I struggle with the
restrictions on what I can say or share within my team. The next scored
that 16 out of ten. How would you describe your
current work situation, the environment that you're in? And how would you score that
on a satisfaction scale? From one being the lowest, 210 being the highest. Let me share an example that is very current for
me and very real. I spend my time between
England and Mexico. I love both places. I have somewhere to
live in both places, but I want to make my home in Mexico where currently
it is in England. So I'm split between the two. I have family in both countries. My opportunities are
different in each country. So I'm exploring the issue of where do I want to make
my permanent home base? And how does that impact my
family and my work activity? At the moment, I
would score that as nine out of ten in
terms of importance, it's hugely significant and
it takes up quite a lot of my time in looking
at the process. If I take another example, it is less prominent, but equally significant for me. It is about my work environment as opposed to my home situation. Do I want to spend
more time contracting with organizations where I
will go into their offices, work as a contractor for
three months or six months, and then that contract
will end and I don't know how soon it will be renewed or whether I need to be applying to
other organizations to do contract work as a beta reader or as a
manuscript editor for them. Or whether I should simply
create more content online and continue to add to my
existing portfolio of imprint and digital books. How do I scroll that one? Is it a nine out of ten? No, because it's not keeping me awake at night is not
something I worry about. But it is something about my life design and
living my best life. That attracts my attention and it gives me
cause for thinking. Okay, I need to give
this attention. I'm gonna give this 16 out of ten because I'm okay about it. It's not causing me
grief or hassle, but I want to push
things forward and define my working patterns in a different way to the
way they exists currently. What would you like
to put on this list? Where are you? Right now? How would you score
your health situation? Do you feel like you're
exercising enough? Is there something
you want to change in terms of dietary behavior? How about your expression
and your artistic endeavors? Are you devoting time to that writing activity
that's important to you? Are you learning more skills in the kitchen and potentially
creating a side hustle? That might mean you all
making and baking and producing food that you then sell in the work environment, or which you sell at weekend
fates or public events where you have a store that
you hire and you go out with a friend or a little
team of colleagues. Is there something for you in the cytosol other
side gig activity that you would like to develop, is it currently a four or a five and you'd like
irregular six or a seven. Is it pulling your
attention out of concern that you'd give it a
high score of eight or nine. But you feel that you can
generate income from it, which also keeps it and
gives it a high score. But at the moment, you see it as something you weren't
start for another year, which case you'd give
it a low score by allocating scores to the things you want to look at and explore. It gives you a ready-made
indices of what's important. What's less important,
why something draws your attention and
you need to focus on it. Why something can be left to one side for several
weeks or several months. And you can focus on it later once you've given your time and attention to the priorities that you've just identified
by asking yourself, where am I right now?
3. Exploring My Roots: Welcome to this
next short lesson, which is about finding yourself. And in doing so,
exploring your roots. Today, you might be
working full time. You might be freelancing
or contracting. You might be out of work and
looking for new employment. If you're currently working, it may be the case that a lot of what you do is really enjoyable, but that something is
out of your reach. It could be the next position. It could be a promotion. It could be a sideways
move where you think you will
actually feel a lot happier with perhaps
a different sort of team, a smaller team, less pressure or
suitable pressure for your skill set and your enthusiasm for that specialism, whatever your situation
is right now, you know that
something is missing. It doesn't need to be
a financial instrument or financial gain. It could be an
emotional absence. It could be the lack
of free time because your hours are so
long or the pressure upon you to travel
to and from work, so significant or difficult perhaps that you're
struggling to spend time with the
people you love. I believe it's this
sense of something missing that has
brought you to and is now enabling you to watch and take part in this
Skillshare class. Because you're looking for
something that is absent. You're after something that
you know is important to you, but you haven't been
able to find it. You're struggling to
bring it into being. You want to create it, but you're not sure how
to go about the process. I've worked with two
massive organisations in my early career. The first one was a large computing and personal
technology company, which is still very famous. It has made the move into artificial
intelligence and learning systems away from what
it used to solely do as a corporate provider
of computing technology. The other organization
I worked for after that was a global bank. When I worked in finance
in the center of London, it took me about seven
years to realize that I wasn't happy working in
large organizations. I didn't feel I had a voice. I didn't feel I could express much creativity in
either of those roles. I could work well
with customers. I could work well with internal customers who
wanted support and new structures and ideas and programs that would bring about benefit for those
teams and departments. But I didn't feel I belonged. I would work very long
hours and the second job, come home late at night, get up early in the morning
and repeat the process. On one day, I was commuting to work and I just couldn't
get on the metro system. I just couldn't get on
the tube train because I was terrified. It was too much. That was my burnout moment. It attack me from behind. I wasn't expecting it. And it left me
absolutely desolate. And it knocked me for six, went overseas for months. I just traveled and I
enjoyed my travel time. And then I came back home
and started to think, what is it that I love? What am I passionate about? What is it that inspires me and fills me with energy as opposed to those things which drain me of energy and make me feel
exhausted all the time. I started to work
then as a freelancer, as a portfolio worker, I began working for Enterprise Agencies and
regional development agencies, working with small business and designing and developing
training programs and opportunities for
personal coaching and personal growth activity. I've done that sort of thing
ever since and I love it. I know that I work
better on my own. I know that I come up with
better ideas when I'm sitting at my desk with
an iPad or a Mac book. And I am exploring opportunities for
creating new product, designing new
digital information, and working on those things
which I am inspired by and I love to have in my day
to day working activity. What is it that you
know about you? That you're not acting
upon which you, because you're feeling
some elements of stress, some element of
work frustration, aspects of difficulty
between your private in your personal life and your time allocated to or given over
to a corporate employer, what is it that you'd
like to change even if you're not sure how you
would go about it right now. It might be that you're working timetable is one
for an employer, but your body clock, once you to operate
slightly different hours. And the two are constantly
clashing against one another. And you're pushing yourself
in a direction that is leading to burnout, exhaustion, overwhelm, and the potential for a breakdown
somewhere down the road. We don't know when,
we don't know where. But you do have a sense
that there's this pressure building up and it will burst unless you
find a resolution. My hope here is
that by helping you focus on how to live
your best life, you will find solutions
before things get difficult. You will find answers along the way to making
positive change, which will generate
greater happiness and peace of mind for you. Within your
resources, you'll see a worksheet for this
particular exercise, which is called
Exploring your roots. And the idea behind this is
that it will take you back to how you first approach
the ideas about the world, about how the world works, about work, about relationships, and about the things
that you do and can contribute to the
world in order to make your way through the world. So let's look at it now. It's called exploring my roots. The points we're going to look
at now are the family who raised me, my early community, the landscape or environment
at my childhood, and the role models I had, all the sources of
positive influence. So in response to the family
who raised me question, I can write about my parents, but I can also write
about several aunts and uncles who lived locally, some of them and others
a long distance away, but who gave me
great positive input and where a hugely
encouraging to me. As a young child. My early community involved
folks from nursery school, people from church, people from community organizations
in the village. And all the activities that went on around
the village and around a small community so that people had a
sense of belonging. For me. The quote that
comes to mind is, it takes a village
to raise a child. That doesn't have
to be a village in a countryside location
that is only has a church and the
Pope and a couple of shops and a river and
some fields and forests. That village could be
the village that is created within two or
three streets that are part of a small neighborhood
within a large city. What was your early community? What did you learn from this exercise is to
ask you to focus on exploring who you are and making notes about
the ideas that come to mind. These prompts are these
trigger questions? If we look at the landscape or the environment or childhood. For me, that landscape
includes forests and woodland. It includes fields by the river. It includes mucking
around in the river as kids with canoes
and little boats. I think there was
adult supervision, but I don't remember
a lot of that. It would mean going on bike
rides through farmland, greeting farmers, being
chased by farmers. And it includes lots of
summers where we were out of the house at first daylight and returning home at dusk because
it was time to come home. Who were your role
models and who were the sources of
positive influence on you as a young child. Not talking about
your teenage years are going away to college. Talking about your young
primary and early school years. Some of my role models
were school teachers. One of my role models
was my grandfather. Another role model
has to be a man who was sort of like the
mayor of the village, even though there
was no such thing. But he was confident, happy, helpful, and his focus was on what is good
for the community. Another pair of role models, because I'm going
to choose them. Or the husband and wife team, long since passed away. But who when I was a six
or a seven year old child, were the leaders of our
local Cub Scout groups, which I loved going
to one night a week, coming home from school, changing into my uniform and walking a few 100 meters
to this counter for games and entertainment
and learning skills that have been useful
throughout my life. Who were your role models and who within your early childhood and the first formative years were your role models and
points of positive influence.
4. Back to School: I'm sure that last exercise was insightful and has
given you some ideas about your upbringing
and the way that started to shape or
sculpt your behavior. But also how you
saw your character forming in your
responses to some of those questions and looking at the motivations that your
answers indicate for you. Let's look now at an exercise which I'm
calling back to school. I was looking at my
notes on screen, but you have the
resource document in front of you so you can work
with that and enjoy that. Let's look now at
your preschool, that your preschool and your initial primary
school years. If I think about
this one for myself, I remember very well to a large wooden
construction building, more of a Swiss chalet. That as a toddler, I thought was enormous. It still serves the
babies and toddlers. It's the community going now with their moms for
one or two mornings a week as they experienced their process of
formative years. What do you remember of your preschool years
and how do you think that has formed or influenced
or molded your character? Let's look at the same for
your primary school years, your very first few years
at school where you would be there for most of the
day before going home. What you remember that What do you consider was important? You remember craning or artwork? You remember painting? Do you remember
sitting on the floor while the teacher told afternoon stories
before a short nap? What do you remember about you in those early school years? Moving forward a few
years and looking at Your move to
secondary school. So you might be ten or
11 or 12 years old. Now, you moved up several grades within
the school system. What do you remember? Can you think of two or
three friends who you stuck with throughout
the school experience? Are you still in
contact with them? Why were they special to you? What do you remember about them? And what were the
qualities they had which you identified in them
as being important. And perhaps which you see now in those people still as
friends, now as adults. But also they have the same
characteristics that you find positive and supportive in
your adult friendships. As you move towards
the end of school, you might be 161718 years old when you actually leave school. What career guidance
did you have, if any? What support did
you have in finding work experience placements
in your first working jobs, and your first
opportunity to look at and understand
what it was like to be in a workplace for 30 or 35 or 40 hours a
week as a school leaver? I remember when I
was 16 years old, I wanted to leave school. I've been working a Saturday
job in a model shot. So I was selling and making miniature
vehicles, military toys, and selling those two
enthusiastic school boys, not much younger than me, coming in every sense of
their with their pocket money and buying the things
that we had for sale. I loved that job. When I was 16, I had the
opportunity to leave school and go into
full-time work or to stay on for another
two years and do another range of studies and exams before going
to university. I actually wanted
to quit that 16, but my parents had a different opinion and so
I stuck with the exams. How do I had I had
the opportunity, I would have left school and I would have gone to
work full-time in that model shop for a manager
who I absolutely love, who had two sons who also
work there during weekends. I thought that would have
made a great opportunity selling model toys. Looking back on it,
a few years later, I realized that would
have been a mistake. I stayed on at school, I did a series of examiners at university and went to
study in Latin America. And of course, that's led to me being back in Latin America. What do you think you could have done differently in school? What did you do and how did you make the decisions
around that? The answers you give
to this are all formative in
allowing you to look at how your character developed the ideas you
had about the workplace. How those ideas led to an initial job and then maybe
a second or a third job. And started to influence the
way you felt about work, about employment, about freelance work,
about creative work, about endeavors where
you could work based on your skill rather than time submitted and actually
get paid for your output. Completely separate
to working and getting an hourly rate
or a weekly wage. Who were your role models in either in school or
if you went into further education,
who encouraged you? Who gave you a leg up on the next row of the career ladder or
the learning ladder. Because of the inspiration or
ideas they shared with you. For me, my English
language teacher, Mr. Monroe, was phenomenally
influential on me. He was the person who probably had the biggest
influence on me deciding that my parents suggestion
that I stay on at school before going to college or
university was a good idea, but I took it better from him than I did from
my mom and dad. He was a strong
role model for me. Also, Mr. Mitchell, who was our religious studies teacher. He was a great example
of work ethic. He was always
well-dressed at school. He spoke clearly in his classes, were fascinating to very
strong role models. A third one, if I can
have a third one, was my headmaster, Tom abdomen, a tremendous man,
a real role model. He, he happened to be a
good friend of my father's, but he was just a great man and he led the school
in a very good way. My examples are just examples. What matters is what you put
down on the sheet that you fill in as a resource for yourself as we move towards
living your best life. What counts here are
your role models. The people who inspired you, the decisions you made about school and at school about work, and about further education, and how those have
impacted on your lives in the years since
you were at school.
5. Up Close & Personal: This exercise is
called an up-close and personal because
it's more about you than any exercise
we've looked at so far or any of the notes I've suggested that you
make in response to the prompt questions
which I've shared with you in the resource notes. As before, I've got four
little prompt questions for. The first one is asking
how you earn your living. The work that you do, any
side hustle you have. The second one is about
your home environment. The third one is about
your personal life and relationships. And following that,
I'm just asking you to make notes of
your feelings and thoughts on your responses
to those three prompts. And any of the notes that you write on thoughts that come up. Looking at those responses, we'll look at the first one,
how I earned my living, work, or side hustles. In just giving an example about that particular
first question about work and earning
and central side hustles. Let me just throw
out some examples. We were recently at a
family barbecue and they were all manner of
people at the barbecue. I was there as a writer. Another person there
within the family is a lawyer, a journalist. Was there a scout leader, a paid scout leader, and organize our scalp groups? Was that the Gathering?
Another person? There is a comic designer. There was a, an insurance
broker random selection of half a dozen activities that
I noticed amongst those of us who were at the
event because I love vintage books and they are
an absolute passion of mine. I buy and sell vintage books. So I might buy 30 or 40
books from an auction site. Keep five or six for myself
because they're either by an author I've long loved, or they are of
some future value, or they just look
beautiful on the shelf. Somebody else in the family buys a wholesale phone cases and sells those
individually by mail order. So what else were in the family? Creates online digital
courses and it's not me. They create online
digital courses and they sell those and get a monthly revenue from the different platforms that
they create content for. What can you do extra to
your current activity? What do you do for
a living yourself? And how does that
compare emotionally and financially with other jobs
you've done previously? Are you earning more or
less than a previous job? But are you experiencing
greater levels of happiness or higher
levels of stress? And what you're doing now than
where you were previously. Think very seriously about the opportunities for
satisfaction within your work that may
be connected or may have a link with or a connection
to your payment level. But where that is not the only
driver of your motivation. If you're in a role that
you love or which you've tolerate and for which
you receive fair award. Can you find time for an
additional side hustle where either the additional earning is good or where you are
building up skills, generating an income, and
practicing something that could take you closer to your
next full-time role. Let's look now at
the next heading, which is my home environment. I've shared in a previous lesson about one of the
issues which is on my mind about living
between locations. And for me, that was a
nine out of ten score in an earlier exercise about
your home environment. What is it about your
home environment that triggers you,
that motivates, that gives you a sense
of tremendous com, or peace of mind
or frustrates you, or is a source of annoyance, or just your feelings
and your thoughts. As you jot down notes within
this section of the class. And as you consider
your levels of satisfaction or unhappiness or frustration with that situation. What would you change? What is absolutely
working really well? And you could possibly amplify. Or what is it that you could take from
something that's working really well and expand that or draw from that into another area of your home life
and your home environment. I'm also asking you
to make some notes about aspects of your
relationships where you feel things are
going really well and why you understand
that going well. Is it because you're
putting time in, is it because of
your dedication and commitment or other areas
where because you are drawn in different directions
because of work or long hours or
work-related commuting that you think actually, I could do so much more
for my relationship by finding a different
work environment or different work role. And instead put the
focus on my home life. In wrapping up this
particular exercise. Put the, put the notes
to one side for awhile, maybe come back to them tomorrow and think about what it is that has occurred to you since you made
the initial notes. How we're thinking
about what it is that you might be able to do to improve upon any
aspects of those. And also to think, why is it that you get such a value from any one
or all three of those. And how you can foster and encourage and strengthen
each of them. And look to your notes
and your observations for clues about good
ways forward with that.
6. Follow Your North Star: Well, this little section is my absolute favorite
of the whole class. Finding and following your
north star is about hanging onto what is ultimately the
most important in your life. This is about qualities. It's about experience. It's about a relationship. It's about the thing that
motivates you, above all else. So we're talking
about home life, finance, how you
spend your time, what it is that motivates you
and creates passion within you to create that opportunity
for living your best life. That first question
in your handout here. What sense do you have
that something is lacking or missing from my life. When you look at a typical week in your life or you monitor that for a month and you
look at four weeks of activity and the
usage of your time. What is missing? What is it that supports
you and works really well and contributes
phenomenally to your life? What is it that makes
you most happy? How do you influence this? Can you take a seed
or a kernel of an idea and develop that
to give you more pleasure, to bring more satisfaction into different
areas of your life. By comparison, what causes you to be worried, an unsettled. You can identify
that and then start to very slowly chip
away or reduce or minimize the impact of
those things which cause you to feel where it and unhappy
you are making progress. Looking at living
your best life. Use this exercise
as a way to find the things that work
and why they work, the things that upset you
or cause you distress, and why you need
to remove those, or in the very least, minimize their activity and involvement and
engagement in July. And between those
two activities, those which motivate
you towards, and those which
motivate you away from. Find the space where you
can live your best life. I've always been fascinated by writing and also by property. When I was able to write
my first few books and by rental property
using those incomes, I created a returning cycle
of activity that would create income to more activity that would create income that allow me to spend more time writing. What is it that you can identify
from your own personal, deeply motivational
patterns of activity and behavior which can create
the results that you want. Those could be physical results, financial results,
emotional benefits. Now that you've gone through several self-assessment
exercises and you're looking at things
that can allow you to live your own best life, identify just a
couple to work with, and move those to
the next level. One of the things that
struck me as I've gone through these exercises
during the class myself before recording
it and packaging it into something for Skillshare is that I've always had
this love of travel. Do you remember when I had my
burnout when I was working for one of the
financial institutions in London some years ago, I handed in my notice, I finished a couple
of months later. I went traveling for a month. That was my source
of rejuvenation. Since then I've worked
to regularly travel, but doing things
which completely refill my levels of
passion and excitement. You may have heard
of a footpath that runs across northern Spain, but it's called the
community Santiago. And it's an old
Spanish pilgrim route from the paradigms of Southern
France and Northern Spain, across Spain to the west. And a town called
Santiago de Compostela. There have been
many times when I have traveled with
my youngest son first as a teenager
and then a teenager. And now as a young man, walk that foot path, which is 800 kilometers
or close on 500 miles. It's great exercise. It's a lovely father
and son activity. It's wonderful to be immersed in Spanish culture and
history and architecture. And it's good for the soul. It's a nourishing thing to do walking the Camino
de Santiago is just one manifestation
of something that brings together time
with one of my sons, my love of Spanish language
and Spanish culture, and my love of long
distance walking, which came to me from my father, and also some role models from the village when I was
a teenager growing up. Can you see how these things, if you explore them and
look at the sources of those things which inform and educate and grow your character. They can become real
things later in life. And you see them
bringing benefit again to you and those
you love and care about. My love of writing came from a writer who lived
in the village when I was a child in Nottingham
chef who was a world-famous
published author and whose family were kind enough to notice my interest
in the written word. And who encouraged me in my
love of books and of writing. The scouting movement, which
I referred to in one of the earlier exercises when I was looking at role models
for my childhood, the ethics and the values
and the behaviors of a good scout to stay with
me all my life and have influenced me in many
small business activities, but also in community
activities. They continue to do so now, tiny little seeds that knowledge of
information of somebody sharing their experience with you in a way that works for you. Those can allow you to
influence other people. Further down the line. I hope you can see
that by working through some of these exercises, you can find ways that
your behavior as a child, as an adolescent has a young
adult can not only informed, but also could mold the
behavior that you have with others as you share opportunities for them
to live their best life.
7. Bring it All Together: You've made enormous
progress by working through these different resource
sheets during the course of the Skillshare class here
on living your best life. One of the things that will
help you enormously over the next 30 days is
to look at your diary and understand the patterns
of behavior and reward of time allocation and the emotional and
personal benefit from the way you use that time. Something else that
you can do over the next day or two
days is track the use of your physical and
financial resources so that you can begin to
understand the way that you're spending is influencing
for good or for bad. The intention you have to move towards living
your best life. It might be that
you can identify spending behavior that is
not really shooting you, are serving you in the
goals that are part of moving towards and
following your own Northstar. Following your passion for what will bring great results in your life and strong benefits that you can enjoy sustainably. Can you find a way to shave 5% or 10% of your
spending in one activity. And instead divert that
into a savings pot. We'll build up a
resource for you to invest in your side hustle. Let's also look at the
issue of time management, because a strong part of life management is
time management. You can give only a
certain amount of time. Your time is finite. You have 24 hours a day. Can you take one hour that is currently allocated
to something that is perhaps not an
investment of your time. It might be scrolling
on social media. It might be time
lost in watching a TV series which is
undoubtably enjoyable. But if you were to
rank it against. So here's the TV,
and you rank it against something which
is high on your list of priorities and leads towards greater personal satisfaction
than this one falls away. And the other one stays as
something which you want to grow and develop and
make more long-lasting. Look at your use of time as a way of saying to
yourself, okay. If I track and monitor
20 hours of free time in a week aside from my work activity in my
sleep and eating activity, what am I doing with
those 20 hours? How might I use two or
three or four hours differently next week than the way I use those
same as this week. What emotional and
self nurturing benefit can I get by shutting
down some activity and instead allocating
that same amount of time to things which will
further my career interests, my relationship,
my hobby activity, and those things which make
me feel happier as a person. And in another week's
time we can ask yourself whether having switched
those three or four hours to new activities
and new places of focus has really
cost you anything. This is the final section
where we look at and review the previous
elements of the clause. The handout for you
here is exercised six, It's called plans and goals. The learning that you take from the individual exercises
that we have gone through, which you can revisit at
anytime you want to buy, reprinting the handouts and maybe creating little
folder or a file of them. Make those notes personal, give them some importance, keep them safe in
a special place. Perhaps review your notes
in two weeks time and again in 28 days time so that you can see the
progress you have made, the positive impact that these have had upon
you personally. And to see what you can do by bringing forward these ideas. Implementing more
positive change for greater personal happiness in order to live your best life. It's been my privilege to
share these ideas with you. I hope you find them helpful, but also that you can
put them into practice, that you can track and monitor
over the next 28 days, benefits that you have obtained. And note those in your diary. I'm putting these things into real practice in your
day-to-day life. Share here within the community. Some of the achievements
you make in some of the very small percentage
changes you make and use of your time or your
financial resources, but which bring about much greater happiness
and satisfaction for you and share those with
us here in the community. It's been my absolute
privilege to share with you these ideas for living
your best life. And I hope that you find them useful and put them
into practice. Thank you.
Nick Sturgeon, Author & Beta Reader, Landlord
