Create an Extra Hour Each Day to Transform Your Life

You might think that you’re already booked solid for the day.  But do you know that it’s not that difficult to find an hour for yourself by stealing a little bit of time from your other activities?

Each one of us needs a little quiet time for ourselves so that stress, depression, boredom, and anxiety do not creep into our lives.

Creating an extra hour each day for reflection can really pay off over time. You’ll find that the quality of your life improves when you make time to reflect on your goals, dreams, and desires.

Equally important is focusing your mind on what’s most essential to you which enables you to go after those dreams with a passion and bring them to life.

Try these ideas to find that extra time to reflect:

1. Re-purpose some of your TV time. Television is a significant time waster but most people average 4+ hours of TV per day. If that’s you, this is an easy place to find your extra hour to reflect.
2. Spend less time on the internet. It is true that the net is a great source of information, but it’s also an easy place to spend a lot of unproductive time. For example, how much time do you spend on social media websites reading about what your friends are having for dinner or where they have recently traveled?  Really? Just cut back and use the time for yourself. You’ll be glad that you do!
3. Early to bed, early to rise. If you rise up an hour earlier in the morning, that’s an hour you have free to yourself. There’s something quiet and peaceful about the morning that you don’t get at other times of the day.
4. Limit your email time. Plan a specific amount of time of the day to check and reply to emails.
5. Cut out some shopping. Drop all your shopping (except grocery shopping) for a month. It’s just a month. You can go for a month without buying anything, can’t you?
6. Take a longer lunch break. If you’re getting your work done early, maybe you can extend your lunch and get your solitude in the middle of the day. Relaxing? Oh, yes!
7. Skip the news. Spend the next 30 days without watching, reading, or listening to any news.  Then, you can go back after a month if you really miss it. Deal?
8. Drop some of the extraneous after-work activities. Instead, use some of this time for yourself for all the other things you might have planned,
9. Ration your reading time. Keep the most important parts of your reading activity and eventually limit the non-essential reading to a minimum time each day.
10. Cut down on your playtime. It’s certainly crucial for your well-being to take time to relax and participate in activities that you enjoy. However, if you find that you play video games for hours at a time or spend frequent evenings out on the town, perhaps you can shave a little of this time off for reflection.

These are 10 effective ways you can find and you can easily find 10 more. If you use just 4 of these ideas each day, you would only have to cut out 15 minutes of each activity to find your hour.

How to use that hour to create a more fulfilling life? Try these useful tips:

1. Review your goals. Remind yourself of your new goals every day. How are things progressing? Is your plan to reach your goals moving you forward? Reading and checking on them each day is helpful.
2. Think about your day. Ask yourself every day what you’ve learned. What did you do well? What mistakes did you make? Can you make choices that serve you better? How? What are you grateful for today?

• • Imagine if each day were a little better than the last, on average, what would your life be like a year from now?

3. Escape the hustle and bustle of life and quiet your mind. Be calm.
4. You’ll be shocked at how much you can learn about yourself when you write down your feelings. Plus, a journal gives you a venue to write about your challenges, reduce your stress about them, and work through them to find solutions.

Finally, give yourself the gift of an extra hour each day for reflection. An hour a day can be transformational – find your hour and take advantage of it. You’ll be so glad you did!