Tag Archive for Productivity Tips

You CAN Break Bad Habits

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You CAN Break Bad Habits

Have you been trying to break a bad habit for a long time? You read about how to do it and give it a try.

But, time and again, you keep repeating the same bad habits.

Are you eating the wrong foods? Are you smoking and can’t seem to kick the habit.?

Before you start working on how to break your bad habits, GenuLines suggests you think back to how you started them.

What kind of mindset did you have at that point? Were you a teenager who wanted to fit in?

man with bad eating habitYou could also be overeating because you’re stressed out about your job.

Once you’ve identified how your habits started, it’s time to determine how important they are in your life. The correct answer would be, “they’re not important.”

But, they are important, or you wouldn’t continue those habits.

Try to list why they’re important. In other words, why do you need to continue with your bad habits?

 

If you get to this point of clarity you’ve turned the corner on breaking the habit. The reasons are important but don’t dwell on them and beat yourself up.

You can’t do anything about the past. It’s best to move on and try to stop continuing the habits.

The Key to Change

Stop  bad habits by replacing them them with good ones.

If you’re a smoker and you have a craving for a cigarette, go out for a jog. Jogging can work for bad diets as well by taking your mind off your cravings.

You can deal with poor eating habits by having accessible fruit and vegetables.. Ideally, you want to have these ready-to-eat, and place them right next to junk food.

Of course, getting rid of the junk food in the first place is a great way not to have it within reach.

The next step in breaking habits is to realign your mindset. You need to focus on what you’re gaining by not continuing the bad habit.

For instance, if you’re having a problem with alcohol, try to keep focused on the way you feel without alcohol. For most people, that’s better.

You can break bad habits. It does take some effort.

But, your life will change for the better, if you’re willing to put in the effort.

JohnK 6-16-2025
chiforyourself.com

 

stick man hears about habit changeOverheard: “Don’t let your sins turn into bad habits”

~Saint Teresa of Avila
 

 

 

Article image by Artem Podrez: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-holding-burger-smiling-4728880/

 

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Prioritizing Your Life 101

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Prioritizing Your Life 101

When living your life for obligations and commitments, it can be difficult to prioritize what is truly important. Without priorities, everything becomes essential and urgent, or nothing does.

Learning to prioritize is an essential life skill that you need to learn, regardless of your age or what you’ve already accomplished in life.

priorities listWithout priorities, life becomes a series of reactions and aimless wandering. With a focus on what’s important, though, you can achieve your goals and live the life you want.

For active prioritization to help your life, GenuLines suggests envisioning what you want and where you want to go. Without a clear goal, it’s difficult to know how to get there.

Vision, therefore, becomes an essential first step to prioritizing.

 

A popular way of prioritizing your daily and weekly tasks is to rank each regarding urgency and importance. These are two separate qualities that are important to understand.

Urgency means how quickly it needs to get done, while importance is what is meaningful for your happiness.

Here’s how tasks might look using these categories:

• Important and urgent tasks are meaningful to you and have time constraints that require immediate action. These types of activities are often unexpected, which contributes to the urgency factor.

Without proper planning, though, lots of things can end up in this category.

• Not important but urgent tasks are usually the mundane tasks that keep life moving forward. Emails, meetings, and appointments that represent obligations end up here.

Having a lot in this category means your life may be running you instead of you running your life.

• Tasks that are not important or urgent are ones you can consider eliminating from your life. If your job or personal obligations fall primarily in this category, it may be time to reevaluate how you’re spending your time and what is important for you moving forward

• Not urgent but important tasks represent areas where you should be dedicating your time and prioritizing tasks best. These represent tasks that say you are in charge of your life and doing things that matter to you.

Being clear about your goals and values will help you spend more time in this last category and remove the clutter in your life that’s leading you astray from your goals.

And understanding how to categorize your activities can help you recognize how you are spending your time to determine if it is in your best interest.

Yes or No

Remember that everything you choose to say yes to in your life is a potential opportunity for you to say no to something else. Saying no to unnecessary obligations in your life gives you more time for those things that are important to you.

Saying yes to what matters means you are spending your time on things that are a real priority for you, not something else.

It’s important that your priorities are not just for your long-term goals but also for the day-to-day activities that drive our lives.

It can be hard to avoid distraction, but being clear about your priorities each and every day will help you achieve your dreams in the long run.

Reflect often on areas where your activities are not matching with your outlined priorities, and make adjustments to eliminate distractions in your life.

By choosing your priorities, you are designing your future, your vision for yourself. If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will do it for you, and that’s no way to control your life.

If you want to start living the life you want to achieve the goals you most want, make yourself and your tasks most important.

JohnK 5-5-2025

 

stick man hears about prioritizingOverheard:  “Action expresses priorities”

~Mahatma Gandhi
 


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You Can Define Your Perfect Morning

 

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You Can Define Your Perfect Morning

As I sit down to prep this GenuLines blog post a new morning is starting. I have my own way of approaching each day.

I call it my daily regimen.

How about you? Is there something you want to do that would make a big difference?

A habit you can do on a daily basis?

It could be in any area of your life. From exercise and healthy eating to working on your relationship with your kids.

Sit back and imagine your perfect morning. It isn’t stressed or rushed.

picture of beautiful morning

Best of all it’s a day when you have time for everything on your list.

This could mean having time for a long shower. Or going for a run before breakfast.

Or having a few minutes to connect with your spouse over breakfast.

There are a lot of “maybes” but the key is to start with what’s most important to you. Then think about how you could fit it into your morning routine.

Dream On

Remember, you’re only dreaming and imagining at this point. You’ll work on figuring out where to find the time to fit it in and how to make it all work out later on.

For now paint a vivid picture of what your new morning could look like. Get very clear on what you want that perfect morning to look like.

Imagine it in as much detail as possible. (And I would suggest you keep all this to yourself)

Write it down somewhere so you can refer to it as needed. In short, define your perfect morning.

Why is this so important?

Because you can’t start to make any meaningful changes until you know what your goals are.

You need to know your destination before you can start to pick a route and figure out how you’ll get there.

That’s what today’s task is all about.

It’s figuring out where you want to get to. Don’t stop until you have it figured out and firmly pictured in your mind.

JohnK 3-24-2025
chiforyourself.com

 

stick figure hears about a perfect morningOverheard: “Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it”

~Richard Whately
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