Daily Five Minutes for Success

Posted 8 months ago at 10:00 am. 2 comments

Let’s face it - people are overworked and overstressed. And I bet you are too, to some extent. (Well, maybe not if you’re super human, or are retired, or have no job… if you’re one of these people, pretend you’re overworked for the sake of argument.) When people want to do something new in their lives, such as exercising, there isn’t any time to do it, plain and simple.

Everybody gets the same amount of time. But if you’re working 8 hours a day, and sleeping 8 hours a day, your left with 8 hours to do whatever you want. If you have kids or a relationship, a good portion of that leftover time is (most likely) devoted to that. If you’re going to school while working 8 hours, your time is thrown in that direction. There’s no way around it - the average person is strapped for time.

Most people don’t possess super human time management skills. They’re possible to obtain, but it takes a lot of dedication and self-discipline that most people don’t possess or have in very low quantities. I used to be one of these people several years ago. At the time, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I felt overworked, stretched to the limit, and ready to break due to stress (both the mental and physical symptoms.) Obviously, that wasn’t an exciting time in my life.

I developed a little technique that helped me out during those times whenever I wanted to take a little rest from life and try something new:

Pick an area you want to improve on in your life. For just five minutes per day, intensely immerse yourself in that area, and once 5 minutes are up, you’re done for that day.

Who doesn’t have five minutes to spare? You might be hard-pressed for half an hour, but five minutes? Nah, that’s easy time to come by!

You can do a lot in five minutes. Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing, before you brainstorm what you can do:

• Exercise during the commercials of your favorite TV show (commercials actually run about 8 minutes for a half an hour show, 18 minutes for an hour show)
• The five minutes before bed - meditate, journal, relax, enjoy yourself
• Five extra minutes in the shower to relieve yourself from stress
• Read a magazine, newspaper, or a book you’ve been putting off for a rainy day
• Take five minutes and brainstorm as many ideas as you can on how to improve any aspect of your life
• Call somebody up you haven’t talked to in a while

But once the five minutes are up, stop! You’re finished! But you’ll have this strange feeling after you’re done… you’ll want to keep going. Pretty soon those 5 minutes will be 10 minutes. Those 10 minutes will turn into 30 minutes. And then you’ll be thinking to yourself, “God, how can I fit this into my day tomorrow?” But you don’t have to do that! Just five minutes a day to success is all you need.

Do you have the five minutes to spare to try something new?