Doing it anyway
Setting the Right Tone
I think it’s safe to say that I’m not alone when it comes to fighting the typical resistance of the first thing we all need to do in the morning: get out of bed. As simple as this task is for some, it can turn into a real mental battle for me, particularly in the middle of winter.
I don’t know about you, but when the alarm goes off, and my surroundings fill my eyes with soft darkness, the last thing I feel like doing is starting the day. Moreover, this absence of light during this cold, grey season is on another level in the Nordic region.
But excuses aside, I recognize that overcoming this everyday challenge has a tremendous impact on how the rest of the day unfolds. Unsurprisingly, even just your attitude alone sets the tone for everything else that follows.
This is why I think it’s a good idea to collect practical tools that effectively empower you to stay consistent in following through with the kind of structure you need. Ultimately, it’s about staying proactive in protecting your energy and well-being, no matter what situations come your way.
I’m grateful for the specific hacks and tips I’ve picked up over the years because this constant effort goes a long way, and in my experience, the effects are undeniable. This is why I’ve put together 12 healthy lifestyle quotes from some of the best books on the topic below.
“You aren’t battling your ability to stick to a diet, execute a business plan, repair a broken marriage and rebuild your life, hit your goals, or win over a bad manager- you are battling your feelings about doing it. You are more than capable of doing the work to change anything for the better, despite how you feel. Feelings are merely suggestions, ones you can ignore. To change you must do the same, you must ignore how you feel, and just do it anyway.”
― Mel Robbins, The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage
“How you wake up each day and your morning routine (or lack thereof) dramatically affects your levels of success in every single area of your life. Focused, productive, successful mornings generate focused, productive, successful days—which inevitably create a successful life—in the same way that unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre mornings generate unfocused, unproductive, and mediocre days, and ultimately a mediocre quality of life. By simply changing the way you wake up in the morning, you can transform any area of your life, faster than you ever thought possible.”
― Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life
“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”
― Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
“Your blood flow, the life-force, the electricity, they’re all in there. But what are you going to do with them? This is the only life you’ve got, so it’s time to move beyond your conditioning. It’s time to move beyond your fear or whatever else is holding you back from living fully because that’s the way nature meant you to be. Your fears are a consequence of a conditioned mind, and they are nothing but a burden.”
― Wim Hof, The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential
“When you’re an adult, your life, happiness, health, healing, social life, friendships, boundaries, needs, and success are all your responsibility. If you’ve been secretly hoping someone else would come and rescue you, fix your problems, pay your bills, create a social life, heal your wounds, change into your dream partner, and motivate you to be your best. . . it’s not going to happen. No one is coming. And any time you spend blaming other people, or waiting for permission or an invitation, is wasted. Those days are over. It’s time to take full responsibility for your happiness, your dreams, and your life. After all, responsibility is simply the ability to respond. And as you’ve just learned, true power lies in your response.”
― Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About
“Seven books of the Chinese Tao dating back to around 400 BCE focused entirely on breathing, how it could kill us or heal us, depending on how we used it. These manuscripts included detailed instructions on how to regulate the breath, slow it, hold it, and swallow it. Even earlier, Hindus considered breath and spirit the same thing, and described elaborate practices that were meant to balance breathing and preserve both physical and mental health. Then there were the Buddhists, who used breathing not only to lengthen their lives but to reach higher planes of consciousness. Breathing, for all these people, for all these cultures, was powerful medicine.”
― James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
“Again, we all have negative feelings, but not all negativity produces disease. To create disease, negative emotions have to be dominant, and what accelerates the process is knowing the negative thought to be toxic but giving it permission to thrive in your consciousness anyway. For instance, you may know you need to forgive someone, yet you decide that remaining angry gives you more power. Remaining obsessively angry makes you more likely to develop a disease because the energy consequence of a negative obsession is powerlessness. Energy is power, and transmitting energy into the past by dwelling on painful events drains power from your present-day body and can lead to illness.”
― Caroline Myss, Anatomy Of The Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing
“A sense of purpose doesn’t come from thinking about it. It comes from taking action that moves you toward the future. The moment you do this, you activate a force more powerful than the desire to avoid pain. We call this the “Force of Forward Motion.”
― Phil Stutz, The Tools
“If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.”
― Byron Katie, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life
“Is sisu a mental power or muscle that you flex? Where does it come from? Is it a cultural construct, part of a country brand, or a slogan? Or, as I suspect, a sort of mind and body attitude that anyone, anywhere, can tap into? In my quest to wrap my head around the term, I initially apply it liberally to cover a quality that I notice a great many Finns seem to share: a hardy, active, outdoors-in-any-weather, do-it-yourself approach to life. Even when it comes to domestic chores, such as house or window cleaning, which many people could easily afford to pay someone to do, it seems instead to be a source of personal pride and satisfaction to take on the task oneself. I observe that this DIY approach also includes trying to fix things before rushing out to buy new ones and taking on home renovations instead of contracting them out. Doing instead of buying.”
― Katja Pantzar, The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Wellness, and Happiness Through the Power of Sisu
“Cold showers are the gateway to flow and energy and peace. I’m not exaggerating. It’s the entry point from which you will learn the power of the mind over the body. If you do just ten days of cold showers after warm showers, meaning that you end your regular, warm showers with a minute or so of cold water, then you will be able to command your vascular system to close up when you go into the cold.”
― Wim Hof, The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential
“Here’s how you use the Let Them Theory to process your own emotions in a healthy way: When you feel your emotions rising up, Let Them. Allow the anger, the frustration, the hurt, the disappointment, the sadness, the grief, the tears, and the feelings of failure to come up. Let Them. And then, Let Me not react. Don’t reach for your phone. Don’t turn on the TV. Don’t make a drink. Don’t open the fridge. And for crying out loud, don’t text anyone. Just notice the feelings and Let Them rise up. The reason why you must learn how to Let Them rise is that once they do, they also fall.”
― Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About
We Get What We Give
As many experts continue to point out on the topic, it’s the things we do on the regular that have an enormous impact on the quality of our lives. Our outputs are a direct result of the choices we make, regardless of how we feel.
In practice, I could not agree more with how true this statement is, especially in the times I manage to show up on a challenging day and immediately see the benefits soon after I get on top of things. Unsurprisingly, as with many things in life, we get what we give.
