15-minute life-changers

3 minute read

Do you ever feel as if you don’t have enough time to worry about your everyday chores, let alone organise opportunities for happiness and growth?

1. Name your adventures

We can become so entangled and stuck in our ‘comfort’ zones of work and routine, that we forget how exhilarating it can be to step outside of them and experience something new and exciting. Spend 15 minutes choosing 12 mini adventures or fun challenges that you are going to commit to over the forthcoming year. Make a promise to yourself to start planning, and having, these adventures each month. Before you know it, life won’t seem humdrum.

2. Choose and check-in

When you consider looking back on your life in years to come, what do you want to be able to say you achieved and contributed, personally and professionally? Spend 10 minutes writing a list. Then, look at your diary or current to-do list and ask whether the choices you’re making will allow you to leave your chosen legacy. If some change is needed, make small shifts by finding, and acting upon: something you can cancel; something you can postpone; and something you can delegate.

3. Organise your optimism

Label a glass jar ‘Happy days’. Note a few good things that have happened to you recently, on separate bits of paper, and put them inside the jar. Whenever something positive unfolds in your life, pop it into the jar. After a year, relive the times that brought you happiness. The simple act of paying attention when good things happen to you will be beneficial for developing an optimistic perspective.

Adapted from ‘I Don’t Have Time: 15-Minute Ways To Shape A Life You Love’ by Emma Grey and Audrey Thomas (Exisle Publishing, £10.99)

Photograph: iStock