Simply Successful Secrets

Sania Wyatt tagged me to par­tic­i­pate in “Sim­ply Suc­cess­ful Secrets.”

Com­pose a new blog post list­ing the top 5 to 10 things that you do almost every day that help you to be suc­cess­ful. They can be any­thing at all, but they have to be things that you do at least 4 or 5 times every week. Any­thing less than that may be a hobby that helps you out, but we are after the real day in and day out habits that help you to be successful.

In no par­tic­u­lar order, here are some things that I do consistently:

Work out regularly

It’s really sim­ple: If I don’t work out, I don’t feel well. There is noth­ing magic or mys­ti­cal about it. For me, work­ing out is essen­tial to keep­ing my energy level up, my blood and cre­ative juices flow­ing. I would be at the gym every sin­gle day if my sched­ule would allow it. As it is, I’m there a min­i­mum of three and max­i­mum of five days per week.

Make good food choices

Same story. I can no longer eat junk food and feel well. The dietary habits I got away with 20 years ago would kill me now. I eat a lot of veg­eta­bles — I love salad — and fruit. If there is a non­fat prod­uct out there, I use it. I keep non­fat salad dress­ing in my home and office refrig­er­a­tors and have no prob­lem tak­ing it with me to a restau­rant, although many are now offer­ing at least one non­fat choice. I don’t fol­low any par­tic­u­lar diet plan and I indulge a bit on spe­cial occa­sions. But for the most part, you will find me steer­ing clear of any­thing greasy (deep-fried is out), fatty or with no redeem­ing nutri­tional value.

As much as pos­si­ble, stick to a rou­tine

In order to get every­thing done, I find that I need to stick to a basic week­day rou­tine. I get up at about the same time each day, fol­low my morn­ing rit­u­als, and get down to busi­ness at about the same time each day.

Pri­or­i­tize

My “to-do” list is con­stantly being re-ordered so that the most press­ing items appear first. I re-think the pri­or­i­ti­za­tion reg­u­larly and love to get small annoy­ing chores off the list quickly so that I can focus on big projects.

Read vora­ciously

The best way to learn is to read. Books, mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, pro­fes­sional jour­nals, blogs … you name it. I spend a good chunk of my wak­ing hours read­ing and/or writing.

Multi-Task

Years ago, I learned that I would never get every­thing done if I didn’t multi-task. It is not unusual for me to have sev­eral appli­ances run­ning while I am work­ing on the com­puter with the tele­vi­sion on. In fact, multi-tasking is so habit­ual that it is dif­fi­cult for me to do just one thing at a time.

Think

As sim­plis­tic and, per­haps, silly as it sounds, it is impor­tant to take time to be alone with one’s thoughts.

Most often, I find myself doing this in the car as I drive. I turn off the radio and the CD player and enjoy being alone with my thoughts and the high­way. I also shut my office door for a lit­tle while dur­ing the day and enjoy shut­ting out the sound of ring­ing phones, peo­ple talk­ing, print­ers chug­ging away … It is in these moments that I hear the wis­dom of the Divine.

Pay heed to my dreams

We resolve a lot of con­flicts and issues while we are sleep­ing. Psy­chol­o­gists and psy­chi­a­trists advise their clients to jot down the details of their dreams and spend a lot of time ana­lyz­ing them. I con­fess that I don’t always com­mit the mem­o­ries of my dreams to writ­ing, but I do try to recall as much about them as I can and dis­cern some mean­ing from them.

I feel espe­cially grat­i­fied when I wake to real­ize that I have dreamed about a loved one who has crossed over because I believe that when we dream about those folks, their spir­its have actu­ally paid us a visit to deliver a mes­sage.

Take time out once a week or so for a nice, relax­ing meal and glass of wine

I enjoy going out about once a week for a nice meal, accom­pa­nied by a glass of wine. If there is music being played live in the restau­rant, I’m a happy camper. After din­ner, I enjoy­ing lin­ger­ing, vis­it­ing and enjoy­ing the music over a cup of cof­fee. And then I like to go home, curl up in my bed or favorite chair and watch a really good movie. If I am so relaxed that I doze off dur­ing the movie, all the bet­ter! I can always watch it another day, but I need to toally unwind from time to time and let my men­tal bat­ter­ies recharge.

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