Phoenix Education

Do Something Different Once Per Week

You have probably heard or read on numerous occasions that setting a routine is the best means of accomplishing your goals. That has some truth to it. It’s like creating habits where repetition is the way to develop them. Sometimes, however, this can cause you to get into a rut or a funk. You still need to maintain your routine but need something to break it as well.

Commit to trying something different. You could do this every day or commit once per week. You could also do it once a month, but you may get more out of it with a higher frequency.

The idea is to have something else interesting looking forward. That will help you when tackling your routines. You can think about that new event or activity while you are getting through your daily grind.

You can choose to do any new activities on your own, with other people or a combination of the two. It’s entirely up to you. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to include other people and to meet new people as part of that. When you meet new people, they will share ideas that can stir the pot for you. That is good.

What kinds of activities should you strive to do? As for examples, you could join a sports team. That’s good in the beginning but may also start to become routine after a while. Still, it has the potential of getting you to meet new friends.

If you want to go extreme, why not try skydiving? Admittedly, this is not for everyone. But it can be something that you have wanted to try but too afraid to do. If it is too much, try something like ziplining first, and take it from there.

The activity doesn’t have to be full of adventure to break up your routine. For instance, perhaps you have always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument and eventually join a band. That’s another great activity to add to your list. Another idea is to join a reading group. This activity is a mix of getting together with people and some alone time.

To get more ideas, join local groups that will update you whenever new events happen. The more groups you join, the more options you will have available to you. Be warned, however. You may start having some fun!

7 Apps for Breaking and Building Habits

Does anybody have any feedback or updates – I wrote this a while ago…

There’s an app for that. It’s become a running joke; there’s an app for everything. Is there an app for habits? No. there are a lot of apps for habits.

HabitBull is a free flexible reminder program that lets you develop good habits. Habits require repetition and HabitBull provides the reminder to keep you on the track to develop the habit of your choice.

If you want to walk for three days in the week, HabitBull lets you set reminders on selected days. If you want to meditate for half an hour each day, you can record your accomplishments in minutes rather than Yes/No answers.
The app creates trends, graphs and tracks your process to create that habit.
HabitBull reminds you that it takes 66 days to create a habit and gives you a progress bar.

Productive (iPhone only application). Productive separates the new habit creation into three categories, morning, evening and whenever. It’s selective as to which it shows when, meaning that it shows the AM reminders before noon only and the PM reminders afternoon, also exclusively. This app is designed to force the user into incorporating the habit into their daily schedule as opposed to saving up or getting it over with early.

Strides. If you’re after a significant goal like losing weight, saving money reading many books, then you should look at Strides. This app looks at the total time to complete any task and breaks it down into milestones that are measurable, trackable. It creates weekly and monthly goals to keep you on track.

Streaks (currently iPhone only). Streaks is an app to help you develop fitness goals. The plus of this app is that it hooks in nicely with Apple’s Health app. It tracks steps, measures heart rate, distance and more. It’s simple, managing only six habits at a time, and has a very easy-to-understand graphics display.

Habitica. This app is free and for iPhone, Android, or web. Habitica takes good habits and converts them into something fun. It converts them into a video game you can play with friends. You can earn badges, battle monsters, and hold each other accountable. If either of you fail to complete the reminder, you’re both penalized.

Coach.me. This app has plans to coach you through the process of forming athletic habits and training. You can see videos and even contact live coaches for hire.

HabitFree (Android only) uses questions to help you keep your routine. “Did you brush your teeth?” “Did you go for a walk?” Not surprisingly, it focuses on streaks, how many days in a row you accomplished your task.

There are a lot of apps available, and the selection in the app store is changing all the time. Scan your options or search under “HABITS” for the one best suited for you.

7 Steps to Your Personal Plan for Flipping the Switch

Flipping your switch can seem like a massive undertaking. One that there are a million separate ways to achieve if all the articles on the internet have anything to say about it. However, flipping your switch is a personal undertaking, one that may have similar milestones for everyone, but really can and should be curtailed by a person’s needs to be successful. Keep reading for the seven steps you need to personalize to flip your own switch.

Find an Activity that Challenges You

The activity that will most help you flip your own switch is the one that challenges you. Not your neighbor or your sibling. But you. This could be as simple as folding an entire basket of laundry in one sitting or the Sunday morning crossword in pen!

Commit to yourself.

Whatever challenge you’re undertaking, you’re doing it for you. Make a promise to yourself that you will try your hardest and not give up when the going gets tough.

Set Realistic Goals

Make sure your goals are attainable. You aren’t going to fold all the laundry that you do on Sunday by the end of Sunday. But maybe you could at least hang up the stuff that will wrinkle. Or perhaps you will only use a pen on the crossword answers you feel 100% certain about, pencil on the rest.

Turn off the T.V. (or the Internet) In General

Get rid of the useless distractions. That show is not going to help you concentrate or make time go faster, so just don’t. You can’t flip your switch on one activity if your brain is partially paying attention to another.

Remove Interruptions

Kids, phones, whatever. Do your best to remove the interruptions that you know will crop up.

Track Your Progress

Find a straightforward way (read: not time-consuming, expensive, or labor-intensive) to track your progress. Sometimes this is a calendar to check off days. For others, maybe you need to write a journal about your feelings, how it went, or your next goal to achieve.

Enjoy Your Experiences

Enjoy what you’re doing and the experiences you are having. It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.

Learning to flip your switch is a process, not a one-day training online. It will take time and practice to find out exactly what it takes for you to be in the zone.

7 Significant Benefits to Trying New Things

When you make it a goal to try something new, you may not realize why you’re setting out to do something new in the first place. There is a slew of benefits that come along from incorporating “new” into your life; here are seven of them:

Learning New Things

How will you learn new things if you never try new things? Think about an activity you’ve never tried before. You don’t know much about it, right? As soon as you put yourself out there and try it out, though, you’ll learn a lot more about it.

Get Rid of Boredom

Boredom is the worst – we all can attest. When you’re trying out new projects, new places, new people, etc. – that boredom slips by the wayside. Keep your brain engaged, and you won’t have to deal with monotony creeping in.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

More Stories to Tell

As you try new things and meet new people, you accumulate more stories about your adventures. Whether it’s a funny story or a scary story, your stories become part of who you are. What a great reward!

Get a New Perspective

Sometimes, you need to sit in another area of the room to change your perspective – similarly, you need to try new things to change your perspective on life.

Self-Discovery

Let’s face it – we spend a lot of time with ourselves. A whole entire lifetime, in fact. So, if you do the same thing day in and day out, you won’t see many different sides to yourself. Self-discovery leads to many great attributes – confidence, self-awareness, perceptiveness, to name a few.

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Gain Confidence

Why fly when you can soar? You can amount to remarkable things by simply expanding your horizons and trying new things. Time after time, you’ll begin to gain a new sense of confidence in yourself and your capabilities.

Experience Life to the Fullest

There’s a reason people say you only have one life to live. If you take this sentiment to heart, you’ll want to get as many experiences out of life as you can. That begins with your habits – your day-to-day life. When you push yourself out of your comfort zone, you’ll gain more of these experiences. Who knows what you could learn about yourself or your life? You’ll have to try to find out!

6 Ways to Add New Things into Your Life to Stir Things Up

“The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

When you feel bored, you are robbed of hopefulness and excitement. Boredom forces the mind to slip into a state of complacency and, in a way, weakness. Letting boredom interfere with your happiness is optional – so don’t let it happen! Instead, try these six ways to fill your life with fun, exciting things to try.

Make a change

Boredom often comes from a lack of activity or interest, so make a change in your life! Start with a change of mindset, whether that means adopting a more optimistic outlook or being more adventurous.

Photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery on Pexels.com

Don’t Limit Yourself

If you really want to stir things up, you need to stop putting limitations on yourself. You’re capable of whatever you want to do – it may take some challenging work, but you can get there.

Go with Your Gut

There’s a voice in your head saying, “Do it!” and another voice saying, “Wait. Let’s take a pause.” Sometimes it’s good to listen to the rational, logical side of your brain. Other times, you need to go with your gut feeling – especially when you’re trying to branch out and try new things.

Baby Steps

Have you ever heard of taking baby steps toward something? We can’t always make giant leaps toward our goals or our dreams. Often, we need to start small. Perhaps that means trying a new ice cream flavor or going to a different mall. Little by little, you’ll begin working your mind into being more adventurous.

Make a List

Just like a to-do list, you can make a “do” list. Draft up a catalog of things you want to do for yourself – for fun! This list can include all new things, some old things, or all the above. The point is to hold yourself accountable to branch out of your comfort zone.

Making Plans Quickly

We’ve all committed the age-old foul of making plans too far in advance that when the time comes around, we’re not so excited about the plans anymore. If you make your plans with more immediacy, you’ll hold yourself to them and you’ll be less likely to back out.

As you read these tips, know that there is no trickery here. You’re not trying to play games with your own mind; you’re learning how to read your mind so that you can accomplish important things and try exciting things throughout your life. Good luck!

Logically, we know we can’t predict the future.

I found this one at Daily Motivation.

Logically, we know we can’t predict the future.

Yet that doesn’t stop us from jumping to conclusions and creating scenarios in our minds that aren’t likely to come true.

It’s almost as if constant reassurance about how things will pan out is a drug we rely on to feel safe.

A large number of variables impact the unfolding of the future.

Fulfillment can come in infinite forms.

For now, breathe and take things one day at a time.

Focus on appreciating the beautiful moments right in front of you.

Cherish your life today with all its nuances.

Budgets – What To Think About

There are many elements to consider in such an exercise and the following are just some of the more necessary considerations recommended:

Business plans and budgeting exercises are designed to give those involved in the business a fairly accurate and current assessment of the business and its future intended direction.

The plans will also ensure the relevant information is available to assist in the business growth based on the funds available. Such information is essential to the business, especially if there is a need to secure financing facilities such as overdraft tools and bank loans or venture capital funding.

The business budget should ideally be the most accurate form of documentation available for the continuous reviewing of the business environment against the actual performance the business is running at. Most of the budgeting exercises reflect information on a monthly, quarterly, half yearly and annual basis.

Focus should be given to area such as the reviewing of the current year’s progress based on the decisions that brought about the present positioning of the business entity.

All objectives and strategies that are in place or projected to be so through the action plans and benchmarks it is measured against.

Resources should also be considered for its consistency and reliability, as these elements can and usually do effect the business in some way or another when problems arise.

The anticipated results are also something to be considered as it may require changes to be made is such anticipations take on a negative form.

Therefore on several different levels the benefits are evident when there is proper planning stages set up in the form of business plans and budgets.

The Steps

Planninng the budget. Fixed cost of websites, advertising, social media, networking…

The following are some tips on how to ensure the budgeting exercise for the business in on track and effective:

Checking industry standards and sentiments of the time is something that needs to be done periodically as the percentages of revenue earning possibilities is often affected by the market behaviors.

The smaller the business entity, the more likely it is to be effected by the volatility of the market, and this is especially so when there is a downturn in the economy.

Designing an accurate spreadsheet is another essential element that should be included as part of the budgeting exercise. Making clear estimates on the revenue amounts expected against the percentages allocated toward tools and materials relevant to the business will give a clear overview of expected expenses incurred.

Factoring some degree of slack and avenues to cut cost can also be clearly reflected in a comprehensive budgeting exercise.

Understanding that there is bound to be a lot of movement within the economy that will eventually have some bearing on the business entity and then taking the necessary financial step to limit its liability will help to keep the budgeting exercise more realistic. Ideally this will also provide better for better cost cutting exercises that can positively contribute to the overall success of the business.

New Business

I’m working on a couple of online businesses. I know I should be planning a quiet retirement, and I’ve tried that and it is boring and expensive! So I am putting books for sale on a new website, and also looking at launching some online courses. So I decided to look into some business ideas and came across the following ideas.

All businesses start out with three main elements prominently featured in the general make up of the endeavor. These would be listed as revenue to be earned, expenses to be incurred along the way and the projected profits expected. These three categories are usually studied in depth before the actual business entity is launched and through this process there is always the need to have an effective budgeting platform in place.

The expenses which usually fall into three separate categories such as the semi-variables, fixed costs and the variables are also usually considered in the budgeting exercise. All these calculations are done on the monthly ratio which the business progress dictates.

This is the most detailed section of the business engine and usually also required the most attention when it comes to managing the costing elements.

The profits meant to be derived are usually the reasons why the business endeavor is being taken on in the first place, thus the basic profits calculated are also part of the budgeting process.

Successful business entities calculate the monthly budgets and make the necessary adjustments accordingly to ensure optimum profit making probabilities. Calculations for budgeting purposes can also be done on a daily, weekly or monthly basis depending on the individual business requirements and style.

So now I have to look at the costs of running websites and what is the real cost for me in terms of writing time.

I will come back to all of that later.