We welcome you to the NEST blog – the place and space for us to share words and wisdom about the topics most important to you, when thinking about insurance, health and wellness and other important things when it comes to living and leading a happy and healthy life.
Last week, we welcomed the Kiwi summer. What a wonderful time to take a moment to appreciate the year that was 2015, preparing ourselves for the year ahead.
What was your greatest moment of 2015?
There’s been so many moments of my own. From watching my son get up on the wakeboard for the very first time to helping a client with lymphoma, and his family with a successful claim. A moment of realisation and a reminder of why I started Nest. The family and I have been fortunate enough to have some lovely weekends away too, with each other and friends as well. From Rotoiti to Raglan, Matakana to even just exploring the abundance of nature in and around Auckland – 2015 has been about exploration both professional and personally, and the appreciation that everything in between.
I’m very excited to announce that 2016 will bring new opportunities to Nest and our growing community of clients, so watch this space and more good news comes your way.
So as Christmas approaches, we wanted to share with your 12 mini tips and tricks that can help you to get the most out of your days in the remaining weeks of 2015 – setting yourself up for your most successful year yet.
Before you go to bed at night, tell your brain, “wake me up at _ a.m.” Unless you’ve been at a Christmas party the night before, you’ll likely start waking up right before the alarm clock startles you awake. Try it out.
If the subconscious command doesn’t work, set the alarm on your smartphone and put it far enough away from your bed so you have to physically get up to shut your alarm off in the morning when it goes off. You’ll be less likely to hit snooze once you’re already up.
Drink a liter of water upon rising. Most people are under-energized because they’re under-hydrated. Hydration is energy. Keep a liter of water at your bedside table before bed, and crush it immediately upon rising.
After you brush your teeth, pause for a moment and smile at yourself. Then say something positive about yourself. I know it might seem a little weird, but just give it a whirl. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you are what you repeatedly do, then why not repeatedly affirm something positive to yourself?
Take walks. Walking has been known to help people solve problems, come up with new ideas, and have epiphanies that seem to have come out of nowhere. But they don’t come out of nowhere. They were there all along. Taking a walk just changes the context from ‘desk’ to ‘nature’. And nature is going to win almost every time.
Get grateful. If you feel unmotivated, if you feel like you don’t have enough of something; STOP and think of three things you’re grateful for. You’ll immediately feel better, promise.
Meditate for 10–20 minutes. If you don’t know how, just sit down somewhere quiet and count to 4 while you inhale; then 4 more counts as you exhale. Just focus on your breath. That’s all.
Do your ONE most important thing first. Before beginning your work, review your single most important thing that you need to do today. Then get started on it. Your focus and effectiveness will before far higher when you approach your day this way. Go for it.
Compliment one person every day. It feels great to give someone something without expecting anything in return. In fact, you get a biochemical reaction of “happy chemicals” like oxytocin and serotonin when you give genuine compliment to someone.
Sweat every day. Speaking of “happy chemicals,” exercising — or at least finding a way to sweat every day — is one of the highest leverage things you can do for your overall health and happiness. When you’re physically healthier, you become professionally healthier as a bi-product.
Revisit your day and remember the good stuff. Write it down in a journal if you can. I like to end each day by asking myself, “What’s the best thing that happened today?”
Read every day. The greatest way to get the greatest ideas is to read, read, read. The only side effect of reading is a positive one—the more you read, the more ideas you get. Read something every day to expand your mind.
From Onny and the team at Nest – thanks for reading!