I’m always looking for ways to improve myself. Why not, right? Its better than the alternative? 🙂 When I come across a good idea, I’ll give it a try. Sometimes it sticks and sometimes not. Below are some of my favorites!

#1 Keep it interesting. When I’m working a ton of hours it can be difficult to motivate myself to learn about non-medicine things. But I find that if I don’t do that, I get stuck in a rut of uninspired boredom (not that medicine is boring, but doing any one thing over and over can become boring!). The easiest fix I’ve found is Audible audio books. I’ve been listening to these books online for the past few months. Its $15 a month and you get to choose from a ton of books (I think you still get your first two books free). I just finished ~17 hours of Buddhism teaching (the great courses). It was awesome and intriguing! I’m going to make it through maybe one or two more books on Buddhism before I’ll make myself take a break and learn about something else (I heard the great courses on weapons is awesome).

#2 Streamline the online. I can’t believe how much time I can waste on the interwebs. Life is so much nicer after cutting back a bit (sounds like addict talk). To keep myself from sifting through 20-30 emails each day, I subscribe to unroll.me to consolidate all of my retail emails into one daily email. The application also allows you to unsubscribe or keep email from certain sources in your inbox if you prefer as well. I also got rid of facebook, twitter, instagram, etc on my phone. Really, I don’t need all that junk. It would probably be good for my blog to be more involved, but its not worth sacrificing that much of my life to it.

#4 Just track it. For me, eating like crap is a sure way to make myself feel gross physically and mentally. But eating healthy is hard! The easiest (but still hard) way for me to keep my diet on track is to track it. I use myfitnesspal.com because its free. I’ll sometimes fall off the wagon (um, like now), but I know I’ll get back on in a few days and don’t give myself too hard of a time about it.

#5 Observe. Gosh this one is hard, but its so important. Its been my focus for a while now (its a huge part of many types of yoga and Buddhism). What I mean by observe is to observe yourself. To reflect on your own actions, reactions and feelings. You observe them, but that doesn’t mean you have to change them. But I find that thinking, “I’m feeling anxious/stressed/angry about X/Y/Z” actually helps me somewhat overcome those feelings. I realize the feelings are there, accept them and stop dwelling on them.

Hopefully some of this was helpful, or at least interesting to read. Feel free to share any of your secrets!