45 Minutes a Day to Make Your Dreams Come True

We all have dreams. We all want to be successful in life and at work, and we all know - on a conscious or unconscious level - that the decisions we make can move us forward what we want or hold us back. What if I told you that just one decision could make all the difference? And I'm not talking about deciding to drink more water or eat better. That's good advice, but it doesn't make a significant difference in your life (at least not that quickly).

I want you to imagine for just one minute what would happen if you decided to start working on your dreams - no matter where they take you - just 45 minutes a day. What if I told you that's how I wrote a 300+ page book in just over a year (371 days to be exact), will read 52 books this year, am teaching myself Spanish and started a new business on the side?

In this article, we'll explore how understanding the opportunity cost of wasting your time watching TV, on Netflix, scrolling through your phone together with the power of the compound effect will alter the course of your entire life.

As usual, the formula is relatively simple: find your time wasters and commit to replacing 45 minutes of wasted time with proactively working on your dreams. It's the execution that requires a little support, practice, and perseverance. I often find that understanding the mechanisms of our behavior helps to steer us in the right direction. So let's dive in.

What is opportunity cost?

We all have the same number of hours in a day. Yes, some of us have more help and support than others, making more of those hours available for the important stuff. But still, every one of us wastes time. Whoever says otherwise is a big time-wasting liar!

What this means is that every decision has a price. Opportunity cost is the loss of other alternatives when one alternative is chosen; it's what you are giving up to get something else.

Opportunity cost can look like this:

• Watching TV instead of reading a book

• Spending time on social media rather than learning how to play an instrument

• Falling down the research rabbit hole instead of taking a practical step (aka doing something)

• Worrying about a project instead of starting it

• Wasting time binge-watching another Netflix series instead of writing the paper that's due tomorrow

All these things might seem like trivial decisions. They're not. When you make poor time choices, what you're leaving on the table is nothing less than your dream life. To grasp this enormity, we must first understand another concept of time: the compound effect.

What is the compound effect?

The compound effect is a concept that states that all small actions and decisions in life will have the opportunity to grow into big rewards. Although applicable to every aspect of our lives, this concept was first applied in the financial field. When talking about investments, compounding is the ability of money to generate more money, which is then reinvested or remains invested to create even more money.

A famous example is that of compound interest: the earlier your start investing, the more return you'll get for the same amount of money as someone who starts later in life than you.

The compound effect and your dreams

The compound effect isn't only applicable to money. Because everything we do requires time, it's relevant to EVERYTHING:

• Spending 20 minutes every day exercising can add up to a fully toned body over a year if you maintain this habit. This same action could also make you healthier and happier, which will lead to more opportunities in the future.

• Reading for 30 minutes a day, every day for a year can add up to over 60 books a year! The time you spend reading each day is short, but it adds up quickly and gives you new knowledge and life opportunities.

• Writing for 45 minutes a day every single day can add up to over 100,000 words in one year. Imagine how much you could write if you commit yourself to this simple daily practice. I'm living proof that it's possible!

Now let's take this concept back to your dreams. Spending a little time each day on something worthwhile will produce incredible results.

45 minutes a day to make your dreams come true

Things start shifting when we put opportunity cost and compound effect together:

• Identify 45 minutes of time wasters you can do without

• Work on your dreams every day for that amount of time

Using the opportunity cost concept and the compound effect for your benefit is as simple as replacing 30 minutes of scrolling with writing or 15 minutes of thinking about something. Remember that opportunity cost comes from every decision you make in your life while compounding means doing the same small thing over and over again every single day.

You might not know this, but these concepts are already at work in your life. Every time you're scrolling through your phone, your compounding your knowledge of what's hot or not on Instagram or Facebook, all the hours you spent streaming series make you a champion at Netflix trivia.

There's no way to escape these forces from being at play in your life, so you might as well use them to build your dreams, don't you think?

You know you need to make a change in your life, but you keep putting it off.

Maybe you're not sure what the next step is or how to get started. Or maybe there are too many options, and it feels overwhelming. Whatever the reason, I can help! I offer personalized coaching services that will guide you through every step of making positive changes in your life so that you can finally start living the way YOU want to live!

Let me help take away all those feelings of overwhelm and confusion so that together we can focus on creating a plan for success for you and push past any resistance or procrastination holding you back from achieving your goals!

Schedule your free session!

Miracle (morning) routines that actually work

There are two things in the world I love more than anything else (well, almost): learning and experimenting. In my pursuit of figuring out what a soul inspired life might look like, growing into my best, happiest and most productive self often requires using myself as a guinea pig. Today included.

One of the nuts I’ve been trying to crack for a while now is HABITS. How they’re formed, the things we can do to uncover them and – most importantly – how we can change the ones that work against us for better ones.

Something else that I’m absolutely convinced of obsessed about is how we systematically overestimate what we can accomplish in the short term, yet underestimate what we can accomplish over longer periods of time. This fascinates me because it’s rooted in the complex way we operate as humans.

Imagine you want to write a book. You know – rationally – that if you spend one hour a day writing you’ll have a book (self-)published within a year FOR SURE. The thing is, there’s a little voice inside you (or a big one, depending on who’s talking) that keeps telling you a year is way too long. Eventually she convinces you to turn your book dream into a six-month plan (if you’re lucky). What started as an easy, soulful *less-than-a-page-a-day* kind of deal has now magically doubled in pressure and daily required effort. Although it FEELS easier (faster, more doable) to write a book in six months rather than a year, the chances of success aren’t better.

I know, I know. You’d expect me to say that the chances of success are lower, right? Well… yes, in a way. But not exactly. If you give yourself a year to write a book, what works in your favor also works against you: TIME.

This brings me to the third (and final) ingredient of today’s conundrums: the compound effect, aka the theory that your REALITY is the result of your daily choices, behavior, and actions.

This is important. Why?

Because if you give yourself a year to write a book (for a stronger punch line: replace with personal dream of choice) but you’re skipping writing hour three times a week… guess what? It won’t get done.

Slip up once and you can get back on the saddle. Slip up twice and it gets tougher. Do it three times in a row and that book idea probably goes back into the procrastination fridge for a while.

If that’s you (and that is SO ME, by the way) I want you to know you’re not alone.

Nobody taught me about any of this stuff, and I *bet* nobody taught you either (would have been great but, hey, there where so many useless other things to learn first). We’ve been conditioned to fail right from the start by not learning how habits really work. And how to make them work for us.

Because the thing is, there’s a big difference between our unconscious habits and what we can consciously do with them: the MIRACLE ROUTINES we can create to bypass, and change them.

Perhaps you’re familiar with Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning. A daily routine that has you wake up earlier to do what the author calls “SAVERS”: silence, affirmations, visualizations, exercise, reading, scribing. That last one simply means journaling but, according to the author, it didn’t make such a nice acronym. There’s a huge community of people adhering to this practice (more than 170000 of them on Facebook alone). And for good reason.

Small actions repeated over time create the most amazing results.

Actions put together into a specific sequence repeated at regular intervals turn into a routine. Daily routines are easiest to remember and keep up. That’s why creating routines for yourself is so powerful – and creates miraculous results!

Long before I came across Hal Elrod’s book, I was already convinced of the power of routines. In fact, due to my HSP nature, routines is something I always had. Whenever I learned how to do something, the most efficient way I could find to do it would easily turn into a routine for me. Although this can make me a little inflexible at times (hmm) it’s also been an incredible asset both in my private and professional life. Having routines help me

• save time,

• remember what I have to do,

• know what to focus on,

• keep at it over time,

• build habits (!),

• improve my productivity,

• slowly become a joyful, courageous, free version of myself.

The real juicy part of routines comes from creating them in such a way that they not only make you benefit from the compound effect, but positively influence your subconscious mind at the same time.

To illustrate what I mean, here’s my morning routine (what I consider a great mix of action-oriented and mindset improving steps):

• Transcendental meditation

• Journaling

• Visualisation

• Writing down my goals

• Affirmations

• Reviewing my to-dos for the day and getting started with the first one

I have no exercise in this routine because – ta-da! – I have another routine for that. I use the Pomodoro technique when I work, and use my 25-minute breaks to squeeze movement into my day.

Now, these routines work well for me because I have a home office and no kids. I understand things might be different for you, and having a morning program like mine might not be possible. But that’s not to say that you can’t have any routines set in place. In fact, I strongly *suggest* that you do.

Even just one thing – repeated every day – will have a tremendous effect over a longer period of time. I’ve used this technique for years now to teach myself new skills: piano, writing, photography, drawing, even computer programming. (I know, it’s the multi-passionate in me, I can’t help myself).

My point is: you can do this too! If you’re up to it, here’s what I’d love you to do.

Think about what you want accomplish for yourself. Less stress? Better self-care? Writing a book? More clients? Learning to play the piano? Getting back in shape? Whatever it is, think about one step that will help you to get there. Now vow to yourself that you’ll do it every day (morning, noons, nights… it doesn’t matter when) for the next 90 days.

The results will BLOW YOU AWAY.

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