Most of us want more out of life. This is not to say that you’re unhappy with what you’ve got. In fact, the secret to happiness is already having what you want. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t want to scale the highest peaks of success and happiness because you can’t stand still in life.

And, then, of course, there are others who are desperately unhappy with their lot in life – the majority of people appear to be unhappy in their job, a frightening number of people worry about their finances and then there are people who are simply and often deeply unhappy with who they are.

What you need to understand is that you will get precious little out of life by wishing or by being dissatisfied with what you think you currently have or have not. The one thing that stops you getting something different out of life is the blindingly obvious fact that you continue doing everything the same. Keep doing the same things and nothing will change. If you want change in your life, you’re going to have to do something different.

What are you to do? Like all great journeys, changing your life starts with the first step. A tiny step will do for starters because you’re going to have to gradually recondition your mind – to get yourself comfortable with the idea that, in every single thing that you do in life, you have a choice to do something new, something different. Perhaps the most powerful exercises that I offer to my personal development clients is that they use the very routine that has anchored to their current life to destroy the habitual, repetitive patterns of behaviour that have so constrained them, their view of life and the endless possibilities that life holds for them.

I propose the same powerful yet simple tip to you. Break routine by using your routine. Each morning, you will find yourself with a long list of minor habitual tasks that you’ve done in a routine way every day of your adult life. If you were to brush your teeth with the ‘other’ hand, you will achieve two, potentially life-changing, milestones. Firstly, you will have awoken yourself to the fact that, in every single thing that you do in your life, you can exercise choice. This realization will enable you break every single destructive habit that is holding you back from the life that you really want. Secondly, by virtue of the fact that you will be brushing your teeth in an unfamiliar way, you’ll have to pay more attention to the task. Highly successful people call this ‘focus’. Focus means paying attention – not to what you want out of life, but to what you’re doing right now.

Life is made up of moments – every moment that you pay attention develops your ability to be fully focused, fully aware of what must done when changing your life calls for real action – not the repetitive reaction of the normal mind that will never change.

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