A List Of Powerful General Self Help Techniques To Increase Your Value

Here's a list of general self-help techniques that have helped me improve the quality of my life over the years. You should selectively choose one technique at a time to implement and read the description of the technique and what it is used for before implementing it.

How you should use this is to refer to it once you have finished practising the previous techniques, and are looking to implement new habits and techniques. Let's begin.

#1 - Energy Calendar

You should implement this technique if you're looking to find more energy in your life, or if you're wondering why you're so drained at the end of every single day. Here's the technique.

Step 1: Write down every little thing you do in the day
Step 2: Punch it into Google Calendar
Step 3: Label it with the appropriate colours.

Green = Creates more energy (enjoyable)
Yellow = No change (just distractions)
Red = Things you don't like.

The idea is that you spend more time doing activities that are green. For yellow and red, we want to delegate those activities off to someone else, or delete them if possible.

#2 - Four Hours In The Zone Of Genius

You should implement this technique whenever possible, as it is a key component to mastery and doing what you love everyday. You should also implement this when you feel that you lack "focus" in your life. Here's the technique.

Step 1: Identify high-energy activities
Step 2: Identify which of those activities you are "highly competent at"
Step 3: Do those activities for a minimum of 4 hours a day with focus

We as humans only can operate effectively for 4 hours a day. After these four hours, creativity becomes increasingly more diminished. It literally feels like you're a zombie slaving away at brainless tasks.

make sure to get enough sleep when implementing the 4 hour zone of genius technique. It will influence how many actual hours you will be awarded based on the quality of your sleep.

#3 - Meditation

You should implement a meditation habit when you feel like you're not in the present moment. You might be always battling with the future or living in the past. Meditation will help you live in the present moment.

Meditation is just about observing yourself. There are many methods when it comes to meditation, you can just choose one that suits you the best. Ideally, we get in an hour of meditation a day for the best results, but at minimum, 20 minutes. Here are the selection of meditations you can do.

1. Guided Meditations
2. Chanting/Mantra Meditations (My favourite)
3. Kriya Yoga
4. Kundalini Yoga
5. Labelling Meditation

#4 - The Daily List

You should implement this technique when you feel that you are doing a lot, but seemingly not going anywhere in life. A lot of input but not a lot of output. This is because you're focusing on low-leverage activities. Here's the technique.

1. Before sleeping, grab a piece of paper
2. Write the top 5 most leverage activities you can complete that progress you towards your goals.
3. Complete them within the next day
4. Repeat

Here's an alternative version:

1. Before sleeping, grab a post-it note
2. Write the top 3 most leveraged activities you can complete that progress you towards your goals
3. Do those 3 things before you do anything else in the day, no distractions.

#5 - Solo Retreats

You should also implement solo retreats every 3 months, this is because the benefits of vacation last for 2 months and it slowly diminishes in the 3rd. Solo retreats give you time to decompress and realign with your values. Here's the technique.

Step 1: Booking
Booking solo retreats is a bit tricky. Ideally, solo retreats should be a week and should be close to nature. There should be minimal distractions and optionally you can have an idle activity to do there, for example, fishing.

Step 2: Going
When you go to enjoy your solo retreat, totally disconnect from the outside world. Just be in the present moment and relax. Bring things or do activities that can potentially give you new sources of inspiration. For example, books, meditation, contemplation, journalling etc.

As the name implies, you should go alone. Don't bring your partner or anyone else, it is a time for you to discover yourself again and plan for what's ahead in your life. You will notice that you will make big and bold life decisions after solo retreats.

Without implementing solo retreats you run the risk of "doing the same thing over and over again" and extinguishing your passion and engagement with life. Solo retreats offer a new perspective that was not available to you when you were in the midst of the action.

#6 - The Victimized Anti-Procrastination Technique

Procrastination is a direct result of intimidation. You should implement this when you are consistently procrastinating on activities you know you should do. (ie intimidated by). Here's the technique.

Step 1: Breaking It Down
You're often procrastinating on the task because it feels unpleasant and unmanageable. Therefore, the first step is to make it pleasant and manageable by breaking down this task into many little mini-tasks.

Step 2: Plan (Manageable)
Once you have a list of mini-tasks, you're going to write down exactly when you're going to complete these mini-tasks. The mini-tasks should be specific, outlining what exactly you're going to do.

Step 3: Do It (Pleasant)
Make the task pleasant to do. Control the environment of which it is done. Perhaps you can do the tasks together with your girlfriend, or you can reward yourself with a nice dinner after completing it.

#7 - The Empowered Anti-Procrastination Technique

In this case, we are going to face procrastination head-on instead of breaking it down. At any moment of procrastination, ask yourself. "What is the most difficult thing I can do right now?"

Proceed to do exactly that. This technique requires more mental resources. So it's best done when you're in a period of low victimhood with a lot of motivation to progress towards your goals.

#8 - A Strong Morning Routine

Implement a strong morning routine when your days are becoming inconsistent. Some days, you get a lot of things done and some days you're not getting anything done. Here is the criteria for a strong morning routine.

1. You wake up at a specific time
2. You get enough sleep
3. You drink water when you wake up
4. You go outside to get sunlight
5. You move and get active

Thats it, don't implement morning routines designed by rocket scientists.

#9 - Cleaning Up Your Diet

Your diet affects everything. You might not have noticed, but what you feed yourself will affect your mood, clarity of thinking and is at cause for many autoimmune diseases. Cleaning up your diet can literally change your entire life.

Cleaning up your diet is very simple, you just have to follow these rules.

1. Eat things that can be found in nature.
2. Eat things that are the closest to something alive
3. Don't eat things with ingredients that sound like it came from a chemistry class
4. Don't eat heavily processed foods that's designed with a lot of human ingenuity

#10 - A Bold Decision

It might be time to make a bold decision when you're feeling stuck in life. A bold decision is one big major change you can make to your life right now to shake things up.

It might be starting a new business.
It might be moving to a foreign country
It might be drastically changing up your lifestyle
It might be accepting the call to a new heros journey

Ask yourself, "What is the biggest, boldest decision I can make in my life right now." Fear will likely get in the way of clouding your decision-making, and you will be faced with many limiting beliefs before actually making the move.

Don't hastily execute on your decision when you're battling with these demons. You should carefully contemplate, research and sit with your decision for at least 2 weeks before beginning the execution in a state of peace.

Once you have made up your mind, you will decisively and quickly execute your plan as quickly as possible. Pushing this idea into reality on a really tight timeframe.

#11 - Clean Up Media Intake

Online influencers try to battle for your attention nowadays. Your attention is the biggest asset to these people, because the one who influences and provides the most value to people literally control and shapes culture.

Over time we tend to accumulate subscriptions to trash influencers, whom influence us in negative ways that we may not like. Or, they might become irrelevant over time, no longer helping us serve our purpose.

Critically analyze influencers in these categories and judge their relevance to your life:

1. How polarizing and biased they are?
2. How much do their techniques and teachings actually work in your life?
3. How preachy are they in their content?
4. Are they wasting your time?

Influencers that waste your time, those who are polarizing, biased and preachy, you should immediately remove them from your content feed. This is because they cause you to be locked within a certain perspective.

The media you consume (perspectives) will shape what you do in your life, it is important to consume high-quality content and feed yourself high-quality perspectives, people who will share their experiences with neutrality.

#12 - Resolve One Addiction

You don't have to be a drug addict to be addicted to something. For example, most of us are addicted to our phones. How an addiction is defined is "can you go for one week without developing an insatiable craving for {that thing}?"

If you do develop that craving over the week, you are addicted to it and you should attempt to break the addiction. The method I use is the "do nothing technique." Everytime when you have an addiction, sit there and do nothing (literally) until the craving passes.

For example, I have an addiction to McDonalds. Every week, I will have a craving to eat fried chicken at McDonalds. When this craving started to appear, I stopped everything that I was doing and did nothing until the craving passed. Over time, as I did this over and over again, the addiction subsided and I was cured.

#13 - The Blank Out Method

The blank-out method is good to use when you are banging your head against a problem you cannot solve. It utilizes your subconscious to work on problems in the background, relying on a sudden "aha" moment to solve it.

People can blank out in different ways. Some people sit in a cosy restaurant drinking tea while listening to music. Some people like to drive aimlessly around town. Some people like to take a walk with headphones on.

The idea is that you do some intermediary activity so that your mind can "blank out" with the problem fresh on your mind. This allows for your subconscious to actively work on an insight.

Once you generate the insight, quickly run home or write it down so that you can implement it. The blank-out method only works when you innately already know the answer. If the blank-out method consistently fails, you likely do not have the necessary context or education to feed your subconscious for a solution.

#14 - Fasting

Doing a 72-hour fast without any food or water can boost mental clarity by the end of that fast. I recommend doing this twice a year to keep your mental clarity sharp. You should do this if you feel that you are starting to become "slow functioning." Fasting is the natural way to gain the effects you experience from nootropics.

#15 - Finding Masterful Teachers

A deeply masterful teacher can change your life. These masterful teachers do not announce themselves to you. They don't spend million of dollars online advertising and impose themselves into culture.

This is because real masters are retired. They enjoy time by themselves and do not want to deal with the stupidity and ignorance of the people who have never taken the hero's call, the first step in the hero's journey.

But, heros who have accepted the call and are progressing along their journey can seek out these masterful teachers (those who have completed their journey), and ask for their guidance and wisdom.

Take some time to find real masterful teachers. Here are usually their characteristics.

1. Obscure and hard to find
2. Neutral in the way they teach
3. Loving and compassionate to their students
4. They do not seek, but wait to be found

#16 - Life Coaching / Courses / Seminars

Spending money on someone who can coach you in various areas of self-improvement (dating, career and entrepreneurship etc.) is probably the best ROI you can get on your money. Therapy is the mainstream method of receiving life coaching.

Life coaches unfortunately do not come for cheap, ranging from $125 to $10,000 an hour. But, compared to the value you receive (ie. proven techniques and methods), you could potentially save years of your life and spare yourself the pain associated with making mistakes.

Life coaching is just all about time. How much is time worth to you? Picking is a life coach goes like this. First is that you have to like his personality, and second, he must clearly make a positive impact on your life.

You will cycle through a few life coaches before you really find the one suitable for you, after that, you'll be married to him until you outgrow him. Really, the definition of a life coach is a person who is paid to mentor you.

#17 - Minimalism

Spend some time cleaning up your environment, to improve it. Minimalism is the idea that less is more, decluttering your life in the sense of material possessions, time, relationships and mental space.

Cut out toxic people in your life, cut out the unnecessary stuff you hoard in your house, cut out the necessary purchases and subscriptions, cut out all the unhelpful stuff. Anything and anyone can be removed from your life.

In life, we only want to focus on the things we are good at. Outsource and delegate things that you are not personally good at. Hustle culture is nonsense, in life, we never have to do anything we don't like. Life is too short to deal with bullshit.

If you don't like going to the gym, why not give hiking, rock climbing or swimming a try? There is always a replacement for everything, you just have to take some effort and find it.

#18 - Visualization

Visualization is a form of manifestation. When we deeply envision the little details of what we want, we start to understand by subconsciously finding the things that can help us achieve those details.

Visualization only works if you do it everyday for 5 minutes. Every morning, under the sunshine, take 5 minutes to enter a meditative state and envision the future you ideally want.

Vividly experience your visualization. What do you see? smell? feel? Visualization can be a form of free happiness in your life, because for 5 minutes, you get to live the life you've always dreamed of.

#19 - Affirmations

Affirmations are a way to help you alter your beliefs. How affirmations work is that it cause you to pull the ideal value and belief set you want from the future into the present moment. A form of positive self-deception.

How this will work is throughout your day, you're going to recite the belief you want out loud. Slowly over time, by doing more and more affirmations, you are going to believe it and start acting accordingly to those beliefs.

Affirmations also tend to be short and easy to memorize. It is not a long lofty statement you will have to whip out your phone for. Make it 4 to 6 words max and focus on one affirmation at a time.

#20 - Journalling

Journalling helps us keep our thoughts in order, and to bring out thoughts previously trapped within our subconscious. It can also be a way of self-inquiry, helping you highlight various self-deceptions

How you do journalling is that you set aside a set amount of time, and sit in a place that puts you in a state of peace and "flow." You know what I'm talking about. After that, play some meditative music and allow your mind to roam free, writing down whatever that comes to your mind.

There are other techniques when it comes to journalling as well, such as answering prompts. But the highlighted method above for me works the best, feel free to explore other methods.

#21 - Daily Learning

Everyday, learn something new that helps you advance yourselves towards your goals. Be careful not to mentally masturbate in learning too much, but to put what you read into action.

Take the time to research and find self-help products, and slowly consume them throughout your day whenever there is downtime. Line up multiple self-help products you'll slowly go through and spend a fixed amount of time everday to learn and implement what it taught.

A good rule that has always helped me is to implement the advice as soon as possible. If I am told about a self-help technique, I literally pause the video, and do it on the spot.

#22 - Take An Hour Of Risk

In life, it's not how hard we work, that is irrelevant. The more important thing is how many risks we take. The hard work is simply a follow through from the risks we take, simply because you're afraid and the fear causes you to become engaged with life.

Here is how you classify risks:
Smart: Unlimited upside, limited downside.
Stupid: Unlimited upside, unlimited downside
Insane: Limited upside, unlimited downside.

Never spend your time engaging in stupid and insane risks. We only take part in smart risks. This is because irreversible and devasting mistakes can occur, and knowing where you're going to die is the first step of knowing what not to do. As the late Charlie Munger famously said.

Dedicate one hour a day, executing on "smart risks" that can advance your life goals. Everyone who is successful in this life, takes risks and wins the dice roll. This often means doing something you deem "uncomfortable" and have the potential for "downsides."

For example, if you fear approaching women but know that you need to do so to advance your social goals, then that is where you should allocate your one hour of risk-taking.

#23 - Building Financial Assets

Have you wondered why inflation cause asset prices to increase? Or with the term "a little bit of inflation is good for the economy." This is because in our current financial system, new money (credit) will naturally flow to assets.

This is just how the system works. Consider this scenario, the government gives out stimulus checks. Recipients then use their checks to buy goods and services. Magically, this new money supply ends up accumulating at its final destination when these assets pay out dividends.

So if you want to increase your income, build assets so that money magically flows to you. Here are the 8 main reliable, tried and tested asset classes people have used to build wealth:

1. Stocks
2. Bonds
3. Investment Property
4. REITs
5. Small Businesses and Start-Ups
6. Farmland
7. Royalties
8. Your Own Products

#24 - Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a way to get a control of your own emotions. Throughout your day, you feel a myriad of different emotions that runs you like a puppet. Not being aware of these emotions can cause you to do erratic things.

This is an easy-to-apply technique I use, feel free to use other techniques if this is not suitable for you:

1. Notice that you are feeling an emotion
2. Label that emotion (fear, anxiety, happiness etc.)
3. Feel into it and accept it fully

Tada... You have practised being more mindful of your emotions. Doing this consistently will increase your EQ and allow you to have a greater mastery over your emotions.

#25 - Self Care

Self-care simply just means doing what you enjoy in life. It is the simple pleasures. You should implement self-care habits when you feel consistently burnt out. I like to schedule self-care activities in between demanding tasks.

#26 - Mindstorming

Use this when you have a difficult "how to" question to solve. Write the question at the top of the paper. For example, "How to get a girlfriend." After that, write 20 answers to your question.

The idea is that the first 5 answers will be easy, the second 5 will be difficult and the last 10 will almost feel impossible. The lower the answer is on the list, the higher quality the answer will be. You want to have a minimum of 20 answers.

This exercise will take a few hours because once you strain out your usual biased answers, you will then be forced to become creative and think "out of the box." This leads to answers being more high quality.

#27 - Face One Fear

All fears are deception, it is to prevent you from peeking into and exploring that part of reality any further. This is because fears are attached to your identity, and exploration might cause you to then lose said identity. Therefore, what you identify as will define what you fear.

If you identify as a good mother/father, you will fear the death of your own child. You do not concern yourself with the death of other children, because that will not say anything about how good of a mother/father you are.

Similarly, with all fears, we fear it because we are afraid to lose our identity. The best way to resolve fear is to face it head-on, or if you want to be more advanced, to let go of your identity.

#28 - Stop Judging

If you live a very miserable existence, it's because you demonize, judge and criticize too much. It is very easy to find faults in others. In fact, you can have problems with anything you want since it's all relative.

Everytime you judge others or yourself, snap a rubber band against your hand. Remind yourself to not judge and "refine" your statement so that it does not include any judgment.

#29 - Mastery

Society and great rewards are only available to people who have concentrated their force and mastered one specific domain of life. Since mastery takes so long, we are only able to master a few things in our lives, so choose wisely and master the things you love.

There seems to be an idea these days that you can shortcut mastery. Get everything faster, or quicker with less effort. Sometimes that is possible, but more often times than not, we shoot ourselves in the foot when we take shortcuts.

Realistically be able to identify what is the true cost of something. The true cost of losing weight is to mobilize yourself to the gym and give up your ice cream and fried chicken, not Ozempic. Face the true cost head-on with years of consistency, everyone starts off as a student.

To be a student we must learn to bow in humility, to lay down our ego, stop rushing and let the mystery unfold. I would also recommend reading the book Mastery by George Leonard. This is the best book when it comes to teaching the skill of learning how to develop skills.

#30 - Body Relaxation

In the book "The Body Keeps The Score" the author shares the idea that all our traumas and emotions have a physical imprint on our bodies. You can know this because everytime you resolve a trauma through the use of self-love techniques, a literal physical part of your body becomes relaxed.

Body relaxation and awareness help address unconscious traumas and emotions, potentially allowing them to surface to our consciousness. As you go throughout your day, preferably 5 times a day, spontaneously relax all your muscles from head to toe.

In the long term, it can help you become more attuned to what your physical body is telling you. This is a primary benefit, greater emotional control is just a result of this awareness.

Conclusion

This article currently stands over 4,000 words. I have taken a lot of life energy to seek out these techniques, try them and present to you today on which ones are the highest leveraged ones you can do to improve your life right now.

I will continuously revise this article as I encounter more high-leverage self-help techniques. Just by implementing a few techniques, you will already be able to see results almost instantaneously. You are meant to do it one at a time, and find ways to integrate it into your life through some modification.

That's it for me. Best of luck. Please check out my other posts and practice everything holistically. Send me an email if you want a specific topic written. You can see "coaching" to see if I have room to onboard new students.

Cheers,
FriendlyWrenChilling.