10 Unusually Powerful Life Hacks That Will Make Your Life Easier!
Unusual tips for an easier life. Sometimes life can be quite demanding. If you have an aversion to surprises, you'll find yourself looking over your shoulder some days. But flexibility and a certain amount of humility are part and parcel of human existence; they come with the package, so to speak. On some days, it seems, half the world has conspired against us. Then things are going well again for us and nothing and no one can push us off the road to success. It's usually just the many annoying little things that rob us of more energy than they actually deserve. Therefore, in this article we would like to introduce you to ten unusual tips and tricks that can help in agonizing everyday situations, but can also be useful to halt disaster before it starts.
1. Evening praise clears our brain
You should definitely integrate the good old custom of night prayer or evening praise into your daily routine. You could also call it self-reflection or meditation. In any case, before going to bed, take a few minutes to briefly review the past day. What was good? What could have gone better? If you are spiritually inclined, be sure to thank the higher beings for everything beautiful and positive that happened to you today. Of course, you can also ask for help for tomorrow, which, as we all know, never hurts. It is important that you fall asleep every night with good thoughts in your head and in your heart. This mental hygiene ensures a peaceful, restful sleep. What's more, the day's events will have been checked off and dealt with, so you're off to new shores.
2. Save ink when printing
From an ecological and economic point of view, this is only a small step for mankind, but for each and every one of us it is quite a useful hint. If you change the font color from black to gray before printing, you save quite a bit of toner and protect the environment in the process.
3. Keep a daily to-do list
Do you rule your day or does it rule you? Before events come crashing down on us every morning unbidden, we should go on the counterattack. Write yourself a to-do list every day before you start work. The first item on your agenda is the most important one. Devote the first few hours of the day to it, come what may.
4. Introduce screen and desk breaks
We're proven to be more productive and better focused when we take a short break after every hour of sitting in front of screens and at our desks. Smokers have long had an advantage on this point. Take a walk, air out the room properly, or grab a glass of water, coffee, or tea. A little stretching doesn't hurt either. If you can't do anything like that, look out the window for a few minutes; it will relax your eyes and your brain.
5. Apologize for things you can't help
Yes, this is something we should have integrated early in our lives. However, a Harvard Business School study provided some quite astonishing facts about it. For an experiment, actors were asked to approach complete strangers on the street and briefly ask them for their smartphone. When asked "Excuse me, may I borrow your cell phone for a moment?" only nine percent of those approached were generous. However, if the respondents chose a creative solution, such as "Excuse me for the lousy weather, but could I borrow your cell phone for a moment?" more than 70 percent of the respondents handed over their sacred smartphone. The basic principle behind this experiment: We build trust by asking for help and at the same time apologizing for things for which we are not responsible. This makes us sympathetic, and as we all know, sympathy always wins in the interpersonal sphere.
6. Keep sneezing fits in check
It's essentially never a good idea to stop things that want to leave our bodies from doing so. Our body usually knows exactly what it's doing. However, some people find it uncomfortable in certain situations when they have to sneeze. In this case, it helps to press the tongue very firmly against the upper incisors, exactly where they go into the gums.
7. Cross your heart for honesty
Do you want to hear the honest opinion of your fellow human beings on a very specific topic? Ask them about it while putting your hand on your heart. This gesture triggers a kind of moral obligation in our counterpart to answer completely honestly, without cheating.
8. Take inventory, and do it daily
The best way to start each new day is to take stock of all the good we already have in our lives. If you make a daily note of at least three items for which you are sincerely grateful, you will go through the day more satisfied and subsequently focus on even more good things.
9. Going bananas
Eating a banana every day brings many benefits to our body, but also to our psyche. The potassium in them relieves our heart, magnesium and vitamin B6 make valuable contributions to the functionality of our muscles and nerves, and last but not least, bananas lift our mood, strengthen our ability to concentrate, and later even ensure better sleep. If you don't want to have a movie-like duel with the stubborn yellow fruit in the future, do it like the monkeys and peel them upside down.
10. No more email glitches
They have become an essential and important part of our lives. Without email, nothing works professionally and even on a personal level these days. However, mishaps happen quickly because people don't pay attention. With the automatic suggestions, for example, it’s all too easy to type in the wrong recipient. Also risky: confusing the difference between "CC" and "BCC" in the heat of the moment. Forwarding messages also has its pitfalls. Sometimes people read things about themselves that were definitely not meant for their eyes. If you want to avoid such embarrassments in the future, simply turn the tables. Leave the recipient line blank and write the text first. Read it carefully, taking however much time you need, and only then add the subject and recipient. This little trick can save you a lot of trouble or at least some embarrassment in the future.
Our conclusion
Small steps, big effects. Everyday life sometimes seems like a real gauntlet. One minefield follows the next. And once Murphy's law has triggered the butterfly effect, no domino is left standing. Tips like these may seem trivial and ridiculous, but they can be useful in the moment. The more comprehensive your personal bag of tricks, the better for you. There is nothing worse than seeing big events fail because of tiny little mishaps. Of course, we can't be prepared for everything every day. But with time, we will know where the pitfalls lurk. Life is an adventure that we should face head-on. Otherwise, we have no future – as the writer Victor Hugo so aptly put it, the future is unattainable for the weak, the unknown for the fearful, and a real opportunity only for the brave.