4 Hippy-ish Ways to Improve Your Life & Business Used by Billionaires

Okay, so once upon a time, things like yoga, meditation, manifestation techniques, and even morning and sleep care routines were considered a bit hippy-ish, the type of methods used by a bunch of stereotypes that included So-Cal surfers and tie-dye wearing long-haired commune dwellers. Things have changed, it’s 2021, and some of us are willing to try different things to help boost our success. Even the most conservative thinkers have stumbled upon some pretty good out-of-the-box practices to stay sane, elevate our thinking, and improve our lives and businesses.

1. Yoga

When was yoga invented, and where does yoga come from? Yoga has been around for more than 5000 years. It started in Northern India. As it became more mainstream in modern society, it started making its way into many homes throughout America. Today, recent studies show that more than 35 million people use yoga in America alone, and one in every three Americans has tried yoga at least once.

Highly successful people not only incorporate yoga into their routines but also attribute it to some of their ongoing success. These people include Sergey Brin (Google co-founder), Daniel Loeb (Third Point founder), basketball legend LeBron James, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post founder).

Yoga combines a great full-body workout with stretches, meditative and spiritual practices, controlled breathing techniques, and more to center ourselves and take a clearer, healthier, and more levelheaded approach to our lives. See if you can incorporate a daily yoga practice into your routine.

2. Meditation

Meditation apps like Calm, Headspace, and dozens of others, have seen millions of more downloads recently, especially as the coronavirus pandemic rages on. For meditation, you can start a calming inner monologue or listen to professionals. Meditation is centered around techniques like positive visualization, deep breathing, clearing your mind of extraneous thoughts, focusing on an object, thought, or sense, and aligning yourself with the world around you. You can do these things silently in a peaceful space, like a quiet room or a pleasant outdoor area, as there is a positive link between mental health and nature. You can also turn towards more modern practices; meditation videos, meditation apps, and recordings often include speaking over a track with calming noises, nature sounds, or music. Wave Meditation developed a vibrating pillow that corresponds with their spoken words, music, and breathing exercises. Even the Apple Watch is designed to notify you of times throughout the day that a little meditation could help. The idea is to de-stress, clear your head, and refresh while inducing positivity and motivation.

Mindfulness is another popular form of meditation to improve your mental attitude where you focus on being in the now. You use the five senses to center in on the lovely sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels of your day to boost appreciation for your life, instead of focusing on the mistakes of your past or the worries of your future.

Successful business people that meditate include Jerry Seinfeld, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn CEO), Joe Rogan, and Marc Benioff (Salesforce founder).

3. Manifestation Techniques

Some helpful manifestation techniques include vision boarding, journaling, affirmations, self-hypnosis or mediation, visualization, reprogramming, positive networking, and even writing letters to yourself. You may be familiar with The Law of Attraction, a belief that positive or negative thoughts directly correlate to your life experiences allowing you to manifest positive or negative events based solely on your outlook.

• Vision Boarding: Vision boarding is creating collages of words and pictures that inspire you to become your best self.
• Journaling: You can use several manifestation techniques when journaling, including writing down the things you want for your future (intentions for your day, week, month, year, five years, and so on), writing down your hang-ups, and examining how you can get past them, writing down what you are most grateful for (gratitude journal), and more. You should also try and keep a journal by your bed to write down your dreams; they can help uncover more about yourself. Five-year journals are nice too; you write down a couple of thoughts a day per page until you get through an entire year, then you go back and write a couple of thoughts for the same day a year later. Five-year journals show you how much your life has changed in five years. Your thoughts on January 1^st, 2021, will line up with your thoughts on January 1^st for five consecutive years.
• Affirmations: State encouraging things about yourself. Create a mantra of affirming narratives that will lead to your success today, tomorrow, and the time to come, but keep it in the present tense. I am worthy of success. I am smart. I am becoming the person I always wanted to be. I will achieve my daily goals.
• Meditation: Use deep breathing, words, sensory stimulation, and visualization exercises to boost gratitude, de-stress, clear your mind, improve your mood, and increase motivation.
• Visualization: This is putting your goals into vivid mental pictures. Visualizing the life that you want for your future self can be advantageous. This tactic has been used by celebrities, business professionals, and athletes.
• Reprogramming: Retrain your thought patterns; replace negative thinking with positive thinking and bad habits with good habits. Studies say it can take up to 254 days to form a new habit or as short as 18 days, with an average of 66 days. Bad habits can be broken in the same amount of time.
• Constructive Network: Surround yourself with people who have the same positive outlook as you.
• Letter Writing: Write letters to yourself that you can open later; letters from your future self, positive affirmations, and goals.

Successful people that use manifestation techniques include Lady Gaga, Jim Carrey, Ariana Grande, and Will Smith.

4. Morning Routines & Sleep Care

Developing a positive morning routine is a key to success for many people.

• Getting up early at the same time every day
• Stretching
• Making your bed
• Exercising
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Reading
• Journaling
• Listening to music
• Pulling inspiration from helpful sources such as quotes and motivational speakers
• Walking outside
• Taking “me” time
• Family time
• Pet time
• Strategizing
• To-do lists
• Shower and get dressed for your day (even if you’re working from home)
• Starting on your hardest professional tasks early when your mind is fresh

These are just some of the ways to develop healthy morning habits.

Many successful people swear by a healthy morning routine, including John Paul DeJoria (co-founder of Patron and Paul Mitchell), Brad Lande (head of Birchbox Man), Barbara Corcoran (Shark Tank and The Corcoran Group), and Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy producer and Scandal creator).

Sleep care is essential to your success, too.

• You shouldn’t use electronic screens at least one hour before bed.
• You shouldn’t drink alcohol right before bed (alcohol may put you to sleep initially, but it won’t keep you asleep; you could wake up anxious because alcohol disrupts restorative REM sleep).
• Other substances to avoid right before bed are caffeine and nicotine.
• Take a bath.
• Use a calming scent to aid with sleep, like lavender.
• White noise can also help with sleep.
• Keep a dream journal.
• Try your best to get seven to eight hours of sleep; don’t count getting ready for bed and falling asleep as part of these eight hours.
• Keep your room cooler, but not too cold; about 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sleep apps like Calm and their corresponding Sleep Stories have techniques to help you fall asleep naturally. There are also sleep monitoring apps for smartwatches and even smart beds from companies like Sleep Number. Sleep monitoring apps will keep track of your breathing, heart rate, the times you get up during the night, and the amount of restful vs. restless sleep you are getting. The data is laid out in graphs and given a rating then compared day to day, week to week, month to month, and so on.

Many successful people take sleep care very seriously, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo!), Barrack Obama, Karen Blackett (CEO of MediaCom UK), and Ellen DeGeneres.

For more ways to improve your business and your life, go to Brookhollow.