Welcome back to part two of your personal growth plan.

We’re now on Step 5, which is to start thinking about adding health and wellbeing activities into your schedule.

It’s important to look after your wellbeing to help keep you in a positive mindset, and to avoid falling into a negative emotional state.

Here at Rocket, we understand wellbeing as being a mixture of six different activities. 

These are:

1. Physical exercise
2. Diet
3. Rest breaks
4. Sleep
5. Meditation
6. And mindfulness

It can be overwhelming to try and juggle all six of these activities into your schedule at first, so you might want to start off by focusing on two or three areas at first and once those become habits, you can then look into incorporating other areas later on.

We recommend that you use Exercise File 16 to write down your wellbeing plan.

The simple act of writing your plan down is the perfect place to begin setting your intentions and start positively rewiring your mindset.

For this exercise, you can write down the wellbeing activities that you want to prioritise, as well as an action plan.

Remember this exercise is a constant process that you can be reviewing and amending over time.

In this lesson, we’re going to give you some tips on how to go about setting your wellbeing plan.

Firstly, let's look at Physical Exercise.

We’re not going to go into physical exercise here in any great detail. As everyone has their own exercise preferences. 

However, one thing worth flagging up is the issue of time-management. 

You may want to consider not pushing yourself too hard when it comes to physical exercise (assuming that it’s not directly related to your purpose), as in this case, physical exercise should not be your top priority. 

You don’t want to be doing so much exercise that you end up burning yourself out and unbalancing yourself.

Using Exercise File 16 write down what your exercise plan could be.

If you’re currently out of shape we’d suggest you start off with something small just to help you get the ball rolling, like scheduling in one run a week. It might be the case that once you’re up and running you can then begin adding more of these activities into your schedule later on down the line.

Next, let’s look at diet.

We’re not going to go into this one in too much detail too, as everyone seems to have their own dietary preferences, and to a large extent, it’s up to you to figure this out for yourself.

However, a healthy diet will not only help you look and feel better but will help you think more clearly too. So it’s recommended that you learn to ditch sugary snacks and replace them with natural and nutritious alternatives.

Rest is actually quite a big one that often gets overlooked when you’re just getting started, but when you realise how important it is, it can be a bit of a game-changer. 

It’s important to take yourself ‘out of the game’ from time to time, in order to recharge your batteries. You might not always want to, but it’s almost essential that you do this because if you don’t, you’ll probably end up burning yourself out, which may actually end up doing more damage to you as you end up falling into a negative emotional state and finding yourself attracted back to your negative habits.

The truth is, a non-stop focus on productivity and getting things done might work to your advantage in the short run, but in the long run, it will actually risk damaging not only your physical and emotional health but also your chances of succeeding altogether. 

That’s why it’s important to set yourself no more than three goals for the day and commit to doing them well instead of just ticking them off.

Once you have a schedule in place, you can then be sure everything is in order, and when you have a scheduled rest break, you can then really allow yourself to relax.

This so-called dead time will actually end up making you more productive overall. 

Not only is it an opportunity to recharge your batteries, but you’ll also likely gain perspective, and solve problems that you may never have been able to see when you were in a more focused frame of mind.

So, when should you take a break?

If you feel your brain is frazzled and nothing is coming out, take a short break. Persevering will only make you frustrated and you won’t get the quality of work you’re aiming for. Instead, do something that doesn’t require much brainpower. Go for a walk, tidy up, meditate, or lay down and listen to relaxing music.

Also, try and commit to keeping one day of your week completely work-free and do things that energise you, such as spending time with family and friends, or cooking and eating something nutritious.

Getting a good night's sleep is another really important part of your wellbeing and success, as it’s probably the best way you can naturally readjust the dopamine chemicals in your brain. 

Not only will it work magic on your health and wellbeing, but it will put you in a good frame of mind to helping you achieve your daily goals. 

However, for many people getting a regular good night's sleep can be difficult.

The goal of a goodnight's sleep is to achieve as much REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep as possible. 

Here are our tips for getting a great night's sleep.

Firstly, make sure you have a comfortable bed and mattress

Your bed is a key factor in how you’re going to sleep. The better the quality of your bed and bedding, the better the chance of a good night's sleep.

We’ve included some tips on how to go about choosing your bed and bedding in the eBook, so it’s worth checking that out.

2. Secondly, have a nighttime routine

The other big thing to getting a good night's sleep is to try to sleep and wake up at the same time every day.

A good way of achieving this is to have an evening routine in place before you go to sleep.

A simple routine can quickly become a strong habit that acts as the trigger for the brain to do the thing it expects: prepare for sleep.

So the first thing you need to figure out is setting your bedtime and wake-up time. We’d advise you to set this for what works best for you, for some people this might mean going to bed at 10:30 pm and waking up at 6 am. For other people, this might mean going to be at 11:30 pm and waking up at 8 am.

It’s also a good idea to give yourself 15 – 30 mins before you go to bed to get ready for bed.

There are a number of helpful things you can do during this wind-down time to help you shut down for bed. We’ve included these tips for you in Exercise File 16.

Next, let’s look at meditation.

Meditation is essentially permission to sit down, close your eyes, and do nothing for 15 or 20 mins. 

This might seem like a bit of a waste of time at first, but it’s actually scientifically proven to be hugely beneficial.

So when you practice meditation, don’t feel guilty that you’re wasting time, you're actually doing yourself, and your career a favor.

Meditation has a number of amazing and scientifically proven benefits, including helping you to: 

• Relax and lower your stress levels
• It will improve your focus
• It will also help improve your mindfulness practice (we’ll be talking a lot more about mindfulness later)
• It will boost your creativity
• And last but not least it will improve your intuition.

We’d say that intuition is actually the number one benefit of meditation.

Your intuition is your gut feeling telling you what you should and should not be doing. It is often referred to as inspired action. “I don’t know why, but I have this urge to call a friend right now”, or “I’m feeling a strong need to attend that event”. 

It will, almost by magic, help you figure out solutions to problems you might have in your career or business.

Your intuition is one of your greatest allies, so by forming a habit of regularly meditating you’re essentially keeping your intuition topped up at a healthy level.

For anyone unclear on how to meditate we expand on this in more detail in the eBook.

If meditation is something that you want to become a habit then a useful tip is to schedule it into your calendar as a 30 minute block of time at the same time every day and try your best to stick to it and make it a daily habit.

Last but not least, the final wellbeing activity to flag up is mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the challenge of your lifetime. It is the challenge of growing into your authentic self and setting yourself into a positive mindset.

So, what is it? And how do you practice it?

Mindfulness is typically thought of as the ability to tune yourself into the present moment, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. 

As true as this is, this is only a part of what mindfulness is about. 

Living in the present is actually just as much the reward of mindfulness, as it is a part of the practice.

Practicing mindfulness requires more than presence. In summary, there are 4 parts to it.

These include:

1. Firstly, at the foundation of mindfulness is having a disciplined personal growth plan to help support your mindfulness practice.
2. Secondly, is tuning into your feelings.
3. Thirdly, there is paying attention to, and accepting, your reality.
4. And fourthly, is tuning into the present.

Firstly, let’s look at discipline. If the mind is going to investigate itself, you first have to learn how to stabilise the mind, so that it can actually do the work of paying attention.

Typically what tends to work best as the first step to mindfulness is that you get your personal growth foundation in place first, such as developing the right focus, discipline, and habits.

The better your overall personal growth plan, the better your mindfulness practice will be. 

So we would definitely advise that you start with getting your overall personal growth plan in place first, and then secondly start thinking about mindfulness. 

Once you do build up some momentum within your personal growth, you then want to start becoming aware of what's actually going on beneath the surface of your mind, i.e. the constant thoughts and feelings running through you.

The essence of mindfulness is rooted in an ethical foundation, typically associated with Buddhism, in which paying attention to your feelings is just as important as paying attention to your thoughts.

This is what is known as the befriending of the mind with the heart.

In order to practice mindfulness you want to try cultivating positive feelings of presence, kindness, and gratitude into your practice. 

And at the same time doing your best to neutralise any negative feelings you may be having.

We’d say the best place to start with mindfulness is to become aware of your negative feelings and to try and neutralise those first.

The main three negative feelings to be aware of include: hatred, desire, and delusion.

Firstly, let's look at hatred: This is anything you have some strong negative perspective on such as anger or stress. Rather than trying to judge everything all the time try instead to take a step back and keep a rational perspective on things. Learn to try and let any feelings of stress or hatred go. The simple fact of the matter is that these feelings have no helpful purpose. Rather you should be striving for presence, kindness, and gratitude.

Secondly, there is desire. This is the feeling that if you could just get what you desire, then you'll feel complete. In psychology this is referred to as the id, and the brain’s lust for more dopamine. The truth is that desires are a never-ending treadmill, and often are actually misleading as when you end up fulfilling them it doesn’t end up resulting into anything particularly useful. You must try to learn to detach yourself from your desires, not cling onto what you must have, and to quite a large extent learn to let these things go.

Finally, there is delusion. This is about tuning into the present and trying to rationalise what's actually really going on in your life. You have to learn to accept and become grateful for your current reality. So when it’s time to act, you act with a genuine emotional intelligence about yourself and what is happening in your present reality, instead of simply being hijacked by any feelings of hatred or desire. 

Try asking yourself:

Is it hatred or stress you’re currently feeling? If it is, let it go. It’s a waste of time and energy.

Is it desire you’re currently feeling? If it is, again let it go. More often than not your desires are misleading you away from your true reality and purpose.

Is what you’re feeling a true reflection on the reality of things?

Most likely if you bring yourself back to your senses and rationalise things, you’ll realise that whatever it is you’re feeling probably isn’t particularly important in relation to your purpose. Try and retune yourself back into the present moment and be grateful for what you currently have.

In a nutshell, whenever you sense yourself drifting into a negative mindset, try taking a step back and instead strive for presence, kindness, and gratitude. While refocusing your mind back to your purpose.

Here are a few extra tips to help you manage your feelings.

Firstly, rationalise your feelings.

Make a practice of checking in with your body. Ask yourself, what's my mood like today?

By regularly doing this, you'll be building a foundational skill of rationalising your feelings, which is key to helping you recover when strong emotions do arise and will help bring you back to your mindfulness practice.

Research shows that being able to actually name how you're feeling helps you to then manage it. 

When a strong emotion does arise try saying to yourself, "I don't want to feel this”. Acknowledging the resistance again helps bring you back into the present moment, and back to your rational senses.

Secondly, be kind to yourself.

Try saying to yourself, "Of course I feel this way." 

Saying ”of course” opens an empathetic dialogue with yourself allowing you to make sense of the feeling from a more neutral and understanding perspective. Suddenly, your feelings won't seem so ridiculous, they will seem sensible.

Research in neuroscience tells us that self-empathy is one of the best ways to help manage your emotions. And that's true because offering yourself empathy, and understanding why you feel something is another way of integrating your brain.

It's using the thinking part of your brain that can make sense of big picture things to address the part of your brain that's having the feeling. 

Empathising won't make the feeling go away. It just makes you better equipped to manage the feeling.

The third and final tip is to center yourself back into the present moment.

Rather than disconnecting from yourself by being carried away by a feeling, or whatever thoughts are running through your mind, try instead to reconnect yourself back into the present. 

This is important because this presence helps your brain be more integrated, and a more integrated brain is capable of helping you regulate your nervous system.

To center yourself, try engaging with your body and environment.

You might want to try standing up, doing some stretches, going for a walk, having a shower, or eating something nutritious.

While doing so with a sense of gratitude and kindness to yourself. And ignoring any feelings of past or future you may be having.

Self-talk carries on nicely from mindfulness. 

As mentioned, mindfulness is largely about replacing negative feelings with neutral or positive feelings. 

In a nutshell, this can be achieved by centering yourself back into the present moment, rationalising your feelings, being kind to yourself, and feeling gratitude.

However, with self-talk we then go a little deeper in which you then attempt to identify and transform the source of your thoughts. 

In other words in which you aim to change your beliefs about yourself.

All behavior is belief-driven.

In order to believe in yourself you need to firstly understand yourself.

And you can do that through the personal narrative, or story, that you attempt to convince your brain is the truth about yourself.

You would have already made quite a good start on this in Exercise File 4 where you would’ve found out a bit more about your personality type, your strengths and weaknesses, and you should also now have a better idea of your purpose. These are all core elements to your personal brand.

However, all of this can now be taken a step further by integrating a self-talk plan. Which we will come onto soon in Exercise 17.

You can think of self-talk a bit like your own inner artist, who is first trying to paint the picture of who you are, and then constantly trying to reinforce that image into your mindset.

The key to this next exercise is to be kind to yourself when you do this. Also, make sure to tie your story along with the same narrative as your vision and mission.

The aim of this exercise is to help you believe that you can become the best version of yourself. In order to do that it’s helpful to have a positive narrative at the foundation of your thoughts.

If you’ve made mistakes in your life, then acknowledge them as character-building opportunities that have now led you into discovering your purpose, and acknowledge that you’re only human and everyone makes mistakes. You want to remind yourself that actually you are good enough the way you are, and that you are on the right track in your career. You may have had some bumps along the road, but that happens to more or less everyone.

It is often through the mistakes we make that we are able to then learn from them, and find the motivation to grow.

It’s also helpful to try and identify what your motivation is:

• Do you dread the idea of working an unmeaningful job, where you feel under-appreciated?
• Maybe you want to see how far you can go when you put your mind to it and fulfill your talent and potential
• Or maybe you’re passionate about solving a specific problem that has also been a problem in your own life too
• Are you're trying to disrupt an existing unethical industry?
• Or is it that you want to make your family and friends proud
• Or it might just be that you want to make more money

According to Greek philosopher Aristotle your motivation should be to live a life of reason and virtue, this will not only help you to find your purpose but is key to elevating the state of your character and attracting abundance, prosperity, and happiness.

In Exercise File 17 we have given you an example of how to go about structuring your personal brand. This includes:

• Outlining your vision and values. Why did you decide to make the career choice that you did?
• What motivates you?
• What are you passionate about? And why.
• What are your strengths?
• What are your recent achievements?

In a nutshell, remind yourself of how good you are, and the story of who you are that you wish to believe about yourself.

Most of us are neither trained nor terribly comfortable talking about ourselves, but like any exercise, as you practice defining your brand story over and over, you will improve it. 

Eventually, the idea here is to make yourself forget about all of your negative nit-picking, by largely refocusing your attention to the positive narrative about who you really are.

Self-talk helps dictate how your brain works.

What you attract into your life largely comes from what you focus your attention on.

Your brain is like a super-computer, and the thoughts, feelings, and images you expose yourself to are the program it will run, and this can make or break the narrative you’re telling yourself in the previous exercise.

Every thought you think and every word you say is an affirmation. Your thoughts and words are declarations of who you think you are and how you perceive the world to be. 

However, (and as we’ve already mentioned when discussing mindfulness) the big problem you’ll most likely face is managing your negative feelings.

We all have two voices on each shoulder. One voice is an angel of patience and productivity (in psychology this is known as the super-ego), the other voice is your dark side of self-limiting beliefs (in psychology this is known as the id). 

Essentially, your goal is to eliminate the voice of your id and to replace it with the voice of your superego.

You will become more powerful in creating what you want when you shift your attention in this way, as your superego will reward you with positive feelings of pride.

As a result, you’ll be able to better tune the frequency of your mind to more positive thoughts and feelings.

However, if you listen to your id, your superego will punish you with feelings of shame and guilt.

The unfortunate reality for us human beings though is that our id seems to be the inner voice that comes most naturally to us. It almost seems to be our default setting, so in order to overcome that voice, it will take a serious amount of effort. 

Your id is trying to keep you in your comfort zone of mediocrity.

Instead of giving up so soon, try to stop and give yourself some time to analyse your reality.

Your id will tell you, “you can’t do it”. It will try and remind you of your weaknesses, and invite you back into the familiar pleasures of staying put in your comfort zone.

Self-talk is very much mood-based, generally, if you’re in a bad mood you’re more likely to listen to the temptations of your dark side, if you’re in a good mood you’ll be more likely to listen to your superego.

So, you want to be doing your best to keep yourself in a positive mood. This will largely involve, as already discussed, getting your work/ life balance in order.

Another tip is to associate pain with the consequences if you do listen to your id.

Following your id will drag down your self-esteem and limit your growth.

Following your superego will empower you by keeping you focused on your vision and goals, which will help build your confidence and self-esteem.

Research has shown that we need something in the region of four to seven positive comments to balance out one negative one.

So you may need to regularly remind yourself of how good you are and your personal narrative, using Exercise 17. 

Thankfully, the brain’s capacity for neuroplasticity works in your favor here. When you begin to constantly remind yourself of your personal narrative through positive affirmations, you create new pathways. 

You begin to train your brain to alter its bio-electric habit-trail, essentially changing its response to situations by generating different thoughts. This, in effect, consciously changes the way you think and literally helps you create your new desired mindset. 

Any repeated thought is just a set of neural networks that have been activated many times, becoming the path of least resistance and the easiest thing for your mind to think about. 

This next exercise is really powerful.

Positive affirmations are statements you can write down and repeat regularly, to bombard your mind with the correct thoughts you should be thinking in order to help your self-talk.

The aim of this exercise is to help you override the limiting ideas and negative beliefs you have taken on and internalised over the years with positive statements that assert who you want to be, and how you want to experience life, as you will have outlined in your personal narrative.

So how do you practice positive affirmations?

Once you have written down your personal brand story using Exercise File 17, and you’re happy with it, then we would recommend buying a small notepad and writing this down again on there.

You can then keep your notepad on your desk or your bedside table.

This then allows you to reaffirm these affirmations to yourself as a part of your morning and evening routines.

A National Institute of Health study found that when you express kindness or gratitude, you are sending good dopamine to your brain.

This gives you a natural high, motivating you to do good and express gratitude even more. 

Gratitude is also scientifically proven to reduce stress and increase the quality of your sleep. Not only this, but it will also help you develop a genuine connection within your relationships with others.

So, how do you integrate gratitude into your life?

A good place to start is to again use Exercise File 17 to make a list of all the things you appreciate and are grateful for.

You can also include day to day things that can easily be taken for granted, for example, your close family and friends, wearing nice clothes, eating nice food, a soothing shower at the start and end of your day, electricity and gas, the weather, your pet, your health and the feeling of being alive on this amazing planet.

As you learn to focus on what is good about things (rather than what is wrong with them), you’ll be amazed at how your relationship with your surroundings will change.

Using the same notepad as before, write down your gratitude list. And again try and get in the habit of regularly reaffirming these to yourself as a part of your morning and evening routines. 

Creating an initial list is a good start, but you’ll most likely continue to edit this list over time.

The key here is consistency. It might not always feel like a productive exercise to do, but the aim of the exercise is to slowly and subconsciously bombard your mind with the correct program that you want it to run.

Now that you have a clear vision and have set yourself big goals, a really powerful exercise that you can then do is to embed your goals and affirmations into your subconsciousness.

To do this you can use a subliminal affirmation software on your laptop called MindMaster (You can find this in the tools folder).

At $40 it is relatively cheap compared to some of the other options out there. And it’s easy to use and has good customer support too. 

(This is an optional exercise. We personally subscribe to the idea of tapping into the power of the subconscious mind, but with the scientific evidence for this still debatable we can appreciate that this might not be everyone’s cup of tea).

The idea here is to pin down visual and written queues of your positive affirmations and goals into your brain. 

By regularly and subconsciously reviewing these queues (while working on your computer) the idea here is that it will help stamp your goals and affirmations into your subconsciousness.

The best way to start is to review your goals, positive affirmations and gratitude list and use these to help you create your subliminal affirmations. 

The software also already comes with lots of pre-installed affirmations you could use too.

We recommend that you use a mix of the pre-installed affirmations and your own goals and affirmations.

It’s useful to then run the software on your computer for about one hour a day.

Remember, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best version of yourself. In fact, we’d say it’s only natural. 

You can be whoever you want to be. Life is not static, time is always moving. 

So it’s only natural that you should be trying to evolve into becoming the best version of yourself.

Just like an athlete who trains for a competitive event, a personal growth plan requires that you try and practice and tweak it as best as you can.

But be realistic with yourself by remembering that it takes time for these new practices to become a routine. 

There will be moments when you falter and that’s okay. We’re all human. Don’t punish yourself, but instead refocus and recommit to your plan.

As already mentioned, no one is perfect, we all have a dark side trying to derail all of our hard work, and sometimes your dark side will get the better of you. It’s pretty much inevitable this will happen from time to time.

Failure is actually necessary. It is how we learn, and improve from our mistakes.

So the next time you fail, don’t be upset or annoyed about it. Instead, try and accept it and think about what could you do better, and try and learn from it. 

Maybe it was because you didn’t meet the expectations you had of yourself and that’s why you’re upset, rather than the fact of failing itself. 

Failure will not kill you. In fact, it will hopefully make you stronger.

If you do have a setback here are a few tips to bear in mind to help get you back on track:

1. Firstly, reflect on the cause of your setback and make the mental intention to improve upon where you previously went wrong.
2. Also, reflect on all the good progress that you achieved before your setback and know this is just temporary and that you’ll be back on track again in no time.
3. Reflect also on your positive affirmations and gratitude list. Rationalise any negative feelings you may be having, be kind to yourself, and center yourself back into simply being grateful for what you have.
4. Smile.
5. Play an uplifting music playlist.
6. Have a soothing shower to help you come back to your senses.
7. Make yourself something nutritious to eat.
8. Meditate.
9. Exercise.
10. Have a power nap.
11. Go for a walk (preferably in nature while getting some fresh air and sunshine).

It will take time before you’re able to perfect your personal growth plan.

Take any setback, rejection, or defeat for what it is: simply a bump on the road. Try to learn and grow from it, so you come out refocused, stronger, wiser, and more capable on the other side. 

By all means, you should be aiming for perfection, but you need to appreciate you’re on a journey, and perfection is kind of what you’re aiming for a little bit further down the line of your journey. 

In the meantime, you need to make do with where you are at the moment, and crucially remember that practice makes perfect.

Don’t take yourself too seriously, remain humble, and just keep working towards your goals.

So far we’ve outlined an almost robotic roadmap to personal growth and success, which let’s face it, might sound a tad dull. 

Yes working towards your dream is great, but as a consequence, you will have to rule out a lot of the fun stuff. So, where can you add a little spice and fun into the mix? 

One answer is through facing your fears.

When was the last time you did something scary and wonderful at the same time?

Mostly everything great worth having in life is outside of your comfort zone, and on the other side of fear.

In order to make real progress in your career or business, you must decide between leaping into the void or staying put in your comfy mediocrity that defines your reality.

You have the power to achieve greatness and create anything you want in life, but in order to do that, you have to accept that you will most likely have to face some of your fears in the process.

So be brave. And remember when you start facing your fears often enough, you’ll soon start to realise that the earth beneath your feet won’t crumble, and this is actually likely to boost your confidence and overall wellbeing.

Try and actually enjoy facing your fears, knowing that the outcome could be a substantial step towards achieving your goals. 

You have to be willing to risk failure, risk looking stupid, risk losing money, risk getting rejected, risk being unpopular. But know that you have acted rationally with your purpose in mind, and followed your gut.

Risk-taking is good, but you should be aiming to take measured risks. 

You want to stop and think what are the long-term benefits to success or failure? “If I mess up, how bad would it be? If I succeed, how much will it help me?”.

What you’ll find is that when you get your act together and start consistently practicing personal growth, not much will scare you.

You’ll be able to tune into your intuition far easier, you’ll be physically, mentally and emotionally sharper, you’ll be feeling positive and confident, and you’ll most likely attract more rewarding career and business opportunities.