Welcome back to Lavendaire.

It's Aileen.

So good to see you again.

Today I want to share five habits that have changed my life.

I first saw MuchelleB and Erin May Henry do this, and I'll link their videos below.

But it inspired me to want to create a version myself.

So the first habit that changed my life is actually a mindset shift

that I learned from Marie Forleo, one of the women that I look up to.

So instead of having the mindset of "I already know this,"

switch that mindset to "What can I learn from this?"

So this applied to when I was taking Marie Forleo's course, B-School,

because when you're taking something like an online course

or you're in class or just anywhere in life,

sometimes we can have a mindset of,

"Oh, I don't need to learn this. I already know this.

I already know this. I've heard this before."

Once you have that mindset, then you kind of brush things off,

and you know, there might be some lesson in front of you,

whether it's in a course or in life that you don't know

and yet you're just brushing over it as if you already know everything.

I think you have to go through life acting as if you don't know everything

because then you have an open mind to learn.

So it's really an approach to being more curious, open-minded, and humble in life,

because instead of thinking you've already been there, done that, you already know everything,

consider: "What can I learn from this?"

So yes, maybe you've seen these lessons before,

but I'm sure there's something new that there is to be learned.

There's always something else that can be learned,

so instead of approaching school or life through the lens of "I already know this,"

approach it through the lens of "What can I learn from this?"

The second habit that changed my life is really obvious if you follow my channel.

It's journaling, specifically journaling to help me organize my thoughts

and to help me dig deep to discover what my true emotions, feelings, and thoughts are.

I'm one of those people that I don't really know what I'm thinking or feeling

until I take the time to sit down and write it all out.

I literally have to ask myself: What am I feeling?

What do I really want?

And then write it out, and then by the end of a long journal entry,

I'm like, "Oh, that's what's going on."

It's not really surface-level for me.

I really have to take the time to journal it out,

and journaling helps me break down things, organize my thoughts, analyze my thoughts.

And it's just something that is my own form of therapy.

And I think, because I tend to be more of an introvert,

that's my way to communicate with myself.

I like to work through my issues on my own,

just kind of hitting my emotions and situations

from all different angles and try to solve it myself.

On the other hand, people who are more extroverted probably like to talk things out with others

and that's how they discover more about their situation

or about themselves or work through their problems.

They need someone else to talk to.

For me, it's just me and my journal.

Everything happens within, and I don't really like to share problems

and talk it out with anyone else so much.

I like to be my own best friend.

And journaling has saved my life so many times.

The third habit that changed my life is adopting the KonMari minimalist mindset.

So if you've followed my channel for a while, you should know what it is.

KonMari means Marie Kondo's way of thinking.

Marie Kondo is the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

She has this life philosophy to only bring in physical things

and only keep the physical things that spark joy within you.

And it's just the mindset of a minimalist.

Every single thing that you own, everything that's in your space should be there intentionally.

It should be there because you love it, you want it there, and it makes you happy.

And this can be applied to all areas of life, not just your physical things,

so it really helped me kind of filter out the clutter in my life, mentally, with the people.

Every aspect of your life, you could learn to intentionally hand pick and design,

you know, "This person makes me happy so I want to keep in touch with this person.

This person does not necessarily give me good vibes,

so I'm willing to distance myself from that person."

This was really helpful in terms of productivity too,

because it helps you prioritize what projects or pursuits are most important to you,

what will really matter in the end, which ones bring you the most joy.

And so you learn to not focus your time and waste your time on things that are not as important,

which brings me to my next habit that changed my life:

Learning to do the most important things first.

I learned this concept from the book, Getting Things Done by David Allen,

which is a great productivity book.

It will help you revamp your whole system of how you get things done, basically.

And it also relates to the KonMari minimalist mindset in really focusing down on what's important.

Doing those most important tasks first, you're getting the most value for your time spent,

because you're working on the biggest most important thing that you could be working on.

So people like to think I'm a productive person.

I'm actually not very productive most of the time.

Yes I have my good days where I'm like boom-boom-boom, knocking things out.

But most days, I'm really not doing much during my day.

I wake up pretty late.

I wake up like 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 PM.

Then I really just prioritize doing the most one or two important things in my day,

and then once I'm done with that I feel good about my day.

So you have to ask yourself:

"If I were to only complete one or two things today, what things will those be?"

And then prioritize those.

Do those first.

It will change your life.

It will just make you more productive and effective.

You might not get as much done as before,

because those important things are hard and they take more time than others.

But they're the most important.

It's just been a great strategy for me so far.

The fifth habit that immensely changed my life is

learning to cultivate gratitude as a daily, consistent practice.

It really is shifting your mindset from focusing on what you don't have,

focusing on what's going wrong, to focusing on what you do have,

focusing on what's going right, and being thankful for everything that you do have in your life.

I know it's said over and over again, how important gratitude is,

but I can't emphasize it enough.

The way that you see the world heavily impacts how you feel

and it heavily shapes your reality as well.

So if you see the world through the lens of – you're cynical, there's so much chaos in the world,

nothing's going right, everything's going wrong, people are horrible…

Then that's what you're going to see in your world.

But if you shift that lens into being grateful for everything that you do have like,

"Oh my gosh, I get to live in the first world.

I have food, I have water, I have technology,"

there's just so much that we have, so much to be grateful for.

Just learning to see the joy and the beauty in all the little moments, it will change your life so much.

It just changes how you see things, and when you change how you see things,

you really change how you feel and you change the reality of your life.

The way that this has manifested in my life is:

I'm just more joyful and light-hearted about the tiny, simple things.

There's so much delightful little moments I have in every day,

or just seeing my plant grow a new leaf makes me so happy.

Or seeing a really neat fridge makes me really happy as well.

Or laughing at my own silly jokes or silly puns that I think of in my head.

There's so much fun that you could have in this world.

There's so much beauty everywhere, that even when you're having a bad day,

you can still find something to be grateful for.

You can still find something that is beautiful, something that is a miracle in the world.

And when you see the world through that lens,

that positive lens of love and beauty and joy, it really changes everything.

It's really just the major shift.

You can live in the same world as another human being

and yet see two completely different things because the power is in your mindset.

The power is in the lens that you see the world through.

Just learning how to shift that lens.

In the beginning you have to do it intentionally,

make it a practice to do some gratitude journaling every day,

listing things you're grateful for, and then just practicing finding things to smile at.

And over time it just becomes a part of your mindset and your personality.

It becomes ingrained in who you are.

It just becomes more natural.

And so now I generally feel like I'm more of a light-hearted person.

Even when things go wrong, I could just breathe and relax,

still be grateful for some things and practically deal with the problem that's in front of me.

But it's just not as emotional of a roller coaster as it used to be.

Alright, those are the five habits that have changed my life.

Let me know if you have a favorite.

Let me know if you learned anything or was everything pretty obvious

after you've watched my videos and gotten to know me.

I hope you have a beautiful day.

Love you all so much, and look out for the next video that's coming out.

I'm gonna share six books that have changed my life.

Bye!