There is plenty of talk of improving your life, and plenty of life coaches now to help you do it. I believe that it’s always the little things in life that make up the larger scope of your human experience: as seconds become minutes, minutes hours, and hours days.

Here’s my go-to list of ways to improve your life right now:

Go for a walk. Pry yourself away from the monitor, walk out your door, and into the world. I promise I will be here when you get back. Walking helps clear the mind while simultaneously stimulating it. It’s encouraged to walk with your pets and loved ones to create stronger bonds. If you find yourself alone on this walk, breathe, take it all in. Look up at the trees, clouds, buildings, sun, birds. It’s all so beautiful, and it was meant to be enjoyed.

Breathe. Focus on your breathe. We are so used to the subconscious taking care of us on this one, that you may just pull a fast one on your mind by focusing your concentration on inhaling and exhaling. You are also able to pull more oxygen into your being, feeding your cells. If something goes wrong in your day, take five deep breathes through the nose and see if your mood improves.

Give yourself an Attitude Adjustment. A friend of mine gave me a workbook several years ago, and it is a practice I use to this day: list 10 things you are grateful for, 10 things you would like to attract, your intentions for the day, and long term goals. I habitually write these out every morning before starting my day, and it helps put me in a better mood thinking of all my blessings and what I want out of life. The Laws of Attraction work, so the more you are in a state of gratitude, the more blessings you will attract.

An extension to this exercise, which works marvelously with children, is what I call the Attitude Adjustment. When you become overly upset or angry with life, just take a deep breathe in, think of one thing to be grateful for, exhale, repeating this step for 10 breathes. At the end, you sit quietly with eyes closed, and think about what you want to attract in life.

Dream. This is a huge part of manifesting your reality. Dream big by taking a break to search the web for your dream job, dream home, dream vacation, anything! The tricky part is to not get stuck in limiting beliefs or self-pity for not having fulfilled this dream already. Get to the place of what it would feel like to have it, then be it, see it, and let those feelings emerge.

Sing, dance, laugh, play. A post from ElephantJournal.com will help illustrate my point:

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions.

When did you stop dancing?

When did you stop singing?

When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experienced the loss of soul.

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.”

~ The Four-Fold Way: Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Healer, Teacher and Visionary

Think happy thoughts. I was once a skeptic of this phrase, until research revealed that your brain is incapable of telling if happiness is from an external source – like drinking a milkshake, getting that new red sports car, or winning the Nobel Prize – or from simply choosing to be happy. In any moment, we are allowed to chose what thoughts we let go and which we chose to encourage. Encouraging happy thoughts, reflecting on past happy events, and even just being happy for no reason will indeed make you happy.

Let go of expectation. Let go of the past, and what needs to be for the future. Every second that you focus on either, you miss the beauty in this moment. Eckart Tolle wrote a whole book on this, The Power of Now. My favorite reminder is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

One could easily substitute out “angry” for: worrying, sad, etc.

I wish you happiness, health, and the ability to witness the beauty of life everyday.