You know it’s time for a change. You are feeling unfulfilled. You felt you could do better. Your heart has a longing desire which has not been fulfilled  yet. The most important indicator is that you are not happy — with yourself and your life.

2020 has been a strange but fantastic year for me. The reason is that I took the opportunity to step back from our business to look after our children when the quarantine started back in March this year in UK. My desires of looking after the family and having time to think have been fulfilled completely which are the two things I have been wanting to do for a while but couldn’t get myself justified to do. And I love it. It turns out my heart is longing to give and to serve. Have time for myself means that I could spend time thinking without stressing myself out with multitasking. In fact, It has been so significant that I feel that it has changed my life completely during this quarantine.

Here are the five things which I have made changes during quarantine which transformed my life for good:

Get up at 4:50am and have a good morning routine

I am a morning person. Getting up early has been a long standing desire. It gets stronger and stronger after I had three children. I read the “5 AM Club” book from Robin Sharma. That idea has struck me since. I had been trying to get up at 5am on and off for a while but never sustain the habit. The same as meditation, I have been doing it on and off without faith. The voice of ‘what’s the point of you sitting down and doing nothing for 30 mins.’ comes back again and again even more stubborn than a toddler. Now I know that’s my ego fighting for it. Sitting down and Meditating for 30 mins are exactly what I need to quiet my mind and let go of all those unhelpful self-talks. Now, I can’t wait to get up at 4:50am every day and starting my morning routine consisting of 30mins of stretch and Ab exercises, 30mins of meditation, 10 minutes reading and then prepare breakfast for the family.  It prepares me for the day ahead.

Read two Gill Fielding books 

My colleague Sonia has been so kind to introduce me to Gill Fielding’s book <Solving the Property Puzzle>. I was so inspired by the property book that I bought her another book <Solving the Financial Puzzle Success>. One main perspective I took from <Solving the Property Puzzle> is that it’s all about whether the property could ‘wash its own face’ and make an income or capital gain; it is not about how expensive the property is. Sometimes or majority of the time, small size properties (one or two bed flats) make very good income generating vehicles. One thing we implemented immediately is to follow Gill’s method to find the right area to look for our next investment property.

<Solving the Financial Puzzle Success> has been a huge light bulb lighting moment for our own personal financial situation. One thing we took on action is to record our household monthly recording  and become consciously spending and eliminate mindless spendings on our credit cards.

Set up two saving schemes for our kids

Another thing I implemented from Gill Fielding’s <Solving the Financial Puzzle Success> is to set up two saving schemes for our children. One saving scheme will be matured when they turn 18 years old. The other saving scheme is for their pension. The thing I like about this idea is that you don’t need to put aside a big amount of money for those two saving schemes as the children are still young and the compounding effect will do the job for us over the years. For now, I just put £50 per month on each of those saving scheme for each child. Something to start them off on their own financial journey when the time comes.

Start recording our household monthly spending to control our credit card bills

This has been a game changer for us. We started recording our household expenses in July this year. We can feel the immediate effect of this discipline. We start with setting a spending limit for this month and then rigorously record every expense coming out of the credit card. It really makes you think twice before you buy anything. In July, we have been able to reduce our credit card bills by 50% which is incredible and horrifying how much mindless spending cost us. Please try it. This is not about being stingy. It’s about respecting your own money and managing it and have some spare to invest, for raining days and dream holidays. Managing money is not complicated. We can start with consciously aware of our spending which is a major step to financial freedom.

Start an evening routine with my husband Paul 

It is very easy for us to think about morning routines but not so much on evening routines. During the lock-down period, the workload between me and Paul had been increased massively both from work and family life. We end up having no time catching up/working on the things we both want to make progresses on in our life. One day, I just got this inspiration of’ why don’t have our evening routine as well’. As you can see from the image above, we allocate each evening of the week with a theme/area we would like to work on. We even put ‘movie night’ into the routine. So far, we have been benefiting from this routine and felt that we have been dedicating time on areas of our life; most importantly we feel very rewarding when we do have our movie night as we know that we have been working hard. It’s great for Paul and I working as a partnership on our business, property investment and financial planning. We feel that our relationship have been strengthened during the quarantine because of this routine.

I would like to end this article with a quote from Deepak Chopra — “I will step into the field of all possibilities and anticipate the excitement that can occur when I remain open to an infinity of choices. When I step into the field of all possibilities, I will experience all the fun, adventure, magic and mystery of life.”

So if you are not happy with some areas of your life, it’s time to make a chance and not to be afraid of the uncertainties.