Life Reset: How to Find Hope and Stay Balanced

Who hasn’t gone through the same experience: one day, you’re motivated, working tirelessly, achieving numerous accomplishments, and feeling proud of yourself? The next day you are tired; you start to watch movies, eat unhealthy food, and worst of all, you look back and see this was your entire day. It is already 2 AM in the night, and you can’t help but feel angry at yourself: “Why did I even do that? ” Yes, you did it again. Instead of working, you now spent the entire day lying on the bed. But don’t panic; I have the solution for a positive life reset that will make you stay balanced and find hope for your future.

Generally, you should not judge yourself or make yourself feel bad. Many people at some point in their lives will find themselves stuck. Failure, however, doesn’t mean defeat. If you find hope, you can reset your life and even stay balanced. That is why I present to you today a way out of this rut. I will show you how to recover and never fall again. At the end of the article, you also find a method that is unique to this blog. This method will make sure you notice imbalance in your life before it becomes a problem.

Disclaimer: I advise you to read this article step by step and follow the advice. Once you complete one task, come back and read the next one. This makes it easier to follow through with it.

1. Clean your room

No, you cannot get out so easily. A life reset should begin at the bottom, not the top. Going directly to work will not improve your life, since you probably live in a dirty and unorganized space. This is not a favorable working environment! If you continue living your life in this manner, you are more likely to revert to your old habits. But being organized and clean will help you be more free while working and feeling less distracted. It will help you stay balanced.

Additionally, it will be an open space; you will have room for activities like sports, and your kitchen (if you have your own) will have enough space to cook. In this circumstance, you could have visitors without a problem. Look at your room right now; would you let anyone in? If you had a date planned the next day, would you clean your room? If the answer is yes, you surely need to take action and make it look good.

Start cleaning

Before you start cleaning, take a look at the mess you made over the last days, weeks, or even months. You need to find a good starting point, from which you need to begin cleaning. First off, most of you probably have some unclean rooms, but not enough that it takes days to clean. So if the day has just started, you can still do this step in one go. However, if it needs more than one time, start by cleaning the most important parts: kitchen, bath, bed area, and your working area.

Otherwise, start by removing obstacles from the ground, if that’s the case. You need, at first, space—space to move around and clean more efficiently. Get rid of everything you no longer need, including your trash. Put things that are valuable aside— in a chest or in the right place where they should be. Afterwards, clean your floor and then all other surfaces.

This will make your place way cleaner; there is enough room to move around, and it’s not too dirty. Now you should clean up the rest of it, moving from area to area. Depending on how big your living space is, this might take the longest time. When you finish, your room will be clean enough, so find hope in it again.

Declutter

Your room might be clean, but you probably have a lot of unneeded stuff that will take up space. These items range from outdated mementos to obsolete kitchen appliances. Those things are messy and will make you fall back more easily. It is no real-life reset if you don’t take action and get rid of the old stuff. Generally, this process may take longer, but you will complete the first part fast.

Go through your belongings, kitchen equipment, decorations, and generally everything you don’t really use. It’s a waste of space, and instead of hoarding, you could make some quick money from it. You need to categorize every item you decide on into one of four categories: Keeping, Undecided, Selling, or Trash. If you want to stay balanced, a lot of stuff simply has no use in your life.

Everything that you clearly need should be in its proper place. There’s no need to discuss it further. Undecided is for things that could be useful now or later in life. Selling is for all parts that you don’t need, don’t want, and that could be sold for money. On the other hand, trash refers to any unnecessary item that a reasonable person would not purchase. Only when old stuff is gone, can you fully regain control of your life.

Organize

Your room is now clean and free of clutter, which automatically makes you more organized. But to stay balanced, you will need to work on your organization as a whole. Not only should you maintain cleanliness, but also strive to stay balanced in your life with your daily responsibilities and the tasks at hand. An organized life helps you stay balanced.

This included organizing your working space into a healthy and productive workspace. It means you need to separate the working area from other areas of life. Even if your room is small, you still need spaces for different reasons. For example, you could have an area for work, one for sleep, one for recreational use like watching a movie or reading, and also one kitchen/dinner area. Work on each zone for yourself; create it the way you like it.

Also, you could run several journals and books to track your activities. You should consider using notebooks, particularly if you prefer taking notes offline. Otherwise, keep the method that you work best with. There is no reason to force something that really doesn’t work. Alternatively, you can use notebooks for journaling, calorie counting, workouts, work, and more.

At last, you should clean all your devices of unnecessary things. For your phone, you can delete or block all kinds of games, apps, or websites that you won’t need. It could be hard at first to delete things like Instagram, Twitter, or your favorite game, but for a moment consider whether you actually need it or not. What do you use these things for? What does it bring into your life? In most cases, you just waste your time, so go ahead and delete it. This is an essential step for a life reset and to regain control over your habits. It makes you stay balanced on your devices and in real life.

2. Reschedule

Now that you have cleaned your room, it is time to reschedule your tasks. Take a piece of paper and write down everything you should do in the next few months. This could be learning for an exam, writing job applications, or starting that one project you always dreamed of and never did. Don’t be shy about adding as much as possible; we will sort out every task that is not important soon. After you have that list, we take a method called the Eisenhower Matrix. This helps you take action.

First, you need to consider two options for every task: Is this task urgent, and is it important? For every task that is important and urgent, you will rate it a one. Tasks that are important but not urgent are rated a two. Tasks that are unimportant and urgent will be a three (these could be tasks like buying an item that is on a discount for a short time in a store). At last, you give every task that is both unimportant and not urgent a four. You can simply discard these final tasks; they are not necessary to complete.

For the next step, you should sort these in a new list. Prioritize tasks based on their importance, as they now require the most attention. You can either sort these tasks randomly or by priority. Then you plan how much time you will need for every task and put it on your calendar. This is a crucial part of the life reset to regain control again.

3. Work on your Discipline

You now have a good base to go back to work as quickly as possible; you might as well have a lot of motivation right now! But there is one thing you need to take care of. Sometimes you have great fuel, but it won’t last forever; your motivation will sometimes just be enough. It’s foolish to rely on it. Even if you are not motivated, you need to take action. That’s were discipline kicks in.

Maintaining discipline is crucial as it provides support during times of exhaustion. Just like a muscle, discipline is a skill that requires training. It takes time to develop discipline. However, you can start getting better by doing tasks that are uncomfortable, exhausting, and hard to do. A beneficial “exercise” is having a cold shower every morning; the colder, the better. To improve your discipline, I suggest reading this guide about it. Mastering discipline is one of the best ways to ensure you never fall back into a rut again.

When you have the desire to doomscroll, take action by forcing yourself to work instead of wasting your time. Doomscrolling significantly hinders productivity. The same goes for every other wasteful activity you have done during your last rut. Whether it’s engaging in video games, going out to parties, or engaging in other activities, the same applies. Sure, you can do those things from time to time. But it’s better to keep it to a minimum or go completely without it. Find hope in yourself, that you reach your goals. That will also be a motivation to stay disciplined.

4. Get some work done

Another thing you really need to do now is work. You have already made significant improvements in your life. Having a clean and organized life allows you to effectively focus on the most important aspects of your life and stay balanced. Take action and regain control of your life by really being productive. The discipline you begin to cultivate will have a significant impact on the tasks you perform. The extra benefit is that you improve your discipline though work as well.

So take on your first tasks and just do them; start learning, practicing, or working. You already set up a working space, so use it! Put your phone away, remove all distractions, and just start working. Make sure you focus all the time; focus is one of the most important skills you need to have during work. If you want to improve focus, I also recommend this article I wrote about it.

You can take a break after one or two efficient hours of work. Make sure you did some actual work; if you feel like you did not achieve enough, start again until you do enough. This is the most direct way to regain control and take action again. However, breaks during work time should be short, a maximum of half an hour; in some cases, you can also allow yourself one-hour breaks. But keep it simple and relaxing. Engage in activities that help you replenish your energy. Don’t play video games or watch TikTok during that break.

5. Improve your Habits

How many habits are you practicing right now? Is it just one or more? Good habits can change your life for good, but bad habits will make it worse. Some habits are more effective than others, but at most, they are a fantastic strategy to change your life. Are you consistently brushing your teeth in the morning and evening?

This may seem like a strange question, given that you likely consider it a routine. You do it every day, and it doesn’t make you sweat. This is because it is also a habit, one you do so often in your life that it feels like nothing. No work, no thinking, and no effort does it take you to brush your teeth.

Same as this habit, you can establish other ones as well. It takes time and dedication, but the longer you maintain it, the easier it becomes. This makes it one of the best strategies you could use to prevent a rut. Here are some suggestions for potential habits you could adopt!

Do a cold shower daily; this is both good for your health and makes it easier for you to do hard things. The best is doing an ice-cold shower because it will train your discipline if you do it daily. Another habit you need to do is workouts. This could be daily but should at least be a few times a week. It improves your overall fitness and gives you more energy for your daily work. Thirdly, you should read a book for at least 30 minutes a day, which will make you more educated and knowledgeable.

More about these Habits here:

Doing habits daily, whichever one you choose, will make it less likely that you fall back to your old ways. The longer you do these good habits, the longer you will last without a rut.

6. Take Care of mental health

Doing habits daily, whichever one you choose, will make it less likely that you fall back to your old ways. The longer you do these good habits, the longer you will last without a rut. Habits are not the only thing you will need, as it is challenging to establish them at first. If you want to succeed, there is no way around a healthy mind. Before you can improve it, you need to identify your areas of weakness.

Most of you probably feel lonely, depressed, or sad. These feelings can drag you down like an anchor and will stop your progress, so not dealing with them is a big mistake. First, you need to improve your Four Pillars of Happiness. Matthieu Ricard invented these strategies to improve your mental health.

A. Altruistic Love and Compassion

You must improve your compassion and love for others. We as humans are a society that doesn’t function without help. If you care for others, they will ultimately care back for you. This improves their and your life, which will make both happier. But make sure you don’t confuse kindness with being nice! Significantly, you don’t expect something in return for your kindness, or it will lose its value. To improve your kindness, you could first do meditations with a focus on kindness.

Secondly, you could do little kind things in your life for both random strangers and your friends and family. Ultimately these things will improve your social connections with your family, friends, and other relationships. If you notice that you do a lot of things for a person, but they never do anything in return, you should reconsider if this friendship is worth your time.

B. Mindfulness

Be mindful of yourself— both your feelings and sensations. You can achieve this through meditation and daily journaling of your thoughts and feelings. Don’t judge those; just experience what is there. With this strategy, you will greatly reduce your stress and anxiety, but also you could find things about yourself that you ignored for a longer time. Maybe you are unhappy with your job, your university subject, or anything else. This strategy is effective in finding out more about yourself and your dreams.

C. Altruistic Joy

Some may find this difficult, but you must enjoy your success and others’. When you feel enjoyment for others, you will greatly improve your social connections. Those that you care for will notice your true enjoyment of their success. Next time a friend of yours achieves something, try to not feel jealous about their success, but instead try to feel grateful for them. For a while, this will strengthen your family, friend, and relationship bonds.

D. Resilience

Resilience is an effective strategy to prevent yourself from downfalls due to challenging events that could, in the worst cases, drag you down. Life has many sides, good and bad. No matter what we do, life will inevitably bring bad things our way, but allowing them to drag us down is a choice. Instead, you should train your resilience to make sure you will always stay strong and enjoy life.

Establishing this mindset takes time. Develop inner strength that helps you in difficult times. You can also achieve this by engaging in meditation and observing the workings of life and its mechanisms. Stuff will always happen, good and bad, but giving up because of them will only make you more sad. Instead, try to believe in hope— that things will get better. Most times things will also be better.

7. Check in with your goals

In advance of those points, you also need a goal in life that paves the road forward. These goals should not be aspirational, such as becoming wealthy and accumulating as many material possessions as possible, but rather, they should be pursuits that you genuinely love and are passionate about. It is not the end of the goal that makes it so important; it is the way toward it.

Before you establish your goals, make sure you know where you want to be in the future. This is some work to do, so put out a pen and a piece of paper. You want to write down where you want to be in 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, and 1 month. This will give you a plan; now you only need to find a way toward those goals. So find out and write down what you need to do so you can achieve your dream.

Next to your life goals, you also need daily and weekly goals. This is important because you won’t reach your long-term goals shortly. So if you go on your long-term journey with small steps, you will experience small feelings of success that will keep you motivated. But you should also always try to enjoy your tasks; in any case, you should enjoy the ones that will lead you to your dream.

8. Work life balance

Next to all those habits, work, and your mental health, there is one important thing. You should always have a good work-life balance between working and free time. However, you should use your free time for more careful activities instead of scrolling Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Playing a video game at one point is always more proactive than just watching a movie.

This is primarily because engaging in mindless activities will deplete your energy instead of replenishing it. That way you will not regain control, and neither can you stay balanced. It’s difficult to take action when you have been scrolling through Instagram for hours. You will simply continue with it, while you normally should do some work. This is an easy way to procrastinate.

Besides these mindless activities, your free time is yours. Do what you love and like, as long as you control it. That means taking as much time as you need, but not a minute more. If you want to, let’s say, play video games for 2 hours, then stop after 2 hours. Even if the game becomes extremely exciting, you should stop after 2 hours. No excuse.

Also, you should have some activities with friends or family as well. Going outside and doing activities you like will improve your life and help you with the recovery from long working sessions. Also, you should add hobbies to your life that are more proactive and, in the best cases, creative. With this work-life balance, you find an effective way to a wonderful life.

9. Accountability Partner

The last strategy is to work with a friend that has the same goals as you or something similar. Someone who shares your desire to break bad habits and lead a productive life, such as working out, can be a valuable resource. You can meet with this person and share your failures and successes; therefore, stay on track. An accountability partner will boost your motivation. Because we humans work better together than alone, you will increase your productivity and accountability even more.

This partner doesn’t necessarily need to be a friend; it can be just someone you know, or it can be a family member. Also, it could be your life partner or roommate. It will work especially well with someone you live together with, since you can constantly check on each other. If you procrastinate on the couch, he or she will notice. You do the same to them. It will make both of your lives easier and more productive.

If it’s your life partner, you can do more than check and see how productive each other is. To find it out, check my post about romantical productivity; one of the best was to stay balanced and take action every day. Your life will be more focused, yet you will have even more free time. This will improve life and relationships.

10. Extra: New method, rate your daily productivity

In the last step, I want to share a new method that I developed to predict when a rut is going to happen to prevent it before it starts. So to start, you need a checkered piece of paper, a pen, and a ruler. The object is to have a graph with two sides; up, you put your productivity, and down, you put the days of the month. Now rate each day’s productivity with a rating of 1-10 and put a cross on each day. At least you drew lines between those crosses and therefore see a genuine graph of your monthly productivity.

In the example above, we see that during the month, productivity had its downfall of 3 on the 18th of the month. But we also see that the productivity did not go down from a 7 to a 3; it took some time to change. When we work on our goals, we lose focus and productivity over time. With this method, we can prevent it before it even starts and therefore take any precautions when we notice it goes down again. This makes your life much more productive, and you will improve way quicker than before.

Every day you can come to your graph and rate your productivity, checking the work you have done. For example, if you worked diligently for the first half of the week, but then saw a drop in your productivity rates, your life may become abnormal. This alone is not a problem; however, you need to take action to stay balanced. If you don’t take action, your balance may drop even further, potentially returning to its previous level. Then you would need another life reset. Instead, actively work more to make the graph better. Improve every aspect of life we talked about constantly.

Conclusion

There comes a time when you discover you are being held back by a cycle of powerful drive followed by total immobility. This is your time for a life reset. Beginning with little, basic tasks like cleaning your room and organizing your area helps you to develop a fresh perspective whereby the balance and order you are trying to achieve reflects in your surroundings. So taking action is a good way to find hope for a change.

Every element of this reset—from rearranging your physical surroundings to applying the Eisenhower Matrix to reschedule your tasks—helps you to recover control over your life. You come to see that it’s more about performance than perfection—about doing even when the inspiration wanes. Rather than a one-time cure, this reset is a long-term lifestyle modification that enhances your mental health, develops discipline, and lets you start a proactive attitude. You start behaviors that not only increase your performance but also free room for development, creativity, and self-compassion. Every setback offers a teaching moment—a reminder that every day, regardless of size, presents fresh chances for personal development.

Your vitality returns, you will feel more balanced, and you will find hope even in trying conditions as you commit to these methods. Small but notable changes will follow. This is now your road map for turning transient errors into long-term transformation—a road map for building a life in which obstacles are merely stepping stones to a better, more controllable futur.

What to do

What to Do List

• [✓] Clean Your Room: Eliminate clutter and create a tidy, organized space that supports productivity.
• [✓] Declutter: Evaluate your belongings and sort them into keep, sell, or discard—free up both your physical and mental space.
• [✓] Organize: Establish dedicated zones for work, sleep, and leisure to foster a balanced daily environment.
• [✓] Reschedule Tasks: Write down your tasks and prioritize them using a method like the Eisenhower Matrix, ensuring that you focus on what truly matters.
• [✓] Work on Your Discipline: Cultivate willpower by challenging yourself with tasks that push your limits, such as starting your day with a cold shower.
• [✓] Take Action: Force yourself into motion even when motivation is low; remember, momentum builds from simply doing.
• [✓] Monitor Your Progress: Use a checkered graph to track your daily productivity, making it easier to spot and address any imbalances.
• [✓] Improve Your Habits: Integrate small, positive habits into your routine that compound over time to support a healthier lifestyle.
• [✓] Take Care of Your Mental Health: Practice mindfulness, compassion, and resilience to maintain a robust mental state.
• [✓] Check in with Your Goals: Regularly review your short- and long-term goals, keeping them in sight as you work toward your vision.
• [✓] Maintain Work-Life Balance: Ensure your free time is used wisely—balance productive breaks with activities that truly recharge you.
• [✓] Find an Accountability Partner: Connect with someone who shares your goals to stay motivated and keep each other on track.

Now I wanna hear from you!

Has this article helped you? Also what methods helped you to stay balanced in life and find hope in your future? Write down in the comments your experience with it.