Everyone wants the formula for a happy, healthy, successful life. In fact, most of us spend enormous energy to find that formula, and we do it all our life. Recently, I had talks with many clients and friends and realized that the problem is not finding the formula but implementing it.
Most people say they know what to do but they just can’t do it. When I teach them something and they have an awakening or awareness or realization, most of the time, it is not because they don’t know what to do but because they found a way to implement something they already knew.
Did it happen to you that you read a book, went to a seminar, heard a podcast, and said, “I knew that”, but still you don’t do what you know?
Well, it happens to all of us.
Knowing vs. doing
The biggest problem we all have is that we just don’t understand the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. This makes us very frustrated and carries a sense of inadequacy, failure, and inability to trust ourselves for no reason.
I feel it when I do my art. I know what I want to do but I just can’t do it. There is a natural gap between understanding and doing things.
Many of my clients understand that meditation is very important for finding peace and balance between the mind and body, but they just can’t do it or if they do it, they do it for a day, two, three days and they give up. I did too, years before I was able to actually do it.
My older sister started meditating when she was 16 years old. She collected money (lots) to do a transcendental meditation course. Wow, she was inspiring. On top of the world.
About 15 years later, my younger sister did it too. She was amazing, her life changed 180 degrees, and she managed to heal herself from accident and a blood disease with the power of her mind. So, for 25 years of my life, I knew that mediation was good for people, but I just couldn’t do it.

When I was 29, I went with Gal (my husband) to a meditation course while we were living in California, and we learned different forms of meditation. Wow, that was weird, and we just fell asleep during the sessions and when we came home, didn’t feel refreshed at all so we left it for about 5 years and went to a transcendental course in Melbourne Australia. We had an amazing teacher and everything, absolutely everything fell into place, and we felt relaxed, and meditation became part of life.
You see, from knowing to doing, it took me over 25 years.
Could I do it earlier?
Obviously, I couldn’t!
Every time you beat yourself up for things you couldn’t do before, remember that now is always better than starting 25 years from now.
I’m writing this post to help you separate between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
For this to work, you first need to know what you know and then, pick items from your “knowledge bank” and start implementing them one by one.
That would take you all your life and the good news is that you don’t need to do all of them in order to find the joy, happiness, health and success formula. With many clients over the last 38 years, including working on myself, I can tell you that sometimes, just 2-3 of them can change your life forever. Much like in my sister’s life, one thing changed her life, forever.
Find your own formula
In this activity, we focus on appreciating what we already know and make a stock take of all the things we believe and know, which can bring us happiness, health, and success in life.
No, it is not what other people think about it, not what others say about it, not even what Ronit thinks the formula is, because each of us must find his own formula. Since no two people on earth have gone through the same journey in life (not even tweens because each of them has a different name) there is no such thing as a formula for all.
There is Ronit’s formula, Gal’s formula, Dan’s formula and Sandy’s formula and your formula. One and only. We can learn from other’s formulas, check them, consider them, see if they fit into who we are, if they are good for us, help us and only then decide if we want to adopt it.
What we will do afterwards is choose them one by one and focus on implementing them slowly, until they become part of us.
100 things that have worked for you
If you are familiar with this series, you know the power of the 100. Not because it is a nice number but because it is a big number that requires us to go deep into our mind and search for things that are not on the surface.
In this activity, your mission, (should you choose to accept) is to find 100 things that you know worked for you in the past in any area of life. When my clients came to me with a burning desire to lose weight. I never tell them about my methods for losing weight and always ask “what did you do in the past that worked for you?”
When we do something that worked for us, the mind has more trust in doing it again and gives us more time to try it. The subconscious mind already knows it worked so it won’t self-sabotage our attempts to do it again. Yes, it needs tweaking. Yes, it needs adjusting but we already know it worked, even temporarily, which means we only need to hang on a bit longer.
So, in this activity, you think of many areas of life (I’ll help you with prompts) and think of things that you have done and worked for you in the past until you reach 100. (The first 10 will be easy and as you progress, it’ll be harder. Hard is good because it reaches places in the mind we usually avoid accessing).
Go over your food and think of things you eat, drink, and which combination works for you, and makes you feel OK. Think of times to eat/drink that works for you and it is also OK to have elimination food to add to your formula. When I was 21, I discovered that tea stained my teeth. In my house, as a kid, I drank tea, black tea, heated on the stove for hours, 7 to 8 cups a day. The dentist told me that I smoke too much as my teeth were stained to the max and I didn’t even smoke (still don’t) and told me to avoid tea. Since then, tea has been out of the picture for me. The understanding is “black tea stains my teeth” the doing is “avoiding tea”. I discovered that rice makes my leg swell. My mom had swollen legs most of her life and one day, after a year of not eating rice, I ate rice (didn’t have a choice) and my legs the day after were swollen. It was a bummer and disappointing, but it was good to know. The knowing is “rice makes my leg swollen” the doing is “avoiding rice” easy! Remember, it makes my legs swollen, not anyone else’s. Millions of people around the world eat rice and nothing happens to them, including my dad and my siblings.- Think of sport that makes you feel good. Something that you did that you felt in your zone, it helped you be active and works with your body, your temperament, your style, your liking. I, for example, went to the gym hundreds of times. With a trainer, without a trainer, weights, treadmill. … Not for me! If I walk in a good company, hike, qigong, dance, do some gardening- I’m on top of the world. The knowing is “dancing is a good form of movement for me” the doing is “finding opportunities to dance and dancing”
- Think of emotional health. Things you have done in your life, in the past, which made you feel in control, in the zone, happy and things that that made you feel bad, not happy with yourself. Example: bath for me is heaven. Journaling for me is expression and pure joy. Meditating, doing art, and gardening calms me down. Fasting makes me feel lighter, lighting a candle makes me feel good… This is the knowing of what makes me feel good. Incorporating them into my life is the doing.
Think of friends and social life and remember times when things you have done made you feel good or brought you closer to people or feel connected. I discovered for example that being everyone’s friend is not a target at all and having a small group of good friends is good for me, so I invest in the friends I have and do not try to pretend that I’m everyone’s friend. I schedule dates with my friends on a regular basis. That’s the implementation part.- Think of family members, parents, siblings, partners, children, extended family, and search in your mind for things you have done that made the relationship better. I for example, discovered that remembering family members’ birthdays is a good opportunity to connect. At that moment, I went to my calendar, and I added the birthdays of my family members (and friends) to it. I have it on my computer, so it pops up every year and I also copy it to my diary every year. Saying happy birthday to them makes me very happy. So, the knowing is “remembering other people’s birthday helps me connect with them” The doing is “contacting them to say “happy birthday”
- Go over thoughts you enjoy thinking. Those are the thoughts you need to try to think of, more often. I use this to move my thoughts from worrying, from very tough conversations. For example, I like thinking of the “perfect days”, “The things I would do if I had unlimited money” and simply “imagining art projects”. I also enjoy thinking about my granddaughter, so “doing” is consciously thinking about her when I need to shift my mood.
- Think of your financial and financial transactions/thoughts/behaviors that brought you prosperity or a good feeling about your finances or about life in the past. If it worked in the past, tweak it and use it again. You are likely to succeed.
Think about time management. Things you have done that make you feel/think you are happy about your time management, that you are controlling your time, that you have the time that you need, that you are efficient. When I was a student, doing my degree, suddenly, in one year, I had to remember so many things that it forced me to come up with a way of managing my time and remembering all those things which I did. This is when discovered that writing down things is a fantastic way to make sure nothing will get lost in the mind web. I learned that the opposite of forgetting is writing down. So, I came up with a “rule” to write everything down. From time to time when I feel overwhelmed, I do a brain dump, I sit down, close my eyes, and allow all the things I need to do to come to the surface and I write them down… Everything! I write everything that comes into my mind. I do it roughly once a month (that’s separate to the daily list). In one of my brain dumps, I had 500 items. It allows me to release the need to remember and allows me to plan. It worked for me in the past, so I keep using it. Remember, we all have the same 24 hours each day, some of us use it better than others. There is no one size that fits all, find the time management tools that worked for you in the past and use them again and again until you perfect them.- Think of hobbies that give you a sense of connection, fun, enjoyment. Remember you are not supposed to find those hobbies but find those you did in the past that made you feel good, happy, healthy, and successful. I discovered that working in the Garden, with my succulents, is a good meditative state. I touch the dirt, I propagate my plants, I clean weeds and the whole time my mind is clear, no thoughts, no worries and at the end, I feel good, I feel kind to the earth, to the plant, to myself. It does not mean I am not trying new things but when I need an immediate thing, I simply go to my garden.
- Think of Ceremonies that you did in the past that made feel happy, healthy, and successful. I have plenty of them that I add to my list. Get up in the morning with gratitude, count my blessings when I go to sleep, journaling, Gardening, art, lighting candles, collecting inspiring quotes… In our house, we insisted that we have dinners togethers since our first daughter was born. Dinner time was the most wonderful bonding time. We shared what happened to us throughout the day, we sang, we played, we had personal development sessions, we had meetings. For me, this was a formula for a good family bonding. We all have thousands of ceremonies – things we do as a routine. Some of them, we just keep doing, even if they are not good for us and some contribute to your lifestyle, your happiness and mindset. We need to find which one is which and make sure the “good” ceremonies are just more than the “not so good” ceremonies.
Think of objects that having them made you in the past feel good, safe, connected. The idea is to bring those things to the conscious mind and enjoy them and use them to bring us to a good place. Some people use necklaces, other jewelry, photos, memorabilia… In my wallet, I have a stone. Since I grew up in a poor family, I made myself goals to overcome this poor mentality. One of them was to overcome the thought that paying/taking money out of my pocket, is making me poor (in my head it was “obviously, now I have less money” so I added the abundance stone (just a stone I picked on the street). Every time I paid for a product or a service, I said to myself, “I’m grateful for all I have. What I pay, I pay willingly, with gratitude to the service/product I received. It will come back to me, multiplied” and I look at the stone, to remind myself that the abundance is still with me, even if money came out of my wallet. When I was 18 and I left home for the first time, my dad gave me a card that has the “prayer of the road”. It is a prayer for safety. I had it with me for years. About 25 years ago, I found this prayer carved on a key chain and I added it to my key ring (still has it, with another 10 other things that represent different things.)
Implementation is the key
Remember, you already have many ideas, tools, and strategies that worked for you in the past. All you have to do is collect them in one place and start using them one by one until they become a habit. It is not only about knowing. It is about doing.
Many people are frustrated because they expect that using one strategy will fix everything. For some, one strategy will change their life, for some it won’t. Sort out your expectations, one strategy might not do that, but accumulation of strategies will.
So, pick the strategies one by one and implement them. Knowing what to do without doing it means nothing at all.
Remember, you already know many tools, you just need to use them.
Thank you for reading. Please comment, subscribe and share.
Be Happy,
Ronit
This post is part of the series Make a List:
- Make a list: List Making
- Make a list: About Myself
- Make a list: Friends and Friendships
- 100 Things I Want to Be, Do and Have in My Lifetime
- 100 Things that Make Me Happy
- Make a list: Childhood Memories
- How to Clean Away Resentment and Be Happy
- 100 Ways to Say “I Love You!”
- Make a list: What I like about me
- Make a list: Birthday Presents to Ask for
- Make a list: Improve My Life
- Make a list: Things to tell my parents
- Make a list: Beliefs about Money
- 100 Feelings I Want to Feel (and how to feel them)
- Make a list: If I Could Live Forever
- Make a list: Beliefs about Kids
- Make a list: Beliefs about Kids cont.
- Make a list: Events that Have Shaped Your Life
- Make a list: Ways to be kind
- Make a list: Be More Productive
- Make a list: Mistakes (and what I can learn from them)
- Make a list: Expectations
- Make a list: Beliefs about Traveling
- Make a list: Rules I Follow
- Make a list: Good Parenting Qualities
- Make a list: Excuses
- Make a list: Quotes to live by
- Make a list: How to use my time better
- If I Were Santa Claus
- What I Would Do If I Had One Year to Live
- 100 Things that Make Me Happy
- Make a list: Movies I loved
- Make a List: My Fears
- Make a List: Find your Happy-ism
- Make a List: Inspiring People
- Make a List: Books that have changed my life
- Make a list: Inspiring Movies
- Things to Be Grateful for
- Make a List: Ronit’s Gratitude Examples List
- Make a list: Life Lessons Learned
- Make a List: Self-Kindness
- Make a List: 100 Ways to Be Kind to Myself
- 100 Things I Want People to Think of Me
- Make a List: Judgment of Right from Wrong
- Make a List: 100 Reasons to Be Wealthy
- 100 Great Insights I Got from the Coronavirus
- How to Make Every Relationship You Want Good
- If I Only Knew: How to Learn from the Past
- Happy, Healthy, Successful Life Formula: Knowing vs. Doing