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The lifestyle you are currently living is the lifestyle you’ve convinced yourself to accept. There’s no doubt that many of us can make personal improvements. A key component is also wanting personal improvement, which is where the difficulty comes into play: we often lack motivation.
Habits automate the most essential things in life, assuming you’ve got good habits. Keep at this and success becomes inevitable.
Here are 5 habits that, if adopted, will change your life this year:
1. Reading
This may seem trivial, but forming this habit will have larger implications over time. Reading is the quickest path to personal growth.
In a few hours, you can learn what someone has spent their entire life learning.
How do you expect to grow if you’re not learning? Reading is inexpensive (and often free!) and not complicated:
- Create pockets of reading time in your day;
- Read with your morning coffee;
- Listen to an audiobook on the way to work;
- Read some articles during your lunch break;
- Read in bed at night.
2. Meditation
The simple practice of sitting down and paying attention can counter all of this. Slowing down for even 5–10 minutes each day can reverse our short attention spans. It can drastically lower our stress levels.
Make time every single day to sit down and pay attention. Even if just for a few minutes. It will affect your personal growth when you learn about yourself, especially things that affect your personal well-being within relationships or alone. Meditation is an important personal habit because it makes you more concentrated on little things and happy.
What you need to do:
- Sit in silence for 5–20 minutes each day.
- Meditate on the breath during this time if possible.
- Make it part of your daily routine, even if you can only do it once or twice throughout the day.
- Find a comfortable place to sit where you won’t be interrupted (or set an alarm).
- Close your eyes and focus your attention on your breath moving in and out of your body.
- If thoughts come up, don’t get upset—simply notice them and return your focus back to the breath without judgment or expectation.
- Keep breathing & meditating throughout the entire exercise.
3. Drink Water
The number one thing you should do when you wake up is to drink some water.
You likely won’t have had even a drop of water since you went to bed about 8 hours ago. Hydration is crucial if you want your body and mind to function optimally. Make it a habit to drink water as soon as you wake up. Aim for a large glass.
This quick and simple habit will significantly improve your day. Water helps with everything from energy levels, digestion, circulation, metabolism, the list goes on. If all else fails, use this trick; drink warm lemon water in the morning before consuming anything else (like juice or coffee).
4. Wake Up Early
Are you looking for personal growth? Are you interested in healthy practices to improve your life and happiness?
Do yourself a favor and wake up early. You don’t need to get up at 5 am. For example, healthy breakfast – healthy lunch – healthy dinner – healthy snacks in. The news is bleak: we’re burnt out, overworked, and stressed. That’s why it’s about time you got your healthy (and productive) habits in order! There’s no need to waste this healthy year feeling rough and tired – instead, you could be coming into work energized and ready for action. Even if you aren’t waking up early, there are still healthy habits that will make a huge difference to both your productivity and lifestyle.
You need to have a healthy sleep schedule/routine (We recommend 7.5 hours of sleep for adults, 8+ hours if you are an athlete or training consistently. We are not necessarily saying wake up early to get this amount of sleep but getting your minimum healthy sleep is essential no matter how many hours you have in a day. Waking up early will give you an extra amount of time for getting things done that you never had time for, like exercise, passing some training, preparing healthy food, etc.
5. Walk More
You need to walk more. Aim for 10,000 steps a day. You won’t always get there, but hopefully most days you’ll get pretty close. Walking is probably the most important healthy habit for our minds. It’s also great for your body and it’s free and simple to do anywhere. Walking tunes out distractions. If you go on a long walk or hike, odds are that when you come back, you’ll be able to focus better than before because walking lowers your brain’s blood pressure.
Please mind:
- Walk up the escalator or stairs, don’t take the elevator. Even better if you turn it into a mini-workout by taking one step at a time. Stairs count as your daily steps too! Stairs instead of elevators is an easy way to improve your health and lose or maintain weight; this could also help save you money on heating & cooling costs because you won’t be using the elevator so much.
- Always have comfortable shoes with you whenever possible so that if there is an opportunity to walk somewhere instead of driving, you are prepared for it.
If it’s not working, change it! Nothing ever changes when nothing ever changes. Incorporate these 5 new habits into your life and you will never be the same person!