Picking up Good Habits

Its no secret that habits have a huge impact in our lives, in some cases they even defy who we are. There are good habits, the ones that help us ,mold us and shape us and of course the bad ones that get us no where and just have us wondering what if I did this instead of that? or what if I didn’t say this but instead I said that. Habit building takes time and effort which sounds boring and dreadful but it’s not impossible. Here are 5 ways to pick up good habits.

1. Start Small

There’s no need to go all out at first, something as simple as making you bed each morning can have a positive impact on your day, the feeling of accomplishing that first task of the day will motivate you to make better choices. It’s also helps with managing stress levels. Seeing a perfectly made bed helps us clear our heads, it makes planning a little easier. It’s said that “The state of your bed is the state of your head” pretty much self explanatory.

2. Be Consistent

This is where will power comes into play, the first few days might of been a little easy but what about the rest of the week? It’s important to regularly keep up with a routine even when you don’t want to. Especially if it’s to improve your life style, there are many different ways to be more consistent with habit building.

• Set daily reminders for yourself.
• Write it down(if you don’t write it, you’ll forget it)
• Practice it until it becomes second nature.
• Reward yourself(make it your mission to complete a task and give yourself a small treat when it’s done)

3. Pick a habit that you like.

Anything it could be whatever habit that brings you joy, as long it’s a self improving one. People will often do things that they enjoy doing over and over again. For example, if you like to brush your teeth everyday chances are you can’t wait to get up every morning and brush until your gums bleed( don’t do that). Or if you enjoy doing cleaning the dishes everyday which is a good habit, you’ll find yourself to be the last one to get up from the dinner table when everybody is finish eating just to be the one to wash some filthy dishes.

As long as it brings you joy and it’s helping you becoming more productive that’s all that matters. The more we replace bad habit with good ones the more we’ll get a lot more done, but what’s a bad habit?

• Is is time consuming?
• Do find yourself not having any control over it?
• Does it affect your work/job?
• Are you loosing more than your gaining?

Bad habits will leave us completely dried up, an entire day will just go by and nothing will ever get done. It’s very important to make these changes, if you are used to spending 2 hours on social media, cut it down to 1 and eventually 30 minutes. If you regularly oversleep, set a timer and practice waking up at that time. If you mostly eat junk food through out the day STOP IT! Replace that second bag of chips with an apple, and you don’t have to drink soda every single day, have a bottle of water once in a while. In doing so these small steps can replace the bad habits with good ones.

4. Change your crowd

It’s important to make some changes when it comes to the people we surround ourselves with. Sometimes we have to get a little uncomfortable and leave the crowd. Your company could have a big influence on your behavior, sure it’s cool to follow the crowd and do the things they’re doing, but how far is that going to take you especially when building good habits. Here’s 2 ways to not give into crowd pleasing

• Get into the habit of saying no

A. This one can be a little difficult at first but practice makes perfect, the more you say no the more assertive you become.

B. NO YOUR NOT A BAD PERSON! let your no’s be no and your yes’s be yes.

• Speak up

A. Say what’s on your mind to boost your confidence as long as your not offending anyone.

B. It’s okay to have an opinion, don’t worry about everyone else judging you.

Making new friends can also replace bad habits with good ones. Explore, meet new people, who know’s you might have the same things in common. People with good habits usually stick together because everybody is building themselves up.