11 Daily Habits to Change Your Life For The Better
Below is a set of powerful habits to change your life for the better. They may seem trite at first, but do not be fooled…
1. A Morning Routine
It makes sense that a good morning routine is an important way to start your day. The way you start your morning will colour the rest of your day…
Productivity gurus will tell you to get up at 5 and meditate for 30 minutes. They will encourage you to run 10 kilometres, take a freezing cold shower, and breakfast on a bowl of fresh fruit and bullet-proof coffee…
You're advised to journal, to plan your day, and to find 3 things you're grateful for before you head off to work…
That's all well and good. But essentially, the idea is to develop a morning routine or ritual that creates the best, most productive start to your day…
2. Get up Early
It's a fact that getting up at 5 gives you more time to get things done. It will make you feel fresh and productive, and gives you a great head-start to the day…
And what is the first thing to do when you open your eyes? No, not check your email…
Sit with the silence of this new day. Take a few deep breaths, thank The Universe for another day, and take a mental note of things you're grateful for…
This creates a valuable state of mind in which you are able to see the good in your life despite the obstacles and setbacks. This helps you to push forward when you feel like giving up…
3. Make Your Bed
- Open the window and pull back the bed linen for 10 minutes to kill those microscopic creatures festering in the warmth and humidity of your bed…
- Make your bed – there is something about making one's bed that starts you off in the right frame of mind. It creates order. It gives you a task done, and starts off that feeling of being productive…
On top of that, at the end of the day you will also feel the benefits of getting into a bed of fresh linen, which will help you to sleep better…
4. Get Regular Exercise
Do movement that resonate with you and your personal energy.
I recently started Qi gong, and a brisk morning walk because calming energy is what works for me…
For you, it may be a trip to the local gym, or a half-an-hour spin on your Peloton…
Exercise of some kind in the early morning presses the body's start-button, and gets the blood flowing. You almost can't go wrong from there…
5. Do Meditation
According to a University in Milan, the benefits of mediation are as follows:
- helps to reduce stress
- helps to control anxiety
- Promotes emotional health
- Enhances self-awareness
- helps to lengthen attention span
- reduces age-related memory loss
- helps to generate kindness
- can help to fight addictions
- improves sleep
- helps control pain
- can decrease blood pressure
If you've never tried meditation before, you'll probably feel it too difficult to sit still and in silence at first. If a 10 minute meditation feel too long, go with a 5 minute meditation and build up from there…
6. Start to Journal
In Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, she teaches a very powerful way of journaling called Morning Pages…
Each morning, you fill 3 A4 pages with streaming consciousness: whatever thoughts come into your mind, you write them down. Doesn't matter if there's no cohesion to your sentences. It's all about emptying your mind of all the worry and chatter we tend to walk around with…
I found my mood lifting, and I became calmer, more relaxed and less reactive…
Traditional journaling of writing down thoughts, feelings, and considerations is also tremendously powerful. It takes problems and difficult situations out of your head and places them on the page in front of you…
Looking at your problems on a sheet of paper helps you to feel detached from them, making it easier to see them as they really are…
7. Read Books
There are no two ways about it. Reading books increases your knowledge of how better to navigate the world around you.
Reading helps you find answers to many of your struggles. It will also sharpen your mind, help you to focus for longer periods, and retain information…
Definitely on the list of most powerful habits to change your life, it's not possible for your life to stay the same if you read quality books on a regular basis. Learn from those who are smarter than you. Once you open a book and dive in, the change has already begun…
These are some of the books that have changed my life so far:
- The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
- The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch – more on this later.
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
- Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
8. A Social Media Detox
Research shows that the more you spend time on social media, the more you are likely to develop depression. This is something I have personally struggled with…
It's important to reduce the amount of time you spend on these apps. Even if it's where you make your living. Apparently, the average person spends at least two hours a day on social media. In fact, it has increased two minutes from 2021…
On top of bringing down your mood, social media is stealing the one thing you can never get back: time.
- Two hours a day.
- 14 hours a week.
- 60+ hours a month.
Detoxing from social media is one of the most significant habits to change your life. For the sake of mental health alone. On top of that, imagine what you could otherwise be doing with that time…
9. The 80/20 Rule - Pareto's Rule
The 80/20 rule is Powerful stuff…
It states that 20% of your effort brings you 80% of your results. This 80/20 rule runs through everything in life. Not that everything is exactly 80/20. Sometimes it's 70/30 or 90/10. The point is that a small portion of effort gives the majority of results…
Can you imagine what it could do for your life if you knew what specific actions you were taking on a daily basis that were responsible for 80% of your success in life?…
I encourage you to read Richard Koch's book The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More With Less for a more in-depth understanding.
10. Learn a New Skill
There's no doubt that adding a new skill to your box of tricks opens a whole new set of doors in life:
- promotion
- a better paying job
- starting a profitable side-hustle
- starting up a little business
Acquiring a new skill nowadays is just a few clicks of the mouse away, and at an affordable price for most too. Sites like SkillShare and Udemy offer hundreds of courses you can take while sitting in your PJ's in the comfort of your own home. There's no real excuse for not learning a new skill anymore…
11. Take Up a Creative Hobby
You're probably thinking, “A creative hobby? Who's got time for that?”
A creative hobby is not exactly on people's priority list these days, but having a creative outlet will have a great effect on your sense of well-being.
Not only that. Other benefits of a creative hobby are:
- stress-relieving
- can provide a way of connecting with new people
- gives your confidence and self-esteem a boost
- adds some fun to your life
- helps to discover hidden talents
- pulls you out of your comfort zone
Taking up a creative hobby can open doors that alter the path of your life…
Habits to Change Your Life – Conclusion
To wrap up, there's no need for any grandiose habits to change your life. It really doesn't take much more than the above list, and some consistency…
As long as you are consistent, even the tiniest of changes, compounded over time, will result in positive change. Consistency is key to any lasting changes you wish to make in life.