8 Of The Best Habits That Will Change Your Life

We all want to develop good habits, but how do you build the best habits that will change your life on a daily basis?

 

When I think about the habits that have changed my life the most, those that allow me to slow down and simplify, they’ve all occurred through a series of small steps.  These are the habits that allow me to stay on top of the day to day tasks. It’s been about taking small steps that have built upon each other and lead to consistency over time.

 

You don’t have to start a massive life-altering plan. All it takes is simple action steps each day designed to get you where you want to go. Small steps turn into actual habits.

 

Building the best habits that will change your life is not just about how you build those habits, but also what habits you are building each day. Habits are powerful, they are the key to building a life you love!

 

When you have the right habits in place they establish a sense of purpose and ritual. Even if the idea of starting and maintaining those habits feels hard, once you start the benefits will keep you going. And if you take baby steps I promise it’s not so hard.

 

So what are the right habits?  Here are eight simple daily habits that have the ability to change your life.

Left to my own devices I’m definitely a night owl.  It seems like I always get a second wind late in the evening.  In fact, it wasn’t uncommon at all to see me up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

 

Of course, the next day had me either sleeping in or coming home and taking a nap. I’d often get upset with myself for oversleeping because I’d then be up late again the following evening.  It was a vicious cycle.

 

However, once I put myself on a regular routine of forcing myself to get up at the same time each day, I was actually tired at the end of the day and able to get to sleep.

 

Starting and ending your day with the same consistency begins to shape your whole day.  In fact, building a habit that takes place at the very start of your day is where consistency begins.  As your day starts with one habit, it’s substantially easier to build other habits. This is because you get into the routine of doing certain things at certain times.  Soon you won’t even think about it.

If things are negative or bringing me down I don’t want to keep doing them.  I don’t like hard things, and really who does?  So if you want to establish habits that will change your life, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to focus on the positive during the first part of your day.

 

When you’re seeing the positive everything is so much easier including building habits. What exactly this looks like will be different for everyone.

 

For me, starting my day with the positive means having a quiet focused time in prayer and Bible reading. I try to set aside 20 minutes each morning. But some days it’s only 10 to 15 minutes and other times it’s closer to 30 minutes. You see, there’s no need to have a Ridgid schedule here, the point is to develop a habit of starting your day with the positive.

 

So whether it’s a focused time in prayer and scripture, time meditating, saying affirmations, or keeping a simple gratitude journal when you start your day on a positive note you keep upbeat and this helps you stay consistent with habits that will change your life.

We have so much pulling for our time day after day, it’s more than we can possibly do in 24 hours. This makes it difficult to know what to focus on.  We usually just give in to whatever appears most urgent at that time rather than working on what matters most to us.

 

What helped me stop this cycle was setting up themed days.  Each day of the week has a different theme or focus. For instance, if you were to go into my Trello board for the month you’ll see themes to my weeks and days.  Sunday is always a planning day.  Saturdays are for outdoors and family activities, Wednesdays are errand days and another day is focused on paper and desk work.

 

I also have my cleaning schedule themed so I only need to focus on one room each day.

 

With themes to your days, it helps you stay focused even when you’re often interrupted. Let’s face it, interruptions happen all the time, but because I know what my focus is each day I  quickly deal with the interruption and then know it’s desk day so I have to finish paying the bills.

As I said above, building habits that will change your life are all about baby steps.  When we don’t take baby steps we get behind because we’re trying to do too much.

 

To overcome this obstacle, each evening spend a few moments writing out your 3 most important tasks for the next day.  Then don’t worry about doing anything more than those three tasks.

 

You see trying to do too much is what frustrates us. When we get frustrated we lose motivation then end up in a cycle of giving up on good habits.

 

On the other hand, limiting yourself to focusing on only three important tasks makes you feel accomplished. If you get through those three tasks, you’ve had a successful day! You accomplished what’s most important, now if time allows you can work on some less important things.

This is a skill we all need, but it doesn’t necessarily come naturally.  Problem-solving is a learned skill that takes practice to become a habit that will change your life.

 

Problem-solving is also an extremely important habit to develop because otherwise, we get stuck and don’t know what to do. This usually results in doing nothing and it’s common to just sit in neutral because we have no idea how to fix the problem.

 

But, here’s the thing, this is your life, you get to be the driver and decide what route you’ll take.  Yes, sometimes you’ll be sent on a detour and need to come up with a solution here’s how:

 

Write down your “problem” on one side of a piece of paper.  Next, create a second column, and next to each “problem” start writing out any and all possible solutions. Finally, you’ll pick the solution that you think works best and get to work implementing it!

The more you practice this approach to problem-solving the easier it gets.  Soon you’ll have a daily habit that will change how you problem solve.

 Depending on how much of this blog you’ve read, I may be repeating myself here.  But that’s okay because it deserves repeating.  Your environment has a big impact on how you feel and on your ability to stay consistent in building positive habits that will change your life.

 

A cluttery home makes for a cluttery mind. If your home environment is chaotic disorganized and filled with clutter I know you’re feeling scattered and unfocused.

 

To establish habits that will change your life you’ve got to clear the clutter.  I’m not saying you have to declutter your entire home, not at all.  However, making daily efforts to declutter will pay off big time.

 

I’ve found the easiest way to do this is simply by adding an extra 5 minutes to my cleaning schedule.  My cleaning schedule is set up to focus on one room each day.  For example, Mondays are the bathroom and Tuesdays are the bedroom.  So on Monday, I might go through the medicine cabinet to check for anything expired and toss it.  That’s it.  On Tuesday I might go through white blouses and toss anything stained or ripped.

 

This little daily habit, when practiced consistently will have you clutter-free which will, in the end, result in big changes in your life.

Your physical health affects every area of your life probably more than anything else.   Most of us don’t realize how much diet impacts energy, mood, decision making, and happiness. For this reason, we need to see our diets as an important part of our daily habits.

 

To be perfectly honest, this one is the hardest habits to build for most people.  This is especially true if you struggle with your diet now.  It’s certainly not easy but oh so important.

 

How you feel will affect everything about your life. If you’re not feeling at your best there is no way you’re living your best life. You deserve so much more but you have to take charge.

 

And remember we talked about baby steps at the beginning, here is a perfect way to take little baby steps.

 

Start with drinking more water. It’s so easy to get yourself a water bottle that you can carry with you all the time. This simple habit increased my water intake without even thinking about it.

 

Next commit to cooking at home, when you do you can control what ingredients go into your food.  Then start sneaking in some extra veggies.  Add a handful of spinach to your spaghetti sauce, you won’t even notice it’s in there.

 

These little baby steps will increase your energy and you’ll feel so much better.

This is the easiest habit to forget and yet a habit that will change your life. We all need to take care of ourselves by taking the time to recharge.

 

All that’s required is scheduling a regular time to do something that fills you up.  Whether it’s sitting with a good book, having some alone time, or engaging in a beloved hobby, you need to do it regularly.

 

The best way to make sure you stick with this habit is to go and grab your planner and schedule it in right now.