Habits are the Building Blocks of Life
If you want to become whole and create a new lifestyle, it’s important to have good habits that push you towards your goals. Bad habits can be detrimental, so you also need to break them if you have them.
Habits are formed by experiences that we have even started in very early life. We often repeat these experiences or things until they become habits. Once a habit has started to be performed automatically, it can be very hard to break or change. That’s why it’s important to try and form good habits only.
You might have certain life habits that you aren’t even aware of, such as brushing your teeth every morning or turning on the coffee machine. You might also have bad habits that you don’t realize, such as watching TV while working or making excuses for not exercising or making it to the gym.
Habits as the Keys to Health
Habits are a big part of every aspect of health including mentally, physically, and spiritually. For example, praying daily might be a spiritual habit you have. Exercising every day is a physical habit you might have developed throughout the years.
There are many habits you can create, such as eating better and not consuming soda that is important to overall health.
Healthy habits can affect you physically by allowing you to keep a healthy weight, keep your blood sugar in check, and lower your risk of chronic diseases.
Mental habits and spiritual habits are just as important as physical ones. Spiritual habits night include prayer, devotions, religious services, or listening to music. Mental habits can involve anything that helps your mental health such as doing a hobby, practicing yoga, or just having quiet time with yourself to reflect.
The Power of Habits and Routines
Every day from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed, you are constantly making decisions. Some decisions are small and might not seem to make a difference in your daily routine, but every choice you make has the ability to affect your day and life altogether.
Routines can help ground you and will help you to have special habits within those routines. For example, if you have an alarm every morning for 7 am, your body will naturally fall into that routine and wake up to the sound of the alarm. This is a habit and a routine you have created for yourself.
Having routines and habits also takes away some of the weight of making daily decisions that you might experience. If you make it a habit to make coffee at home every morning, this takes away the decision of stopping by the local coffee shop and spending more money.
Making Routines Centered Around a Goal
If you don’t have a lot of routines or habits already, you might be thinking about how to make them. One easy way to make routines is to think of goals you might have and then make routines to reach those goals. If you have a goal to save money for the next months, make it part of your routine to prep lunch for work the day before instead of going out for lunch every day.
If you have a goal to run a half marathon, you need to make it part of your routine to run most days of the week. If you don’t have a goal, you need to make some before making habits and routines. Having goals is very important when it comes to accomplishing things throughout life.
How to Choose Goals and Tasks
If you are having a hard time prioritizing goals and making concrete plans, you can try to do the most important tasks rather than the most urgent ones. Not everything in life that is urgent is important. Choosing which tasks to complete is part of a time management system you need to have in your work and home life.
For example, your boss might have a task for you that is urgent, but it requires you to stay at work late and miss dinners with your kids and spouse. While having a family dinner is not urgent, it is valued as more important as a work task.
This is part of the bigger habit of creating work-life balance though which is hard for some people. Depending on your job, you might be required to work late or miss things with the family. Consider ways you can change this. It might involve talking to your boss and working out a different work schedule. Don’t be afraid to make a work-life balance. Draining yourself at work can be detrimental to every other aspect of your life.
Establishing Habits and Routines
An easy way to make routines is to put time around them. For example, make a morning routine if you don’t already have one. This might include simple tasks like brushing your teeth, making coffee, getting the kids dressed, and making a simple breakfast for everyone.
If you need to make different routines and habits for your days, you can start by making small adjustments to the routines you already have. For example, maybe you get up early and have a morning routine, but you don’t eat breakfast and you want to start.
You can make adjustments such as getting up earlier or prepping your breakfast the night before so you have time to eat in the morning. Making small adjustments to the routines you already have can be easier than creating new routines completely.
Once you’re comfortable with small adjustments, you can start to add more. You can also completely change the routine once you feel comfortable doing so.
Analyzing Habits and Routines
With existing and new routines, they need to be analyzed and recreated if there are issues. Reflecting on your routines is important because you want to make sure they are actually adding value and purpose to your life.
Ask yourself what purpose the routines serve in your life and what difference they make to your overall health. Ask yourself if the goal is working. If it’s not, you need to think of ways that you can make it work. If you can’t make it work, you need to change that part of the routine into something that does work.
Remember that routines should have goals. You shouldn’t have routines just to have routines. Goals can be simple though. For example, you have a habit of brushing your teeth every morning because you have a goal of keeping good oral health and spending less money at the dentist.
Not every goal has to be complex. You do need to think about the goal of each routine you have though to make sure the routine is serving a purpose.