Daily habits are ingrained …… so deep-rooted that you don’t even realize you have them. Most of the people are unaware of importance of habits and keep moving in life with their habits; without examining weather those are good habits or bad habits. And the bad news is good habits don’t happen automatically. You need to build your daily routine intrinsic with good habits to optimize your mind, body and spirit. I personally have struggled a lot for knowing what is good and what is bad, which good habits to include and which bad habits to eliminate from my daily routine. But fortunately all that phase has given me altogether different definition of habits. The word HABITS itself has different understanding for me now. I saw following changes to bring in life and make habits more meaningful than just the things I do repeatedly in my day to day life.
Health
Attitude
Books
Introspect
Thoughts
Surroundings
These are 6 daily habits to improve life and be do driver seat to enjoy
Health is wealth. Building good habits in health aspect is most important in today’s modern lifestyle. If you neglect it, you are giving invitation to bigger problems in your life in the long term. Bring changes in your daily routine which ensures good health not only physically but mentally as well. Start your day with customized morning rituals for better health. Here is how I spend first couple of hours and kick start my day. Sound sleep, social media detoxification, meditation, physical exercise, gratitude journal and healthy breakfasts are some of morning habits changes which have added value to my physical and mental health.
Apart from this I have included healthy eating habits throughout my day which include nutritious balanced diet, more vegetable and fruits, sufficient water intake and green tea replacing coffee. Till this weekdays’ routine became a habit, I used reward myself on weekend and on Sunday I used to eat what I wished to eat. That kept me motivating and after some time it became my 7 days week routine.
Eat your supper at least 3 hours before you sleep and try to eat food which is easy to digest. I only take soups, juices and fruits in my dinner. There is an old saying “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and eat dinner like a beggar”
Remember one most important tip to maintain good health. Get your medical check up periodically. I personally have six months schedule and get my complete medical check up done. Though it’s not a part of daily routine – the topic of the article, but it’s connected and helps you monitoring your health for which you make efforts on daily basis. Healthy habits is the first place where you need to bring the change.
This may come to you as a surprise... but your attitude is more significant than your aptitude in determining your success in life. Actually, it’s your attitude which determines your altitude. The most successful people don't just drift off to the top. They reach there through optimistic attitude, focused action, personal discipline and lots of energy every day to make things happen.
Remember the greatest inventors of the last two centuries - Thomas Edison? On every single occasion you turn on a light switch, you experience the result of his persistence in spite of continuous failure.
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out” ~ Robert J. Collier
Edison tried 10,000 times to get his light bulb invention to work, but failed each time. The greatness and optimistic attitude was reflecting when he said this about his lack of success, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
You can learn to have this kind of outlook on life, but it needs to be purposefully installed into your daily living. Don’t let the old habits hold you back. Start building simple yet essential daily habit of positive attitude for a happier and more productive life.
Read, read, read …. It’s another daily routine, which will bring a real difference in your quality of life.
Read a book daily, even if you read just a single page, it will give you results. Reading books has a significant number of sciences based benefits. It enhances your competence, knowledge, skills, intelligence, creativity, flexibility, empathy, concentration and focus. It has a calming effect similar to meditation and reduces the stress level. Reading before bedtime can help you sleep better. Through reading you can also broaden horizon, develop new ideas and get inspiration.
Being introspective is often a rare quality in young generation of today’s modern era. They don’t have time to slow down, take a breather from their crazy life and do the exercise of self reflection. Introspection or self reflection involves examining one’s own thoughts, feelings and sensations in order to gain insight.
Introspection is a superpower. It’s the path to an agile life. Through it you can continuously improve your perception of reality and your behavior. It allows you to confront and deal with the things you fear. Not only this, it also helps to cultivate the empathy. Through introspection only you get awareness that happiness is within and not dependent of external factors. Introspection works as catalyst for bringing change in life. Make a daily habit of doing silent introspection.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle
Did you know...we human beings have somewhere between 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day...??
Out of those 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts, as many as 95 percent of them are exactly the same as we had the day before. Talk about creatures of habits! Even more significant, 80 percent of our thoughts are negative. Now with these numbers, you must have understood why having positive and grateful thoughts is an integral part of daily routine life.
The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but the thoughts about it, Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Try to get rid of negative thoughts.
Surround yourself with presence of positive people. Let go of relationships with people who don’t lift you up. It’s of utmost importance to cut down interaction with those who drag you down. Spend more time with the people who give you positive energy. American author and entrepreneur Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Surround yourself with good friends. These best friends are important in life. They share your good times and help in bad times. They are the best critics which help you to improve your overall personality. Why am I giving emphasis on this habit, the reason that these people influence your daily routine and help in developing positive energy throughout the day?
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Inder Kundnani is founder at www.invajy.com. He holds a master’s degree in human resources and a postgraduate degree in engineering. He is an HR manager by profession and blogger by passion. He writes on mental health, self-help, self-improvement, motivation, inspiration, mindfulness and success. Inder also adds value to other people’s life as mentor and life coach. You can engage with him on Twitter @InvajyC