7 Simple Habits That Can Change Your Life
Some habits make your life happier, healthier, and more productive. Over the past couple of years, there have been many many new habits, some have struck, but most haven't.
In this article, I’m going to tell you about the habits that pack the biggest punch, the habits that can make the biggest and best change in your life.
Here are seven habits that can drastically improve your life…
1. Wake up Earlier
First things first, notice how I said earlier and not early. I don't think every person should wake up early, but I do think every person should wake up earlier than they usually do. I think you will benefit from waking up as early as possible can within your natural wake-sleep cycle.
But how to figure out your normal waking range? You generally have an idea of this cycle, of what your normal waking range is. It seems that around 50% of this sleep-wake cycle or our chronotype is determined genetically, but that means that 50% may come from other things like our environment or our own volition.
So it's better to shift your wake-sleep cycle as much as you can a little bit earlier. For example, the waketime is somewhere between 5.00 am and 9.00 am. You can just try to shift your wake time to 5.30, 6.30, etc. Adding that extra hour provides significant benefits:
- You can get things done before you go to work or wherever you have to go for the day.
- To get some of the annoying tasks out of the way before you go into what you need to do. For example, you can make the bed in the morning, and get your food ready for the nighttime. It's nice to come home to a clean house, to food already ready.
- To avoid sleep inertia at work. It is found that the performance becomes sluggish until two or four hours after waking up and the performance isn't optimal until two or four hours after waking up.
2. Read 30 Minutes per Day
The most important reason to read is just to learn more. A reading cultivates this cool, positive feedback of learning, which makes you want to read more, which makes you learn more and then you read more, and it's just great.
One 2013 study showed that a consistent reading habit and consistent cognitive activity are associated with slower, late-life, cognitive decline. And this supports a theory that says that mentally challenging things and mentally challenging activities help maintain and build brain cells.
Some other benefits include increased vocabulary, of course, increased knowledge, and increased writing ability.
3. Sleep Seven Hours per Night
When you get less than seven hours of sleep a night, your performance suffers. Also, your health suffers. Poor sleep quality has been shown to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer. We all know having bad sleep is bad for you and having good sleep is good for you.
Some strategies to help improve your sleep are:
- Being in the sunlight during the day, this kind of help maintain your body's natural circadian clock.
- Double bonus if you also exercise while outside in the sun.
- Don’t consume caffeine after 2.00 pm because caffeine has a long half-life and it will affect your sleep even if you think it doesn’t.
- Go to sleep and wake up at consistent times, because it gets you in the habit, a routine. It gets your body into the same clock all the time.
- Keep your bedroom dark, cold and quiet.
- Invest some money in a good mattress, a good pillow, and some good sheets because it is where you spend a third of your life.
4. Practice Mindfulness and Kindness
Mindfulness can be practiced well if you create an environment around you that can relax you and calm you daily. RelaxFrens is a great platform that can help you keep calm in this exhausting world.
You will suddenly feel like you are more grateful for a lot of things. You will become happier. You will be less stressed and you sleep better. Your interactions with people are just better. It will change the way you see others and yourself.
5. Spend Three Hours Outdoors per Week
It is found that at least 120 minutes outside was linked with significantly greater reports of good health or high well-being with peak associations between the 200 and 300-minute time mark.
While the quantity and quality of evidence vary across outcomes, living in greener, urban areas are associated with lower probabilities of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, asthma, hospitalization, mental stress, and ultimately mortality among adults and lower risks of obesity and myopia in children. Greater quantities of neighborhood nature are also associated with better-self-reported health and subjective well-being in adults and improved birth outcomes and cognitive development in children.
Those are some pretty big statements. So it seems from this, more nature, more green time equates to a better, healthier, happier life.
6. Exercise 150 Minutes per Week
We know that exercise is good, but the hardest part is doing it, and even harder is doing it consistently. What kind of exercise is good? Is it the sweaty kind of exercise? It really doesn't need to be that. It can just be someone going on a nice casual stroll.
Here are some facts about why exercising is good:
- It lowers your risk for heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia, and several cancers.
- Exercise improves sleep, cognition, memory, and bone health.
- It can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and improve quality of life.
We all know exercise is healthy so do it. Consistent exercise is one of the best things anyone can do for themselves.
7. Cultivate a Beginner’s Mindset
In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.
The best advantage I found with the beginner’s mindset is you constantly get better. You constantly learn. If I'm the expert, if I'm the best in the world, where is there to learn more, there's nowhere else to go. There’s no one else to learn from.
Writer : Masrath Sultana
Create your own calm environment using relaxing sounds — RelaxFrens