5 Healthy Habits That Will Change Your Life
Alright - 5 healthy habits that changed my life…and no, girl, I’m not being dramatic!
These are seemingly small things that I do on a regular basis that have greatly impacted my life for the better. Before I dive into them, I want to talk about the word “healthy” for a second.
When most people hear that word, they automatically think about food and exercise - which HECK YEAH those are part of being healthy but I think being healthy is so much more just that. There are things you can do to be mentally healthy, spiritually healthy - we’re talking well-rounded health today not just the physical kind.
I also wanted to mention a book that I’ve been reading this month that has really prompted me to pay attention to my habits and to understand the power behind consistency. It’s called Atomic Habits by James Clear and I would definitely recommend it.
I want to share a few lines from the book before sharing the 5 healthy habits that have changed my life. The book is about how small changes over time make huge impacts on our lives.
“Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees.”
LIKE CMON NOW. How true is that - we are a people who love instant gratification. But that’s not how things typically work. Most of the time, we have to show up day in and day out and commit to being a little bit better.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”
So true! If we can commit to being a little better each day rather than trying to make leaps and bounds all at once, our changes are more sustainable and we are less apt to experience burnt out. So as you hear the 5 habits I’m sharing today, think about them in terms of a long-game. What will your life be like a year from now if you do these small things every day/week (depending on what the task is)?
So…the 5 healthy habits that changed my life:
1. Putting my phone out of reach in the mornings.
I used to try and tell myself, “No looking at your phone until after your quiet time,” but honestly it was just too easy to pick it up click over to Instagram or my email from Spotify. So I’ve been keeping my phone on my desk during my quiet time. My desk is only a few steps away from my quiet time space, but it takes a lot more effort to stand up, walk over to my desk, and pick up my phone than it does to just reach over and grab it if it’s on the table next to me.
Which means I’m less likely to do it - because as I have to get up and walk over to the desk to get my phone, it also leaves time to realize that, “Hey didn’t you commit to not looking at your phone until after your quiet time?” During my quiet time, I usually have some worship music playing quietly so I thought I needed to have my phone on the table next to me. Ummm not true - if you didn’t know, you can ACTUALLY hear your phone playing music even if it’s not right next to you. Imagine that, lol.
Making this little change, keeping my phone out of reach in the morning, has helped hold me accountable to not hopping on socials first thing in the morning.
I’m not judging you if checking the ‘gram is how you like to kick off your day but I just know that for me, when I start the day that way, I usually feel anxious, behind, and like I need to hurry up with my quiet time so I can get back to DMs or get a story or post up quickly.
Early morning and right before bed are when I’m the most inclined to compare what I’m doing to what others are doing because my mind isn’t as sharp. Knowing this about myself has allowed me to establish habits like not having my phone in reach during these times.
2. Drinking herbal tea instead of coffee after 1 PM.
If you know me at all, you know that coffee is my love language. I love actual coffee and I also love the experience of enjoying a cup of coffee. I found myself craving a warm cozy cup around 3 PM every day but then when it was time for me to go to sleep I would lay awake tossing and turning because of the high amount of caffeine I’d consumed throughout the day. So, instead of drinking coffee in the afternoons, I’ve started making myself a cozy cup of herbal tea instead.
I used to be the person who said, “Gross I don’t like tea, coffee all the way.” But when I decided to ditch that mentality and actually try to make tea something that I enjoyed, I was able to try new teas without the preconceived notion that “I am not a tea drinker.
I bought a cute white kettle from Amazon. This one actually.
I went to the store and picked out a few boxes of teas that sounded good.
And I made making tea an experience that I looked forward to.
Now I’m consuming less caffeine, getting better sleep, honestly, I’m less anxious during the day because of the lower caffeine consumption, and I have an appreciation for tea now. It’s a win all around really.
3. Stretching every day.
I was a personal trainer for 3 years. And I’ve always neglected stretching. Give me a barbell or a medicine ball any day, but tell me to hit the mat for stretching and I’m out. The more that I’ve spent more time craned over a computer every day for my job, the more I’ve realized how vital stretching is for the longevity of my health. If I wanted to be able to keep lifting weights I better figure out a way to stretch and take care of my body every day.
The same thing that happened with tea had to happen here. I had to rewrite the false narrative that I’d been telling myself. “I’m not flexible so I don’t enjoy stretching.” Of course I’m going to dread hitting the mat if that’s my mindset going into it.
So what I did - I bought a nice thick mat to keep in my office. And I decided that every morning after I finish reading, before I sit down at my desk, I was going to unroll the mat, and hit “play” on a worship song on Spotify. I tell myself that I only have to stretch for the duration of the song (usually 5-6 minutes). The playlist has my favorite worship songs and now I look forward to stretching because I know that I’ll get to hear one of my favorite songs and that I’ll be doing something good for my body. And bonus: now that I’m stretching every morning, I’m more aware of my posture throughout the day. I’ve made daily stretching a habit by linking it to listening to a favorite song and by keeping my mat easily accessible.
Which leads us right into healthy habit number 4 that has changed my life which is:
4. Creating triggers
I learned this strategy from Brendon Burchard’s book High Performance Habits and I’ve been doing it for about a year or so now. It’s crazy to think that some of these triggers are now pretty much automatic for me because when I started them a year ago, it was tough for me to stick to them. Let me explain: I create triggers by linking something that I do without thinking about it to something that I want to do more of.
One of my triggers is, every time I flip a light switch, I say a positive affirmation about myself. I don’t have to think about flipping a light switch - I just do it. And now after creating a trigger to say something positive about myself when I flip a switch, it too, had become a normal thing for me to do. So I’m constantly speaking truth over myself every day all thanks to this trigger.
Flip the switch: I am worthy of love.
Flip the switch: I am really good at helping people get organized.
Flip the switch: I am created to live an abundant life.
Some other examples of triggers that I’ve created:
When I hug my husband, I say a positive affirmation about him in my head.
When I check the mail, I list 3 things that I’m grateful for.
When I hit “brew” on the coffee pot, I reach for my jade roller and roll my face.
And healthy habit number 5:
5. Tracking my feelings.
This is the newest habit that I’ve implemented and talk about game changer! It’s been so empowering to pay attention to patterns and learn about what might be causing me to feel certain things. Like maybe 3 days in a row I track that I’m feeling overwhelmed in the mornings - I can take a look back at what has happened those 3 days and see if I notice a common denominator. I’m using this example because it actually happened. I was able to look back and see that I was going to bed really late those 3 nights so I wasn’t getting enough sleep which was causing me to wake up and feel overwhelmed. The day that I realized that, I made it a priority to get a full night’s sleep that night and I woke up the next morning not feeling overwhelmed.
It’s so easy for us to go about our lives on autopilot - thinking that things just are what they are. While that may be true about some things, we actually have so much power to change parts of our lives if we just pay attention and be intentional in how we go about things.
I recently released the Hustle Sanely Journal and part of the daily journaling practice is writing down how you feel each morning. I love using my journal every morning because it forces me out of autopilot mode and calls me to reflect on the day before and the day ahead.
In the journal, there are prompts every day that ask you what you’re grateful for, how you feel, a win from the previous day, an action step that you plan to take that day and which goal it correlates with, and anything else that is on your heart that morning. Doing these simple journal prompts has allowed me to be more present as I go through my days because I know that I am going to be reflecting on them the next morning as I journal.
Okay babes, those are 5 healthy habits that I have implemented that have changed my life for the better!
As you can see, none of them are earth-shattering but as I do them every day, the benefits add up and make impactful changes in my life. It’s so true that our lives are defined by what we do on a daily basis. I encourage you to pay attention to where your time and energy are going each day and make adjustments if they’re not aligned with the kind of person you want to be or the goals that you’re wanting to reach.
Did you enjoy this post? Head on over to the podcast and listen in to the episode:
Use the yellow icons below to share this content with all the babes in your life!