Creating good habits for yourself - Part 1
If you saw my recent YouTube vlog and have been keeping up with my Instagram feed you’ll know that lately, I’ve been talking a bit about habits and in particular, how I’ve found that changing my habits has helped me. I went through a period where I had really good and effective habits, I would listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of blog posts which mentioned different habits to put into place to improve productivity and motivation etc. But for some reason, I got into a bit of a bad headspace and just all of a sudden decided that I didn’t need to put these habits in place and that I should be able to do all of these things without all of these extra things in place. I don’t know why I ended up thinking like this because all it did was put an extra pressure on myself!
So I’m going to just briefly talk about a few of my habits that I’ve been changing which I think will probably work for everyone in general if you know what works best for you.
Sleep Schedule
One thing I absolutely hate is waking up in a morning, it’s not that I have nothing to look forward to or anything like that, I just physically struggle so much to even keep my eyes open so I’ve always tended to get up later in the morning. For a long time I always thought this worked better for me but I think it was just me using it as an excuse to get up later, because I know for sure I feel so much more productive when I get up early and don’t feel like I’ve wasted half of my day.
The struggle comes in actually getting up early, so there are a few things that I’ve implemented to make it easier for myself:
Putting my phone to the other side of the bedroom - this way I have to physically get out of bed to get my phone which means I’ve already overcome the difficult part!
Downing a bottle of water as soon as I wake up - most of the time when you first wake up having had enough sleep and still feel tired, it’s generally because you’re dehydrated, so having plenty of water first thing is a good way to wake your body up.
Cold showers - don’t get me wrong, cold showers are not pleasant and it definitely takes s lot of courage to jump into one, but it honestly makes me feel so much better once I’ve done it!
Healthy Eating & Exercise
I know at the moment these are just seeming like the most cliche things to put in a post like this but I like to think that I think about these things in a much more relaxed way. I usually eat like crap, I can easily eat 3 bars of chocolate in a day, if not more, I drink fizzy drinks on a daily basis (on most days it is just one can), and if I’m being really lazy I will eat a lot of processed food. Although I’m not overweight, I know that it’s not healthy to eat the way I do and I don’t doubt for a second that it plays a big part in the way I feel mentally and physically on a daily basis.
I also have this weird relationship with exercise, because I hate it, I hate doing it and I hate thinking about it. However, I’m a pretty athletic person and I was always very sporty as a child and played football at quite a serious level, even planning on pursuing it as a career while I was a teenager. So I know both my brain and my body thrive on that physical stimulation, so although I hate it, I also love how it makes me feel once I’ve done it.
So some of the things I do stay healthy are:
I mainly only eat fresh food - When I’m eating at my best I very rarely eat anything that isn’t as fresh as possible, and I tend to cook it in the healthiest ways too. I also very rarely add things like condiments to my food which massively helps.
Avoid too much sugar - As I mentioned before I would practically live off of chocolate if I could because I love it so much, but it’s obviously not good for my body. So when I’m being good, I try to eat the least amount of sugar possible using my willpower and focusing on work as a distraction.
Drink plenty of water - I drink plenty of water anyway, probably too much, but sticking to just water, or water and herbal teas, is a really good way to rinse all of the bad stuff out of your system.
Force myself to go to the gym - Right now, I have no set routine at the gym, I just try to make sure I go a few times a week and I plan to work up from there, but as long as I know right now that I’m making the effort to turn up, that’s what matters.