You are what you repeatedly do.
Implementing habits into your day-to-day life can be incredibly life-changing and will overall contribute to a healthy lifestyle, both mentally and physically.
You may not notice it initially, but once these small actions add up over weeks, months, or even years, you will begin to notice the difference between the old you before those habits and the new you.
Here are six easy and effective ways to change your life for the better.
- Meditate
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Meditation, including deep breathing, will ease any stress and anxiety you might have while helping you manage your mind.
Everybody can make time to meditate, but the key to consistency is to not overwhelm yourself with difficult or high requirements.
Make meditation easy for yourself by taking two out of each day to meditate, and then work up from there.
Not only will you be taking time to detach yourself from your worries, deep breathing while meditating will rejuvenate your body and clear your head.
When you’re breathing, make sure to breathe into your diaphragm and not just with your chest.
You’ll know you’re doing this correctly if you fill your lungs with oxygen and let your belly expand in the process.
Hold this for a couple of seconds before slowly releasing the air.
This type of deep breathing can be done easily if you’re laying down on a comfortable surface.
- Tidy your living space
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Are you the type of person who gets easily overwhelmed from clutter in your living space or work environment?
Are you also the type of person who gets overwhelmed by the thought of all the cleaning you have to do, which leads to you procrastination?
A simple yet life-changing habit that will allow you to declutter your life without stressing you out is allotting 10 minutes out of your schedule to clean.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and then clean your desk, room, or office during that time.
This breaks down your cleaning into smaller, manageable chunks.
Ten minutes is a short enough time for you to confidently know you can do it (compared to an hour, for example) and long enough to get a lot of cleaning done.
Once the 10 minutes are up, you’re done! There is no need to worry about it anymore!
The benefit of this habit is that when you get into the mindset of cleaning once you get started on it, you tend to want to continue cleaning past the 10 minutes since you’re in the zone.
- Drink water
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This is one of the more obvious habits you should be doing, but there are a lot of people out there who don’t drink enough water daily.
Drinking a lot of water has multiple benefits (other than the fact it’s a basic necessity of life), such as improving bodily functions, flushing toxins out of your system and helping with weight loss.
Water can pretty much solve almost any physical problem you might have.
Have problematic skin? Drink water to clear your pores.
Coming down with a headache? Drink more water to clear your head.
One way to make drinking more fluids a habit is to keep a full, reusable water bottle near you at all times.
There are also water-tracking apps out there that you can utilize to your fullest advantage to make sure you’re drinking enough.
If you want to add a little flavor to your water, lemon is a great way to make it tastier (and some people swear it helps with digestion).
Did you know it’s also better for your body to drink room temperature or warm water over cold water?
If you’re the type of person who like drinking their water with ice, consider drinking cool water with no ice to help your body in the long run.
- Create visual cues for things you want to consistently do more
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Creating visual cues for things that you want to do in your life is a very helpful way to take on habits quickly and effectively.
For example, let’s say you want to exercise more but don’t really have the motivation to get yourself to the gym.
You can force yourself to exercise by placing your workout clothes someplace that you normally see on a daily basis, such as your bed or on your makeup table.
Another example would be placing fruit on your kitchen counter so that you remember to eat it if you wanted to make a habit of eating healthier.
- Wear sunscreen
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Some people may not take sunscreen seriously, but sun damage is no joke.
Wearing sunscreen on a daily basis is incredibly crucial to skin health and dermatologists and skin-care experts can prove it.
Frequent exposure to the sun’s UVB radiation can cause damage through premature aging, which will lead to fine lines, wrinkles, freckles, brown spots, and, in worse case scenarios, skin cancer.
If you’re the type of person who truly cares about your skin’s well-being, sunscreen should be one of your biggest priorities in your skincare routine.
You should be wearing sunscreen with an SPF of at least 30, which will block 97% of the sun’s harmful rays.
Anything higher than that may block slightly more of the radiation, but there’s currently no SPF that can block 100% of the damaging radiation.
- Practice daily gratitude
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Take a moment out of your day to count your blessings and appreciate the good things in your life.
Life is too short to constantly focus on our stresses, worries and struggles in our lives.
Sometimes, all we need to make ourselves feel better is to have a shift in perspective.
Take time to jot down in a journal at least five different things that you’re grateful for.
Make it a habit to focus on the things you’re grateful for.
Release any expectations that you might have in your personal lives, relationships, education, or career, and focus on the things you have right now within these spheres of your life that you’re appreciative of.
Every day is an opportunity for a fresh start.
Which of these habits have you already taken on? Which of these do you need more practice with?
These habits can be started by anyone at any point in life, but the results at the end will more or less be the same: a healthier and more mindful you.