Habits are hard to start, hard to keep, and hard to break. While many of us seek to break our negative habits, such as excessive screen time and procrastination, few actively seek to adopt new and useful ones in their place. Good habits are key to achieving our goals, improving our mental health, and bettering our relationships, and they can, in many cases, be life-changing. Below are five habits that, if successfully developed, can be truly transformative.
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After a long day of school and work, your body and mind probably desire to plop into bed, shut off the lights, and fall asleep. However, finding the time to reflect on your day through journaling (even if it's just for 5 minutes) is crucial, offering many benefits such as:
- Increased self—awareness and growth- Writing allows us to put into tangible words what our hearts and minds feel and think. Reflecting on these feelings and emotions can allow us to break negative thought patterns, set new goals, and fulfill our greatest potential.
- Spark creativity—Writing has been known to serve as a great platform for brainstorming and generating new ideas. In addition, we often have creative and original ideas throughout the day, yet without recording them, we tend to forget most of them. Writing these ideas down ensures they do not fall into the abyss!
- Express gratitude—Journaling can be a great time to express gratitude for the things we may take for granted. Thisallows us to better appreciate all aspects of our lives, even the smallest ones that may be typically overlooked!
And an overall improved mental state!
In many cases, the hardest part about journaling is determining what to write about. By creating a list of journaling prompts, this problem can be resolved! Creating your own prompts is a great idea, but if you're feeling stuck, here are some prompt ideas:
- What are three things you're grateful for today?
- What's a lesson you learned today?
- What were some highlights of today?
- What would I do differently about today?
- What are three concrete goals I can strive to accomplish tomorrow?
- What's something you did today to help someone else?
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2. Exercise
While exercising can help you get that summer body, daily exercise offers much more. Exercise has been proven to decrease stress, improve sleep, boost energy, and improve overall health. Exercise doesn't have to mean hours of excruciating running and weight lifting; simply going on a 40-minute walk or 10-minute run can suffice. While finding the time and motivation to exercise can be difficult, the benefits make it worth it.
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3. Reading
While many of us may have considered ourselves "bookworms" in elementary school, now, we probably resort to our phones or TV in our pastimes. Reading offers so many more benefits than just expanding our vocabulary and enhancing our reading comprehension skills. Reading can truly teleport us into new worlds, something that watching television or movies cannot fulfill as well.
Not only is reading entertaining, but reading can also teach us new lessons, thus helping us grow as individuals. Allotting time for reading, even if it's just 10 minutes, can truly make a difference. Personally, I love reading right before bed, as it helps me relax and get a good night's rest.
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4. Meditation
Finding the time to stop and reflect can seem impossible in our fast-paced world. Meditation can enable you to practice mindfulness, truly allowing you to reflect on your current state and surroundings. Meditation is known to mitigate stress and enhance self-awareness and offers many benefits to one's physical health, such as better sleep and sharpened memory. Many guided mediation videos and apps are available online, or you can choose to create your own!
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5. Daily/weekly goal setting
Setting tangible and measurable is key to transforming your greatest dreams and desires into a reality! Simply knowing where to start can be the biggest challenge in tackling large goals. This challenge can be eliminated by chunking up larger goals into simple steps! I like using the Notion app to create weekly and daily to-do lists, but planners and other apps can work great, too!
I hope you start incorporating these five key habits into your own life! Always remember that while establishing good habits may take time, with enough persistence, the sky's the limit!