5 Self-Improvement Habits to Improve Your Lifestyle
Not only do they make you happier, they make you more productive and help you develop good habits.
All of us look for ways to improve our lives, more so with the new year approaching. I would like to share some habits — backed by science, that can be done in as little as a few minutes per day.
With the right intention and positiveness, when done right, these habits will help you find some inner peace and motivate you do some soul searching; in turn making you successful and influential.
1. Express Your Gratitude
The first step to self-improvement is developing good consistent habits.
Make a mental note of 3 people in your life for whom you are grateful for. Think about how they have impacted your life, contributed to your happiness or even helped you in a time of need.
Next, express sincere gratitude to them. Be it through an email, phone call or even a handwritten note. Whichever method works for you best. Make it personal and heartfelt, let them know how you feel about them and why you are grateful for their presence in your life.
It’s been scientifically proven that if you perform this habit consistently for 21 days straight, you will be training your mind to only focus on positives; this has been found to be the fastest way to achieve optimism and significantly improve your outlook on life.
2. Be intentional about learning from conversations
The best conversations in life are initiated by learning about what other people do, how they do it, and why they do it. People mostly love talking about themselves.
Make it a habit to convey the message, “I want to learn from you.”
From today, whenever you spot someone interesting or someone you’d like to learn from, ask them out for a coffee session. This makes the person appreciate talking to you and will make you a better person.
3. Practice forgiveness.
Working on forgiveness can help us increase our self-esteem and give us a sense of inner strength and safety. It reverses the lies that we often tell ourselves when someone has hurt us deeply — lies such as ‘I am defeated’ or ‘I’m not worthy’.
“Forgiveness heals us and allows us to move on in life with meaning and purpose.”
Studies have shown that forgiving others produces strong psychological benefits for the one who forgives. It has been shown to decrease depression, anxiety and the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
We don’t just forgive to help ourselves. Forgiveness can lead to psychological healing, yes; but, in its essence, it is not something about you or done for you. It is something you extend toward another person, because you recognise, over time, that it is the best response to the situation.
4. Forget time management, do ‘self management’
By managing your tasks and priorities efficiently, you seamlessly transition to higher productivity and increased work satisfaction. Here are five ways to reach your optimal level of self-management:
- Identify the time of the day when you are most productive and focus your energy on doing the most important or difficult tasks during those times.
- Set boundaries and say no to people when needed, protect your valuable time.
- Be aware of time-wasters such as talkative co-workers, unimportant phone calls or anything else that disrupts your state of flow.
- Start and end meetings on time and don’t get side-tracked.
- Don’t juggle too many tasks at once. Research says it can be detrimental to our brains. You end up splitting your focus over multiple tasks, losing focus and lowering the quality of your work.
5. Take a cold shower
Tony Robbins starts every morning by jumping into a 57-degree Fahrenheit swimming pool!
Why would he do such a thing?
Cold water immersion radically facilitates physical and mental wellness. When practiced regularly, it promotes long-lasting changes to your body’s immune, lymphatic, circulatory and digestive systems that improve the quality of your life. It can also increase weight-loss because it boosts your metabolism. Win-win situation?
A 2007 research study found that taking cold showers routinely treat depression symptoms more effectively than prescription medications. That’s because cold water triggers a wave of mood-boosting neuro-chemicals which make you feel happy.
Work on yourself and you will achieve the impossible.
