Start One Healthy Habit and Set Off a Chain Reaction of Fabulous in Your Life

Feeling stuck? Focus on one thing

It’s tempting to look at “successful” people and feel that they have something you don’t, that life left you behind. These impressions we have of their lives are misleading and we all know it, but we still let it bother us. It might seem to you that you are at the bottom of a cliff, and those fabulous people are at the top. How in the world did they get up there? It looks hopeless.

The best thing you can do is focus on the here and now. And the quickest way to climb up that cliff is to get one really good thing going in your own life. If you can build one healthy habit, it will start a chain reaction that leads to great things.

Building this new habit doesn’t need to cost you money, or take lots of time and resources. It can be a simple thing like meditation, or running, or a daily writing habit. The simple act of repeatedly doing your new activity will cause a shift in another behavior, and another. Over time, your entire life will end up revitalized. This works. You can see it happening out in the wilds of humanity.

Lets see how this could change a person’s outlook, mental state and entire future.

What if a couch potato started exercising?

Imagine you felt flabby and wanted to change. Let’s assume you were a sedentary couch potato and didn’t go outside unless your building was on fire or there was an Amazon package on the steps. “ The sun, it’s scorching me!” you might say when forced to endure that nature stuff. You knew you needed to take action but weren’t sure how to get going. Any sort of fitness activities might be daunting.

You signed up for a High Intensity Interval Training class online with Zoom video lessons because you couldn’t afford a gym (and they were all Covid closed anyway.) It cost you almost nothing — but you had to promise to show up 3 times a week. Since it was in your own living room via video chat, you managed to make it to every workout. You stuck with it for a couple months even though it was hard. Great job!

After two months, you felt so good that you wanted to add more activity. You started walking a mile every day. In a few more weeks, you thought you might try running. You got into a beginner training program with a free app on your phone. Now you really feel some changes happening to your body. You have a ton of energy. You are making different food choices. Your clothes don’t fit — too loose! You make the terrible sacrifice of buying a new, crisp wardrobe.

Because you have so much more energy, you start getting up earlier. You aren’t feeling depressed anymore, so you remember to kiss your significant other goodbye every morning and you help with some household things they really care about. Now that you aren’t so worn down and flabby, your body starts to wake up from it’s deep slumber of boring same old. You want to get it on in the evening, where before things were getting pretty stale. Your SO is definitely more attracted your slimmer self. Your love life is back on track!

You start going to work in a great mood, friendly and helpful, because your home life is improving. You look more attractive because you’re happier and healthier and in a new wardrobe. It gets noticed. Management bumps you into a new position with more money.

All of this energy flowing into your life releases your creative side, and you start thinking about your career in new ways that before were impossible. You realize you could branch out. You see a business opportunity that you could tackle as a side hustle. So, you jump on it with the full strength of your spirit. It’s rough at first. You spend a lot of free time on it, but you scrape by and start making income.

As you become an entrepreneur, you keep up your workouts and focus on your family. Everything is coming up aces. You’re at the top of the cliff, all because you signed up for some zoom exercises in your living room.

Down at the bottom of the cliff, a depressed coworker sees your life unfolding like a beautiful flower and feels despair. He can never see himself being as happy as you. He continues on with his sedentary, lazy lifestyle and doesn’t try any new things. His nights consist of Netflix and food and games, his mornings consist of waking up with 5 minutes to spare before work. He’s stuck unless he starts his own domino effect. But he can’t seem to muster the energy for change.

More examples? Sure! I’ve got a ton of them!

You start a daily meditation practice specifically to lower your stress levels and find some peace. And this does happen, with some extra side benefits. The mindfulness training lets you become more aware of your thoughts and reactions, and eventually you develop more empathy.

This lets you handle situations in the world much better, and you start seeing all of your interpersonal relationships flowing more smoothly. Slowly you repair the strained situation with your brother John that you haven’t talked to in 10 years. You have your childhood best friend and sibling back.

Because you have an actual relationship with John, when your parents are older and needing extra care, the two of you work together to help them through old age. The end of their lives is so much better because their children manage to spend time with them together and there’s peace in the family.

All because you started meditating.

Becoming a writer versus just thinking about it

One last example might strike close to home, since many of us on this platform have thought about what a real writing career could look like. Is this you? I know it’s certainly possible for the following story to come true:

You always wanted to be a writer but never have the time. You decide to wake up an hour earlier every weekday to write. At first it’s terrible, but you find a way to write every morning and work on your wordsmithing. A lot of your early work goes straight on the scrap pile because it sucks. But soon you start pumping out some better stuff. You gain confidence in it.

A few months go by. You write a lot of articles that get read and enjoyed by strangers. You realize that you could write a book about your career and knowledge, so you tackle it and bootstrap your writing habit to finish in a reasonable period of time. You self publish the book and set up a website. You learn a lot about being an author. You start getting seen as an expert.

Because you have the book and are a professional at your job, you decide to reach a little farther. After putting the word out, you start getting consulting work on the side. You sell books. You start a newsletter. Based on all of this activity, you start thinking about public speaking.

Three years later, the world watches you share your knowledge in a Ted Talk. All because you got up early to write.

Big things start with small steps

Life really works this way. Our small actions lead to big results over time. Commitment and consistency in one area of our lives bleeds over into others and alters them. Discipline in exercising, or writing, or meditating can translate into seemingly unrelated parts of your mental puzzle like diet.

“One thing leads to another.” — The Fixx, 1982

Are you happy where you are and wouldn’t change a thing? Then keep doing what you’re doing and five years from now, chances are high your life will be similar. Expect the same results from your input. That’s great if you are in a good place. But, garbage in, garbage out…

If you would like to see growth in your life, though, then consider building a new habit or learning a new skill. Learn to play guitar. Or study a foreign language. Or start volunteering locally.

Me? I’m going to focus on my writing. Let’s see where this goes.

Are you interested in supercharging your daily writing habits? This is one of my favorite topics. I wrote this just for you: