There will be times in your life when you know you want to make some changes, but you aren’t sure exactly where to start. Maybe you know your work life needs a refresh or you aren’t feeling your best and want a health and wellness overhaul.
We’re going to share some detailed examples of new healthy habits you can consider—one that will boost your career, one that will enhance your wellness, and one that will change your financial life.
These are just examples of habits you can introduce into your life. You will need to choose ones that can actually make an impact on your health, happiness, and overall well being. Our goal is to show you how you can take a desired habit and to make a plan for effectively incorporating that habit into your life.
If your job requires a lot of email communication then you know exactly what a time suck checking and responding to emails can be. Truthfully, you’re probably making the situation worse.
It’s time for some major self-reflection on your email habits. Be honest here—how often do you check an email, mark it as unread, and then go back to answer it later? Chances are, you sometimes read an email more than once before taking any action on it.
This is why the touch it once habit can be such a game changer for your productivity, your organization, and your sanity. It’s a very simple habit to adopt, but the ripple effect it has on your productivity will be huge.
The concept is simple. All you have to do is take immediate action on an email the first time you read it. To make this habit stick, it’s best if you only answer emails a few times a day (such as soon as you start your work day, after lunch, and before you wrap up the day). Whenever you open an email, you will read it and take immediate action. Here’s three examples of how this can work:
Meditating is so good for your mental health and stress levels. We’ve all downloaded Headspace (it really is great) and enjoyed our time spent meditating, yet how many of us actually make it a part of our daily routine? The trick to making meditating a part of your routine is to be very strategic about the times you choose to meditate.
For example, if you’re a morning person and love to hit the ground running in the morning, meditating is going to feel like a chore. If you feel energized, inspired, and stress-free as soon as you wake up, you may not get that much out of meditating before work. But how about when that three p.m. slump hits? When there are still a few hours of work left and the stress of the day is starting to mount, carving out a few minutes to meditate can really help you clear your mind, refocus, and bring your stress levels.
To make a meditation habit stick, you need the right foundation. Before you even start practicing meditation, spend a few days journaling. Check in a few times throughout the day to jot down when you feel the least focused, the most frazzled, or uninspired. When you do start meditating, try practicing during those times. You’ll likely find you get more out of the experience and will be more driven to continue your practice every day.
You don’t have to practice a new habit every day for it to be considered a habit. For example, planning (and sticking to) a weekly money date every Sunday is the secret to making your budget stick once and for all.
Everyone creates a budget with the best of intentions. But then what? It’s very easy to forget exactly how much you allocated in each spending category (think food, entertainment, or transportation) and it’s even easier to forget how much you’ve already spent as the month goes by. The solution is to plan a Sunday money date.
Every Sunday, schedule a time to sit down and check in on your spending for the week and month. You need to take stock of what you already spent and how much you have left in each spending category. That way, you don’t accidentally overspend each week. If you wait until the end of the month to review your spending, you may find you went over budget and it’s too late to fix it.
This is also a great time to evaluate how your budget is working for you. For example, let’s say you realized that by the end of the second week of the month, you already maxed out your allocated spending for dining out, but didn’t spend any money at all on self-care. You can allocate self-care funds to go towards more dinners out. Then next month, you can relook at your budget as a whole to decide if you need to adjust your spending categories.
Make your money date enjoyable. Grab a latte, blast some fun music, or light a candle. Make this a relaxing part of your weekly routine, not something you dread. That way, managing your budget will become a habit.
The key to being successful with money is awareness, so making your spending habits visible is key.
Remember—these are just some ideas to get you started. You need to spend some time reflecting on the changes you want to make that will impact your life the most.
Creating health habits can change your life. From your career to your finances to your health to your relationships, the right habits can be total game changers. The reason healthy habits are so important is they make your life feel easier and they make reaching larger goals more attainable. The better habits you practice, the better internal support system you’re building for yourself.
Need more help making good habits stick? We break down how to do exactly that in our upcoming course A Lesson in Building Healthy Habits. Stay tuned!
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