Life Clean Up Step 3: Your Habits

Last week we talked about how to get your physical health in order. This week, we’re going to dig into how you can start implementing those changes. Bad habits can break you, and good habits can make you. Let’s talk about both.

Bad Habits

You have to unlearn the wrong way before you can learn the right way, and your habits are no different. While I will be covering some of the most common bad habits here, I urge you to do an honest assessment of your own personal habits. Determine which ones are holding you back from being your best self, and eliminate them harshly and mercilessly.

Staying Up Late and Sleeping In

Regardless of who you are, you need proper sleep. Unless you are some kind of genetic anomaly, you need the same 6-8 hours of sleep that every other adult does. Don’t make excuses, make time for proper sleep.

What time staying up late and sleeping in are can be relative to your situation. Not everyone can go to bed at 9 p.m. and get up at 5 a.m., but that is a good metric for measuring when you should be sleeping. Stop staying up late and sleeping in. Get proper sleep, and get up early.

A final note on this. Don’t use staying up late as an excuse to not get up early. We’ll cover that in more detail in good habits.

Skipping Workouts

You’re too tired. You’re hungry. Your relationship partner needs more attention. The excuses can be endless if you let them. Refuse to allow any excuses. The only acceptable reasons to skip a workout are injury and emergencies. Stop letting yourself off easy.

Rewarding Yourself Before Your Day Off

Don’t reward yourself with treats, extra rest, or anything else that detracts from your progress. This is a trap and an easy habit to fall into. The reward for success is more hard work. Rest on your day off, not before.

Self Medication

Regardless of what your problems are, self medicating with junk food, alcohol, drugs, self-harm, or any other destructive behavior is not helping you. Stopping these things goes well beyond normal health, it can very well save your life. If you struggle with any of these things, reach out to someone. Me, a professional, a family member, a hotline, anyone.

Good Habits

Once you’ve unlearned the bad habits, it’s time to start getting into the good ones. As with bad habits, I’ll just be covering some of the more commonly helpful practices. You know your life best. If something works for you and doesn’t harm you or anyone else, do it.

Getting Up Early

Notice that I don’t say anything about going to bed early here. The point here is to develop discipline, one way or the other. Either you have the discipline to go to bed on time so you can get a full night’s sleep, or you’re forced to have the discipline to get up early after you stayed up late. If you struggle with doing this all at once, start off just getting up 30 minutes earlier than you normally would, and gradually work back your wake up time until your body can adjust.

Why get up early you ask? So you can…

Exercise First Thing in the Morning

Get your workouts in first thing in the morning (or whenever your schedule has you waking up). Get up however early you need to in order to get the full workout in and get to your first obligation early. This habit alone will set you up for fantastic levels of personal health and success.

Plan Your Meals

Eating healthy doesn’t happen consistently on a whim. Plan everything about your nutrition. Plan your shopping list around what you will be making for the next two weeks, minimum. If at all possible, bulk prepare your food in advance so that you have no excuse to not eat those healthy meals your planned. The day after your day off, make all of the food you will need for that week, and refrigerate it. It’s much easier to re-heat a Tupperware of prepared food than it is to look at a clean kitchen and force yourself to cook.

Drink Water

Yes, water intake gets its own entry. It’s that important. Not flavored water, not coffee or even tea (though those are fine and even encouraged). No, what I’m talking about here your daily pure water intake. The average person tends to be dehydrated to some degree unless they are consciously making an effort not to be. So that’s what you need to be doing. The method that works best for me is to fill up a 64 oz. water bottle at the beginning of each day, and make sure it’s empty by the end of the day. This is the one sitting on my desk (click the image to be taken to where you can get it):

Regardless of how you accomplish it, drink enough water. How much is enough varies by person to person. The supposed 8 cups a day requirement is a myth, but it’s not a bad bench mark.

What Are Your Habits?

As I mentioned before, these are just some of the good and bad habits you can focus on to accelerate the clean up of your life. Doing these will unquestionably improve your life and get you in the direction. Don’t stop there, however. Examine your life, shrewdly root out your other bad habits, and replace them with positive ones that will keep you on the right path. Share your own good and bad habits below, and tell us how you kicked or started them. You never know who you might inspire or help on their own path.

Next week we’re going to look outward from your own direct and personal health into the rest of your life. The reason we started here is that it’s significantly more difficult to tackle those other areas without first making sure you are strong, healthy, and well rested first. Be ready, we’re not slowing down now.