How to build up healthy habits

The idea of building up new habits is a nightmare for some people, because of the famous comfort zone. Usually we don’t make any change in our lifestyles until we step down so deep that we struggle to reach the surface again. Anyway, the important thing is to make a change, right? Because never is too late. Well, let me tell you something… Yes, it can be too late sometimes. Considering that is really difficult to get back all those years of good health that you probably throw away 5, 10 or even 20 years go.

On the other hand, it’s always good to reconsider what we have done in life and make considerable adjusts to our habits if we decide so, to improve our health, appearance and performance.

It doesn’t matter if you are 20 or 40 years old, if you want to recover your health, energy levels and vitality or simply build up new healthy habits to stick with them for the rest of your life; I have few tips that might help you to step towards to the newest, fresher and greatest version of you.

Before we jump onto the tips, I would like to have a look to the word “habit” to understand more its meaning.

Habit 1. an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. 

By Dictionary.com 

Based on the definition, we can conclude that replacing old habits with new ones is indeed a hard task and it won’t happen from one day to another. Therefore, we should be patience and constant because it will take its time until those new habits become almost involuntary. 

6 Tips to build up healthy habits

1. Reflect on your current lifestyle and the habits you want to change

The best way I can explain this is with an example:

• If you want to stop eating fast food, what should you do? Well, stop eating fast food.

Eating fast food is the habit you would like to change.

2. Make a plan to stick to the new habits

We will stick with the example given before.

• What plan would you make to stop eating fast food?

Perhaps, you might want to buy some take away containers and start cooking more at home.

3. Forget about extreme options

Something we should have present is to don’t be too tough with ourselves.

• If you want to stop eating fast food, do you think is a great idea to stop it suddenly?

Let me tell you that it’s not actually an ideal thing to do. You should start decreasing the amount of times you eat out slowly, day by day. Until you reach a point where you don’t do it anymore or only in special occasions.

4. Make your closest ones aware of your new habits

If you make your closest ones aware of your new habits they might help you to stick with them and might join you in the process if they want.

5. Practice the new habits for more than three weeks

If you need to set up an specific alarm or put notes on the fridge to remind you about your new habits, do it. Do it for long enough, maybe three or more weeks, to make sure you stick with the new habits.

6. Recheck your habits and adjust again

Make sure after you have transformed your habits into newest ones, you recheck them and do some adjusts again if needed.

We never stop improving, we always grow.