Cultivating wellness through daily habits is a practical strategy. It helps us to leverage our habitual nature to turn bad habits into healthy ones. That’s right, we use our instinctual nature to develop creative productivity habits. Here are the steps to turn bad habits into healthy ones.
We are creatures of habit, and habits, especially bad ones, are hard to break. A routine is simply a sequence of something we do regularly. Habits are routines that are ingrained, making them hard to break or deviate from.
Establishing Wellness-Oriented Routines
Some people try to change habits the hard way by trying to avoid or stop compulsive behavior. But there’s a better way. Rather than fighting against our nature, we can learn to use it. It’s a mind hack that turns a bad habit into a positive behavior. Wow, what a great idea!
Instead of trying to stop the habit or addiction by stopping the activity, we replace the bad habit with positive thinking. This is one of those powerful mind hacks that create positive behaviors using our habitual nature. You can do this.
Cultivating Wellness Through Daily Habits
If we are going to change behavior, we need to have a positive goal that we want to reach with the new thought pattern. Once you identify the trigger, you can interrupt the harmful script. This gives you the opportunity to replace the negative pattern with a positive one.
We’ll start by setting goals, which will be our targets and benchmarks for progress. Then, we’ll use an inner work tool to find the thought scripts that trigger our bad habits. Once we know these triggers, we’ll change them using affirmations. Last, we’ll build our plan around our goals, using our new triggers to help leverage our habitual nature.
We want you to consider cultivating wellness through daily habits as a lifestyle. It’s built around personalized wellness plans and activities to give you the best outcomes.
Some people use aversion tactics to prevent the negative thought process from taking precedence. Aversion therapy is learning to associate the thought pattern with something undesirable.
Another tactic you can use alone or with the aversion tactic is the use of the right goal, which helps shift the focus to a positive outcome.
Establishing Creative Productivity Habits
Rather than using the aversion process of associating the habit with an undesirable outcome, we will use a two-pronged process. First, we identify a positive goal for the focus of our energy. Then, we’ll identify any harmful thought scripts and replace them with scripts to support our goals.
1. Create Personalized Wellness Plans and Goals
Setting goals is one of the best ways to create positive behaviors because the right objective gives you a roadmap for success. The right goals have certain characteristics that make them powerful. The acronym Smart stands for:
— Specific
— Measurable
— Attainable
— Realistic
— Time-oriented or time-sensitive
Break the larger goals into smaller benchmarks. These incremental goals are stepping stones that build momentum toward the ultimate goal. For example, if you want to lose 20 lbs, you start with an initial target of 2 pounds. This way, you celebrate each step of progress because celebrating small gains motivates you to keep going.
Put the most challenging item at the top of your to-do list. They call this practice “eating the frog.” You eat the frog to get the most difficult item out of the way first. Prioritizing the most challenging thing first will help you in several ways.
First, it builds an essential behavior for success. Reaching incremental creates momentum to accomplish larger objectives, which increases your confidence. Your success strengthens your intent.
Also, make daily goals. Keep the list short, only five or six items. Establishing wellness-oriented routines starts with small, specific behaviors. It is easy if you take it one step at a time. It gives you direction but does not overwhelm you. If you already use a to-do list, then scale it back to only ten things. Next, make sure your list includes things from the next steps below.
2. Inner Work to Overcome Bad Habits
Many people find this the hardest but most freeing aspect of this process. We recommend the Repetitive Question Exercise. With this process, you will identify the bad habits and their accompanying thought scripts. The essence of this process is to ask the same question over and over, trying to find a new answer each time. Doing this gets below your pre-programmed answers to the truth.
Here’s an example of the questions you can ask that you can use to delve into your subconscious. “What is a bad habit of mine?” “What is a way I self-sabotage myself?”
Once you have your list of bad habits, the sheer number of them will surprise you. That’s okay. Now, you know the thoughts that drive your bad habits. Replace the harmful thought script with a positive one. For example, you have a recurring thought script that says, “I’m too tired to exercise.” Replace it with, “I may be tired, but I’m going to exercise, anyway.” You know that starting is often the hardest part. This is the kind of simple affirmation that sets creative productivity habits in motion.
3. Learn and Practice Meditation
Make time for meditation. Start small, just one minute. No matter how tight your schedule is, everyone can spare one minute. We recommend starting with the simple two-step meditation script. It’s something you can do in less than a minute which will have a positive effect on your mindset.
Meditation is the mind’s reset button. All successful personalized wellness plans include meditation on the list. Your practice should include both seated and moving forms of meditation. It’s easy. This practice provides more energy and focus and improves overall health and welfare. Use your smartphone to set a reminder every day. You know there are benefits to meditation. So start today. Try it now; it only takes one minute.
Taking time for yourself is a building block to strengthen the mind. Learning to fold your attention inward is a key to mental and physical health. A two-minute break can recharge your mental batteries and center your focus. Meditation is the foundation of good habits because it provides clarity of thought.
4. Incorporating Exercise into Daily Habits
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” ― Jim Rohn
We all start in different places, and our bodies are all different. Some people have more obstacles to their health than others. The level of our health affects every aspect of life, so it’s crucial to pay attention to health.
Exercise should be on the list of goals. It’s hard to be consistent, so keep starting over. Put your list of things to maintain your health on your SMART goals list. What exercise plan is best for you? If you have health limitations, ask your doctor. The thing you need to do is start today. Walking is a good place to start.
There are a number of exercise alternatives available online and in DVD format. Pre-programmed training programs have advantages. You can use them anytime, and they provide a way to gauge your progress. Start small with 250 steps an hour.
Incorporating exercise into daily habits makes it a part of life. Many people find it helpful to have a specific time each day for exercise. Exercising the mind and body gives us a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.
5. Eating for Energy and Nutrition
This is another difficult step. Learn to eat based on your nutritional needs, not what your palate desires. You need to eliminate fast food and soft drinks. Getting rid of food-like substances and extreme amounts of sugar and sugar substitutes will go a long way toward improving your diet.
Many people, especially in the USA, are overweight. There are several excellent applications that work with fitness wearables to help you create and stick to a healthy diet. Diet is one of the most difficult things to get right, so make it a priority on your goals list. Incorporating exercise into daily habits only accounts for a small portion of the overall impact on your wellness. Learn portion control and eat fresh foods.
6. Read Something New
Read something outside your typical reading genre, such as books on science and philosophy. Always look for authors and subjects that challenge your current thinking. Make sure they are from new authors and sources outside of your worldview. Read a variety of books and blogs like this one that challenge your thinking.
If you want something interesting, read the banned books first (2). People and governments make them off-limits because they expose injustice, bias, and prejudice. These books reveal society’s hypocrisy.
Personalized wellness plans should include sources that challenge your thinking. Learning new things is good for you. These are precisely the facts you need to make rational decisions. Reading creates a healthy, skeptical mindset.
7. Increase Social Awareness
Increasing your social awareness also increases your problem-solving skills. A side effect of this will be a growing concern for people in harm’s way and the environment. It will open avenues for you to help make the world a better place.
It’s the small acts of kindness that make a big difference. Don’t underestimate the power of your actions. Do what you can within your sphere of influence. Building good behaviors should have a positive effect on your life and the world.
The other side of social awareness is learning to identify and avoid harmful social programming. Eliminate or minimize the use of TV news and religious programming, and you’ll immediately feel better. Religion is still the primary source of harmful social bias and prejudice. Learn to be a freethinker and steer clear of those who promote racist and prejudicial thinking.
Establishing wellness-oriented routines incorporating social accountability will increase the likelihood of success. Above all, fill your life with hope and allow yourself to become vulnerable. Open your eyes to social injustice and do something about it, like voting. Learn to live a courageous life.
8. Maintain Healthy Friendships
Alright, let’s address the obvious issue — social media. It can help us establish new connections, but we must be aware that it is often used to manipulate opinions and spread propaganda. If you cut your social media time in half, no matter what it is, you’ll feel better about life.
Don’t overlook your face-to-face relationships. A healthy friendship is one in which both parties gain equal support. It doesn’t mean spending a lot of time together. Friends often have common interests. It makes spending time together enjoyable. Friends help each other become the best versions of themselves. Time apart gives a friend new information to share. Time together helps us build meaningful shared memories.
9. Reducing the Clutter
Reducing the disorder in our lives is essential. Minimizing the number of unused or unusable objects in our lives enables us to maximize the value of what is necessary. This strategy works. Clutter exists in two realms, the physical and mental—both work hand in hand. When things are less cluttered and organized in our physical world, we feel better, calmer, and more self-assured. And when we feel better, we make better decisions.
So, reducing the clutter in our physical world reduces unnecessary and unhealthy thoughts. It’s also an unhealthy comfort zone for many. Reducing clutter helps build good behaviors, enabling you to make positive changes that will affect the world.
It fits well with the first item on our list, setting goals. The difference here is the focus on minimizing the number of things we own. That’s because our possessions can end up owning us. After all, it takes time and resources to gain them. The idea behind cultivating wellness through daily habits is to create an uncluttered, focused mental attitude.
In our modern culture, collecting things is an acceptable habitual practice. And so, accumulating stuff becomes an external measuring stick of success. This isn’t true, but that’s how the cultural narrative works. One of the significant elements of cultural folklore is commercialism. Collecting things becomes an overwhelming habit. Instead, we want to use our habitual nature to create healthy thinking patterns. An uncluttered mind and physical environment are vital to our health.
10. Be Authentic
Finally, be authentic. Don’t pretend your way through life. Don’t fake it until you make it. If you do, you’ll end up being a fake. Be brave and be present. Become a warrior of light, confronting injustice and prejudice with compassion.
Our modern culture teaches us to conceal any negative emotions. We are to smile even when we are sad or depressed. This conditioning leads to stress overload and other serious mental issues.
Many people pretend for so long that they don’t know who they are; they lose touch with their feelings. All their monetary success does not make them happier, and it causes more frustration. It’s the stark reality that modern society uses peer pressure driven by commercialism. Presenting a fake persona of success is all that counts.
What got us to the place where our culture drives these hollow aims? The blame lies with the dominant worldview. It’s the legacy of the Abrahamic tree (3), which dominates most modern cultures.
These systems begin the indoctrination of children at an early age. They have perfected groupthink manipulation, which overrides logic and reason. In this system, people must suppress questions and feelings of doubt. However, its worldwide reach makes it nearly impossible to avoid its effects. So, do what you can within your sphere of influence. Speak up and plant facts, but be safe.
There are situations where it’s best to guard your words and emotions. Become mindful of the social implications of being honest. Sometimes, it is prudent not to express your feelings. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Only share your opinions when it is safe. It’s good to have a friend with whom you can be honest and express your genuine feelings.
Balancing your health and wellness is an important ongoing task. Keep it in mind, and you’ll make it happen.
How to Create Personalized Wellness Plans
Start with step one and create some SMART goals. Brainstorm. Pick goals that stretch your limits. Then, break them down into realistic benchmarks. Go to the list of the other seven items and build these elements into your plan.
Some of these elements will require you to do some thinking. For instance, how do you frame a goal for being authentic? Perhaps this is wearing clothes that make you feel good or unique. Or maybe it’s listening to your favorite music.
Cultivating wellness through daily habits is a practical plan. The strategy to create positive behaviors uses the power of our habitual nature. So, don’t think of your habitual nature as a bad thing. It can be a powerful tool to improve your life.
References
(1) SMART goals: Wikipedia
(2) List of banned books governments: Wikipedia
(3) Abrahamic Religions: Wikipedia