The Importance of Building Healthy Habits First
Recently, I thought of writing a series of articles about the struggles of entrepreneurship with a focus on students and their ideas. I’ve always wanted to be my own boss and work on my terms. So I decided to test my ability and see if I can write about the topic I am passionate about.
My main goal was to help students realize their potential and possibly be more confident to execute on business ideas.
With no experience in business and still just a student, my initial thoughts were that my help would be of no use to anyone. Preaching what you don’t practice won’t take you anywhere — I thought.
That’s why I decided to let go of talking about what I love. Because only love is not enough. Showing love is nothing without taking an action.
Being passionate is always about something that YOU DO. Not only what you WANT TO DO.
Everything else is not a passion, it’s simply an interest, at least to me.
Not having any experience in business translates into lack of foundation or structure for me. And also because I am only 22 years old. But I prefer not to rely too much on age.
At any time, if you are starting something new, the best tool you have in your hands is the knowledge you have accumulated until that moment. You can’t climb the ladder without having the wood to make one.
So that’s when I realized I will start from scratch and focus on the foundational things that I believe can make young people in general confident to make the next step.
And that foundation is created by what we do everyday — Habits.
Disclaimer: Don’t expect to see some extraordinary habits here. It’s the wrong way to see it. Before adopting completely new habits, you can already look at what you are currently doing wrong. Fix a harmful habit first and then dive into a new, better one. :)
Sleep
I am sure we all know one of the major cause of our mood swings is having a shity sleep. Especially if you need to wake up early tomorrow.I can’t stress enough on that even though you probably hear it oftentimes.
Getting a good sleep is a key to high functioning during the day. Sleeplessness is one of the most obvious reasons for having a bad day. Think about it!
You don’t only sleep bad, you also start hating waking up early. And when you have to wake up early, you do it with a feeling of resentment. You attend that meeting you need to be present with a straight face and end up getting the worst out of it. Repeat that 50 times and you’ll end up miserable every time you think about waking up early.
Waking up early doesn’t suck. It’s not being able to enjoy your day and function normally that is killing us mentally.
The first thing you can do is to eliminate distractions that can keep you away from going to bed early. I used to scroll on my phone before I went to bed. Usually, that continued for hours until I got sleepy enough to just let it go.
What I identified here is that one good habit is broken when there are many bad ones interfering. Meaning that, all the habits we have are interconnected in one way or another. If I managed to stop scrolling on my phone before I sleep, I would decrease the chance of being distracted and not sleeping early.
On the contrary, you could argue that your phone helps you to get sleepy, because you are not feeling tired enough to fall asleep. That argument can be valid, but only if you use your phone in moderation and know when to stop. In my case I couldn’t make the proper calculation so I decided to drop it out of the picture.
But let’s explore it from a deeper perspective. If your ability to identify the right time to stop using your phone is not well-functioning, then you subcounsciously treat yourself as weak and dependent person. And if you are those two things, soon you become undisciplined. You constantly make the choice to not start a change even though you suffer the negative consequences from that bad habit. That lack of discipline is later all over the place. It now concerns your decision-making on a daily basis. You avoid what you know is bad for you and it simply comes back to you. Oftentimes, the decisions you make don’t only concern you. It also involves other people. And if you can’t make a proper decision that can do good to your surrounding, you become helpless and useless and resentful. All that process, shown from a deeper level, frightened me enough to imagine how useless I would become after repeating that process for several years. The scariest part is that at some point, there’s no point of coming back.
If you don’t dive deeper into understanding the consequences of not doing the things you should be doing NOW, you’ll silently see the results in a few years time. But the only difference would be that you won’t get the chance to change it even if you wanted to. Which is literally, the definition of REGRET.
You can argue that I am taking this too seriously, but I call that a pretty straightforward and practical approach: “Positive change driven by pessimism”.
You can also project the best case scenario. Let’s say you attempt to improve and get yourself a well-deserved sleep. You take the conscious decision to stay away from your phone and you find a better, more enriching way to end the day before you fall asleep. Maybe you grab a book and you read. Or you write down your thoughts. Or maybe you grab a notebook and start to write a plan for tomorrow. Whatever you choose to do, you attempt to do something different, for the sake of good. Then you wake up the next day, feeling fresh and mentally prepared for the day. You attend that meeting with a somewhat less negative mindset and you make an effort to get the best you could out of it. You can’t see the good coming back to you immediately, however you feel content and grateful to yourself for making the right choice at that particular moment. You get to take control when it’s necessary. You perhaps then decide to reward yourself, and no wonder, because you actually deserve it. People get to see the best side of you and as you get positive recognition, you think highly of yourself. Which is a great facilitator to become confident into making the next step into your personal development.
I personally try to use both scenarios to my advantage depending on the occasion. If I see that I am deteriorating into old bad habits, I bring the image of the horrible consequences. If I start to think the good I’m doing doesn’t have any immediate effect, I try to remain patient and imagine how much better I can be.
Exercise
If you occasionally struggle to discipline yourself, exercising regularly might be able to help you. Even the tiniest bit of exercise everyday can make your day way more productive and content.
The first thing I do when I wake up is to do 20 push ups. Usually this is the only exercise I do for the whole day. Even though it’s so little, I can assure you that it sets you positively for the day. If you ever feel stuck or sad, find a way to exercise for at least 20 minutes. According to many studies, exercise produces endorphins in your brain, which is a natural mood lifter.
To me, exercising represents a sort of value that brings the best out of me. It brings some order to the chaos of thoughts and duties I have. It also decreases my anxiety as it strengthens my mentality.
One thing I tried is to test myself and see how long I will stick with exercising. In the beginning, the process of getting up and having the motivation to exercise was overwhelming. Especially if I hadn’t had a proper sleep. However, once my sleep schedule became stable, I started giving up the excuses in my head that stopped me from exercising. I didn’t precisely become disciplined. Rather, I was confident enough to challenge myself and was more curious than scared to see what would happen if I don’t succeed in building that habit.
It’s obvious that exercising will enhance your ability to function better. But apparently that’s not enough. I knew that exercising would help. I knew all about the benefits. Yet I didn’t start. “Why not” — you might ask? Well because before you get to the benefits, you have to sacrifice along the way. And here, I am not referring to something in the physical world. I am talking about sacrificing your comfort and exposing yourself to a challenge bigger than you. Because if you want to start building a foundation, you need to give up the things that make you feel comfortable and be okay with becoming vulnerable. Vulnerability is scary, but also perhaps one of the most conscious and liberating realizations you could possess. In one way or another, knowing that that I am vulnerable, helped me realize that the best option I had was to go out in the wild and expose myself to challenges. By doing that, I faced many fears, but also looked in a place, where I never looked before. It’s a kind of an exposure therapy — I would say.
And that my friends, created purpose. Deep purpose helped me determine the relevance of what I am doing every day. And be bold about the everyday decisions I make. Because every small thing you do — matters.
I can imagine not many people think about their life in that way. And I understand, because it’s hard, mentally demanding and often too chaotic.
Reflecting back on my ongoing journey, I can tell you one thing:
It’s a hell of an adventure. It’s a hard game that I continue to learn to love playing. And at the end of the day it’s all about creating the proper rules that sustain the game through time.
Habits have the highest impact on your development. They are the key decision-makers in the game of success in every aspect. What we do everyday is what we become. Adopting the right habits is the single most practical test you can take to understand how growth actually works.
Go onto your own adventure and be the main character in your game.
