5 HABITS THAT MASSIVELY HELP
Worth noting, these have all massively helped me. There are hundreds of others, of which I’d love to hear which have helped you. One of the most beautiful parts of life is we get to choose our value calculation and how we grow. And we can all help each other to do just that.
1. Go to bed early, wake up early, do the hardest part of the day first.
I am far from certain that my exact schedule, or even “early to bed, early to rise” needs be yours. So let me cover the full spectrum of this incredibly healthy habit. Ever ever since my blog about how I wake up at 3 AM was mentioned on a popular podcast, I frequently get asked from night owls the following; “is it harmful as a habit to stay up late?” What works for you may not be what works for me and visa versa. I love running while one of my best friends prefers swimming — yet we are still getting great cardiovascular fitness. So the key for me with this habit is two pronged and can be replicated no matter your exact schedule.
First, When I am up at 3 AM I have no “noise” in a world of rampant texts, emails and phone calls. It’s 5 AM as I write this and still no calls or texts. If you’re a night owl and it’s midnight, I suspect the same thing. No different you can get more done with less distractions.
Second, is doing the hard part first. Most get that this instinctively makes sense. My most viral Tik Tok video ever was a visualization of this phenomenon.
But what is simple isn’t always easy; hence the need to make it a habit. On Saturday’s I often write a well-being blog. Do I really want to to be writing this at 5 AM rather than later today? I more than often don’t. But once I do I’ll hike, read, see friends, or pretty much anything I want that’s healthy to do later today. In fact before writing this I worked out. You get it — the two things that were the hardest part of my Saturday I will have done be 6 AM and the rest of my day is now liberated for whatever I want. You don’t have to wake up at 3 AM, If you wake up at 8 AM you can still do the hardest things first. It’s a wonderful habit to develop; once you do the difficult things don’t ever go undone. In fact, they get done first and your day becomes much less stressful.
2. If you're thinking fondly about someone, it takes just a few seconds to also tell them.
This sounds so obvious but many of us don’t do this, and for most of my life I very much fell into this category. Why? It tracks with what I wrote about last week, ‘We Are All Cowards’ that when we compliment someone or put ourselves out there, in our minds we are opening ourselves up for rejection. If you think you should adopt this habit more I’d encourage you to read that blog, we can override that rejection mechanism and, if done in a measured way, there is absolutely nothing but win/win here. Worth nothing, you indeed also win when you let others know fond thoughts about someone else. I’ll use an analogy from author Dan Harris, you can hold a door open for another person for selfish reasons too. You’ll also feel good. But don’t stand there all day holding the door open either. Point being you don’t have to love bomb someone, just tell them how you feel instead of holding back when you have the thought.
3. Make blocks of time in each day to put your phone in the other room.
Have you noticed you are doom scrolling news or instagram or anything else on your phone more than ever before? It’s not your fault, tech and social media companies are just getting better every day and hitting our most powerful dopamine releasing mechanism — the intermittent reward system (Dr. Judson Brewer explains this beautifully on my podcast with him). So we scroll until we randomly hit something we like, get a surge of dopamine and keep scrolling hoping for that next unpredictable hit. Casinos figured this phenomenon out a long time ago with slot machines. We now walk around with our own personal slot machine, our phones.
Everything with an up has a down. Artificial dopamine in the moment produces anhedonia downstream. Put in lay terms, spending too much time on your phone will deplete your motivation. I know of no more simple solution than to just ditch your phone several time a day. You’ll see your motivation to do other things surge.
4. Track everything you want to change in your life.
To be sincere, this is a habit I fall in and out of but when I’m needing to get back into good habits I take the 10 most important habits for me and I track every single one. That’s the cover picture for this blog. Did I workout? Did I write? Did I learn? Was I kind to myself? Those are all boxes (among others) I can check off and see my progress go up.
5. Promises to yourself are great. Acting on those promises is much better. You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.
Author Gary John Bishop says it best — we are always our actions never our thoughts. I’ll end on that, go do. You’ll never regret when you get out and act on something you’ve set your mind to.
Feel free to email or comment in my post your habits. I hope these top 5 help!
Mike Spivey
We are our own griefs. We are our own happinesses. We are our own remedies.