Five Habits to Improve Your Life and Well-Being
By susan Knight | Cultivating the right habits will help steer your life in the right direction.
Written by Susan Knight | Seeking Veritas Columnist | Sankarsingh-Gonsalves Productions - (From the book Living Well: Self-Discovery, Connection and Growth by Susan Knight – reproduced with permission)
As you go about your daily life, you're constantly making choices. You choose what to focus on and where to direct your attention. You choose who to spend time with and which relationships to invest in. You choose your responses to the different situations and circumstances that come your way.
Over time, all the choices you engage in on a regular basis solidify into habits. And those habits matter, because they influence the trajectory of your life.
Habits Influence the Trajectory of Your Life
Your life reflects a collision of multiple factors. While some of these factors can be anticipated and/or controlled, other factors are entirely beyond your control. When it comes to the factors you do have control over, your personal habits play a significant role in determining the trajectory of your life and the outcomes you experience. In light of that, it makes sense to cultivate solid habits that serve you well. Ultimately, you want to cultivate a collection of habits that will bring about the outcomes you find most desirable.
Whatever your goals and the outcomes you wish to achieve, the following five habits will improve your life and lead to greater well-being.
Habit #1: Make your own decisions.
At one time or another, we’ve all had the experience of being pressured, swayed, or influenced in our decision-making. While facing the negative consequences of a poor decision may be unpleasant, it’s worse to be left dealing with the fallout from a decision that was never yours to begin with.
Strive to make your own decisions, based on your own values. This forces you to develop your own convictions about the path you want to follow, enabling you to proceed wholeheartedly and confidently. It also enables you to weather the impact if things don't turn out well, because you know you acted in accordance with what you truly believe in.
Habit #2: After being knocked down, aim to get back up as quickly as possible.
At some point in life (likely at multiple points), you’ll find yourself knocked down. It could be a job loss, a relationship breakdown, a personal setback, the loss of someone close to you, or some other major event. These events are inevitable, and they can be extremely painful.
When something happens that knocks you down, you obviously need time to catch your breath and regain your bearings. How much time? That differs from person to person. Recovery is highly personal; healing takes time, and we all know you can't rush the process. This is where it becomes a bit of a balancing act. On one hand, you want to give yourself adequate time to recover without setting unrealistic expectations for yourself. On the other hand, you want to get back on your feet as quickly as possible.
Why is this so important? When issues start to pile up while you're down, the situation can go from bad to worse rapidly. This process sets you back further and makes it more difficult to get back up onto your feet again. You eventually reach a point where even minor problems become difficult to manage because you have not yet recovered from the previous issue.
If you're finding it difficult to bounce back on your own, don't prolong things while the situation deteriorates; seek out support.
Habit #3: Identify the good people in your life and invest in those relationships.
Don't make the mistake of taking the good people in your life for granted. Invest in these relationships, allowing the bonds to grow and strengthen over time.
Even though you'll continue to meet new people in future, nothing can replace the understanding, trust, and intimacy to be found in close relationships nurtured over years. In times of distress, these deep, longstanding relationships can truly be a lifeline, providing the support and encouragement you need to hold on and push through.
Habit #4: Identify the unhealthy or harmful relationships in your life and distance yourself from them.
Especially when you've had someone in your life for a long time and you're closely attached to them, it can be extremely difficult to separate yourself from them. Even when you can clearly see yourself being discouraged, used, manipulated, pulled into situations you would rather not be in, or otherwise treated poorly, you might still be reluctant to pull away. Instead, you find ways to rationalize the behaviour taking place and why you should continue to put up with it.
Challenges in close relationships are normal, and pushing through those challenges often makes the relationship stronger. However, if the entire tenor of a relationship is one of pain, distress, or harm, that's not normal or healthy. If issues are ongoing or worsening, with no possibility of improvement, that's cause for concern. Over time, these kinds of relationships drag you down, hold you back, drain you, and ultimately wreak havoc in your life.
Know when it's time to distance yourself from the unhealthy or harmful relationships in your life. Be honest with yourself about the detrimental impact the relationship is having on you and take action, even if it’s difficult to do so. Letting go just might wind up being the best thing you can do for your emotional health and well-being.
Habit #5: Think big-picture and long-term.
How many of our problems are due to the fact we were short-sighted; or acted impulsively without thinking things through? As we look back, it becomes clear how so many of our problems could have been avoided simply by pausing long enough to ask: “What are the possible consequences of this decision?”
Are you about to make a poor decision because you're focused on one issue, to the exclusion of everything else? Is your focus on short-term ease or gain setting you up for long-term consequences? Taking a moment to think about the big-picture and long-term impact of your decisions can help you shift your perspective and reassess your priorities.
Conclusion
It’s easy to become preoccupied with the responsibilities and pressures of life, to the extent where you’re running on automatic and making many of your choices with little thought or consideration. As those choices develop into patterns of behaviour, the end result is the cultivation of habits that don’t necessarily serve your best interests. As you make choices every day, strive to make the kinds of choices that lead to healthy, beneficial habits that steer your life in the right direction.
About the author: Susan Knight | SGP Featured Writer | Contact the author: @ http://skfreelance.com
Susan is a writer, certified health and wellness coach, and author of Living Well: Self-Discovery, Connection and Growth
