Bad Habit Examiner

Let’s examine your daily good and bad habits. Answer the following ten questions honestly.

1. What keeps you from going to bed early enough?
2. What keeps you working too long days?
3. What keeps you sitting too much?
4. What keeps you from skipping your daily exercise and meditation, the gym for the brains?
5. What keeps you from forgetting breakfast and replacing meals with bad snacks?
6. What keeps you from harming your body with too much alcohol or sugar?
7. What keeps you from giving time and energy to your loved ones?
8. What keeps you yelling at your kids/parents/spouse?
9. What keeps you skipping the daily things you love?
10. What keeps you tired, exhausted, and irritated? 

If your answer is ten times nothing, I am clapping for you. You don’t have reasons why you can’t live healthier and happier. Your habits are probably already excellent. If they are not, you don’t have any reason why you could not change them. Change your bad habits to healthier ones.

If your answers are something else, we have a challenge here. We have to examine where your bad habits come from and try to change them permanently.

Habits change us without us noticing.

Life has a cause-and-effect relationship, and our habits are the cause.

If we eat poorly, we will lack the energy to do other things in life. If we skip all exercise because we have too much, our bodies and brains will soon become weak and tired. If we are constantly busy (yes, avoiding rest can be a habit), we will become exhausted, nervous, and angry.

If we spend our days and nights lying alone on the sofa and watching series, it soon becomes hard to get up. Lack of activity makes us passive, lonely, lazy, and sometimes even depressed.

Drinking alcohol or using drugs are challenging and dangerous bad habits because they are addictive and alienate us from everyday life, people, and standard rules. They also steal our sleep quality, energy, and vitality and make us the grey shadows of the person we could be. They also weaken our morals and make us forget our values and priorities.

Lack of something crucial leads quickly to anger and anxiety

The lack of rest, energy, nutrition, sleep, activities, and balance forms a recipe for anger, sorrow, anxiety, and irritation. Your regular mood gets lousy. Even small obstacles start to feel enormous. You neglect and hate everything, and often, you also hate yourself.

That’s why you yell at your loved ones, skip what you love, and neglect your physical and psychological needs like proper food, exercise, inspiration, caring, and rest.

It works like a wheel. Your bad habits make you feel bad, and because you feel bad, you don’t have the energy and motivation to change them. Then the situation gets quickly worse and worse.

Good news: We can change our bad habits and lives

The good news is that we are humans and can change our lives. We can often rescue ourselves. 

Please choose at least one of your bad habits every week and change it for the better.

If you can’t eat proper breakfast because you wake up so late, wake up earlier. If you are too tired to wake up earlier, you must go to bed earlier. Your body needs proper sleep, but it minds more about the amount and quality of sleep than the exact timetable.

If you yell for the people you love just because you are tired, sleep and relax so much that you are not tired anymore. Promise the others that you don’t yell anymore, and if you accidentally do, you must do 50 pushups or give the person you attacked some reward.

If you work too much because your job is too busy or demanding, talk to your boss and figure out how to get things back in order.

When changing habits is not as easy as it sounds…

I know things can be more complicated. You can shave insomnia or some other problem. Small kids, restless pets, or snoring fiance can keep you awake at night. Your boss might be a disaster, and your job may be catastrophic. You might do three jobs to survive with your debts. Somebody close to you could be seriously ill, and you cannot do anything but think about that all day and night.

We can seldom foresee and understand our fellows’ problems and sorrows.

But what if your life is just like usual? What If you and your family are healthy and wealthy? What if you do not have three jobs, enormous depths, and both your boss and a job are okay? What if your kids and pets let you sleep, and your fiance is not snoring? What if you are just used to your bad habits?

How do we change bad habits into better ones?

When you have recognized your new, better habits, it is time to roll your sleeves. Do the latest thing the whole week so it becomes a routine. Make it a routine but not too difficult. No self-picked blueberries for daily breakfasts, no 15-kilometer runs every morning before taking the kids to the daycare and going to work.

If you aim immediately too high, the positive change will be temporary, which we don’t want.

Then comes the secret of changing habits. You do not think anymore about the old bad habit—never. What was then is gone. You start to live as you have always done things in a new, better way. You begin to figure yourself out as a healthy eater, active, happy, and loving parent, spouse, friend, employee, and person. You figure yourself out as the best version of yourself.

Soon, you will notice a positive change. You not only gain more energy and a better mood, but you also start to like yourself and others more. Others do the same for you.