Before you go to the bedroom or even before you settle down to watch some television-whatever your nightly routine-go through your house for just 15 minutes. Try setting a timer when you’re just starting out forming this habit. Most importantly? It keeps the mess from escalating, which keeps us from lashing out at our husbands and children, or from being angry with ourselves. However, just sweeping through the house, picking up items lying around, cleaning up spills as they happen and rinsing your dishes and putting them in the dishwasher can make a world of difference. And vacuuming and dusting every single day? Not gonna happen. It’s probably not realistic to expect to spend two hours every day cleaning from ceiling to floor. It prepares us for visitors, helps us be more efficient, allows for a better night’s sleep and even helps us get along with our spouse and our children better. Picking up, keeping things organized and even just making the bed helps us feel better. Try applying some of these good habits to your daily life as “starter habits”-and it’s only up from there! 1. Keep Things Tidy 10 Simple Habits That Will Change Your Life Here are a bunch of great habits (beyond brushing) to help you be more successful, happier and less stressed. Journaling or just writing down your future good habits can really help. It’s a good idea to spend time thinking about what habits you really want to form and identifying what’s most important to you. Thus, the more good habits we can create, the more productive, happier and successful we can become. We don’t have to think about them, we just do them, and they don’t drain our mental energy. My mouth feels better-you have the recipe for a good habit.īut here’s the cool part (and the BIG reason creating good habits matters so much): habits, once established, use a different part of our brain. Once you combine these three components: 1. The routine is simply putting the cue, the act and the reward together. In our teeth-brushing example, the reward is a clean mouth, a lower dental bill, a lack of mouth pain and maybe even the fact that you’d rather happily avoid a lecture from your dental hygienist. Whether it be habits in budget keeping, exercise or even dental hygiene, a reward is a mandatory part of the process. Eventually, just the presence of the cue will trigger a response. In classical conditioning, animals (or humans) are given a cue to perform a task and then rewarded with a treat. The reward is whatever helps trigger that “muscle memory” or Pavlovian response. We don’t spend hours anticipating the act or even thinking about it at all. Most of us don’t think much about brushing our teeth we just do it out of habit. You may be triggered or “ cued” to do it because, well, your mouth tastes mucky, or you ate something with garlic. You’re also probably by yourself, or maybe your spouse is there, too. Most likely you do it when you wake up and before going to bed. Take, for example, brushing your teeth, which you (hopefully) do at least twice a day. The cue is simply the circumstances surrounding the habit. In order to successfully create an automatic response, we have to nail all three. 10 Simple Habits That Will Change Your LifeĪccording to author Charles Duhigg, habits require three components-the cue, the reward and the routine. Especially while we’re at home right now, what better time to set ourselves up for the success we desire. In it, I also share how simple, daily habits can make a big difference in taming the overwhelm. In my book Unstuffed, I share lots of simple, practical tips for clearing our lives of clutter, both the physical stuff that fills up our homes and the mental stress of an overbooked schedule and lack of balance. Once a good habit is etched in our brain, we’ll be much closer to achieving our goals without even thinking about it. As it turns out, setting good habits can be a powerful way to achieve our goals and help keep us focused and organized. It’s easy to think of all of the good habits we wish we had: putting money away each month, getting up earlier, working out every day. Want to be happier, healthier and more successful in life? Don’t miss these ten simple, daily habits that will change your life!
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