How Small Good Habits Lead to a Healthy Lifestyle

A lot of people underestimate the power of small good habits. People often think that it takes a lot of work to develop better habits, but the reality is that it’s all about making small adjustments that slowly add up to create large changes to your lifestyle. So what’s the secret? How do good habits lead to a healthy lifestyle and how can you start making those adjustments without too much effort?

Good habits can help with positive thoughts

Did you know that positive habits can actually help you both physically and mentally? Take cleaning as an example. Cleaning habits can actually help improve your physical and mental health a considerable amount. Keeping your home clean helps with your hygiene, but getting a bit of physical activity around the house can keep your heart healthy. Having a clean and hygienic home can also improve your mood and will improve your mental well-being. If a small habit such as cleaning your home thoroughly can make such drastic changes, it goes to show that making small but positive improvements to your life can drastically improve your well-being.

But how do you start developing good habits?

The secret to developing a good habit is to actually discover what compels you to do it. In many cases, motivation can be a great way to convince you to do something positive or healthy. For instance, people often consider cycling as a good habit. Many people start cycling because it’s a form of exercise that can improve your physical health. For some, this alone is enough motivation to get them on two wheels. However, when you consider that it can also be a form of transportation, they’ll feel more compelled to cycle on a daily basis. There’s even more motivation to be had when you consider the environmental impact driving has compared to cycling. All of these benefits add together, convincing us to take up cycling and even get rid of a bad habit like driving everywhere.

As you can see, developing a good habit requires you to be motivated enough to do it. This can be fairly easy to achieve once you look at the benefits of that good habit. It can be even more motivational to pick up a good habit once you realize you’ve developed a bad habit that counteracts it. We gave the example of cycling versus driving, but you can also compare it to smoking and using an e-cigarette. Smoking is bad for the health and puts you at a higher risk of developing nasty conditions, whereas reputable e-cigarettes like Aspire produce no nasty smells and are nowhere near as harmful. If you’re able to identify a bad habit that you have and find a suitable replacement, you’ll have a much easier time developing better habits.

Start with small goals that you can’t refuse and build them up

Micro goals can be a huge help when it comes to achieving something greater. There’s a wonderful Japanese concept known as Kaizen that can serve as the foundation for building better habits. The concept is a method of continuous improvement that can be used to better yourself at virtually anything in life. It’s all about making small and consistent improvements as opposed to large plateaus.

To give a practical example, let’s say that you have a bad habit of not exercising and thus have gained a lot of weight. In order to overcome this, you know that you’ll have to work out at least 30 minutes each day and start cutting out unhealthy foods. Unfortunately, doing this all at once shocks your system and makes it difficult to cope with, meaning you’re more likely to relapse. The Kaizen method would suggest making small incremental improvements. This can include:

• Working out for 1 minute today then add another minute every day. In 30 days, you’ll have worked your way up to 30 minutes of exercise.
• Replacing a small portion of your food with something healthier and lower in calories such as salad, or removing a tiny portion of your food altogether and saving it as leftovers. Repeat this every week by removing more food and you’ll eventually get used to cutting down to small portions.

This is just a simple example of how small but continuous improvements can eventually turn into large sweeping changes. Since they don’t disrupt your life, they’re easy to cope with and you’ll eventually find yourself developing good habits and getting rid of bad old ones.