The 8 Best New Habits I Built This Year (#7 is My Favorite)
I love new habits. The good ones, of course.
They are a sign we’ve been working on improving ourselves, have dedicated the necessary time and effort to develop them, have hacked the process of ingraining a new behavior and managed to stay consistent.
That’s great.
And to show you that I’m not only writing about all that, but actually taking action upon it daily, here are the best new habits I built this year:
1. Starting small.
Whatever I put my mind to, I know I should be starting small.
It’s like that with any habit we try to develop, and with anything big we want to achieve in life actually.
Great things start small. So I learned to break projects, goals or tasks down to smaller steps, then into even simpler and tinier ones.
Then, I could start without feeling overwhelmed and take one action a day that could let me feel accomplished.
2. Accepting things I have no control over.
Truth is, many of the things in life depend on outer factors, like other people, daily circumstances, or life itself.
Too many of us spend our days trying to change what can’t be changed. I’ve been aware of that for a long time now but it’s this year that I finally let go of that ridiculous desire.
I feel so free and content now that I don’t try so hard to control everything and simply accept the fact that many things aren’t under my control.
3. Working on the ones I can control.
What I can do, however, and what we should all be doing, is taking action upon what we do control.
That’s our habits, our mindset, the way we react to what happens in life, and how well we spend our time each day.
4. Tracking stuff.
Since I started tracking, I’m more productive and can see things that don’t work and do something to improve them.
5. Saying what I think.
I simplified communication so much by being direct and just sharing what’s on my mind instead of trying to guess what the other person is thinking about.
I suggest you do the same. We waste a lot of time and worries daily – and even ruin relationships – by making hints, trying to please others, not asking what we want to know, not saying it when we like someone, etc.
I stopped all that.
6. Prioritizing.
That’s a habit too, yes, as it’s something we should do all the time.
Life is sometimes a constant battle against distractions. It’s our job to stay focused on what we believe in and work on what we want to achieve. For that to happen, we need to prioritize daily and put the activities and things connected to our goals before anything else.
7. Not letting others talk me out of my goals.
Now that I’ve defined what I want and don’t want in life, and am doing something to get closer to my goals all the time, I’m also ruthless with them.
Consciously or not, other people are making us live by their standards and try to talk us out of what we’ve planned. That’s just one of the many distractions on the way to building a lifestyle we’ll be happy with.
So we need to be aware of that all the time. To stay focused on what we truly want and not let other people and their opinion and expectations get in the way.
8. Being ruthless with my most productive time.
I experimented a lot and found my most productive time – the first part of the day.
Since then, I’ve been making the most of it by doing my work during that period without allowing people to bother me or myself to think about or do other things.
I made progress with many other habits and changes in my behavior and mindset too. But these are the best and most practical ones.
What about you? What are the top new habits you built this year?