Healthy Mind - Think Big here welcome to lesson 4 in the previous lessons we covered the strategy for this course how habits work and debunked some of the biggest misconceptions regarding habits so if you have not read the previous lessons stop this post right now and click on the link Benefits Of Meditation, Benefits Of Reading, THE TRUTH - How Do Habits REALLY Work? & How To Quit ANY ADDICTION - The Strategy because remember in order for you to get the most out of this course in order for you to really learn how to change your habits and change your life you're gonna have to read each and every single one of the posts in today's post. We're gonna talk about some of the best habits to adopt so that you can pick one for yourself to focus on for the rest of the course but before we get into the different habits that you should consider let me tell you a short story.
So Tom was your average guy. He was in his late 20s he had a decent-paying job it wasn't very fit but at the same time, he wasn't overweight. He did okay in life but like most people he had somewhat of an addiction his choice of poison was smoking. He would smoke four or five cigarettes a day which isn't too bad but he knew it was a problem. So eventually Tom meets a girl name Janice and they really hit it off but Janice was really really against smoking and wanted, Tommy to quit. Tom was in love and he knew that she was right so he decided to give it his all and quit for good the quitting process wasn't too bad for Tom it took him a while but after a year he was able to quit smoking for good but that wasn't the only thing that changed about Tom he started going to the gym he managed to lose some weight and put on some muscle he also started reading a bit more his relationship with his co-workers and boss and proved that he got a promotion for the first time in five years stories like this are very common researchers have observed that time and time again that when someone overcomes a bad habit or starts forming a new one a whole slew of other good habits come with it they named this sort of habit a keystone habit a single habit that causes you to adopt multiple other good habits and change your life.
The reason I'm telling you the story is that today you're going to pick a habit to focus on for the rest of this course and the three habits that I'm gonna show you are three of the most powerful keys that don't have their out there these habits have the highest chance of drastically changing your life. So if I'll further ado here are the three most effective don't habits.
#01 Reading :
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Most of you guys probably know by now that I'm a huge fan of reading. when I first started my self-development journey this was the first habit that I started implementing into my life. I would read just about every single day on my commute to work because of this I would finish a book a week. Now everyone knows that education is important that's why we spend twelve to eighteen years and buildings that are designed to teach us things however the problem lies in the fact that most of the stuff we learned in school isn't that useful in real life. What was the last time you had a user history knowledge or your knowledge of calculus these things are nice to know and have their uses but aren't that practical in our day-to-day lives instead we need to be learning about things like social skills and maintaining a proper diet, how to exercise, money management things that we don't really learn correctly in school books provide you with knowledge on all of these topics they also give you different perspectives on things that we assumed to be true for example most people assume they should always buy a car but if you read books on investing or money management you'll often come across the idea that hey it's actually better to lease a car and this is actually true literally all of the car salesmen that I personally know leased their cars they don't buy them and by reading you'll often find that you'll start adjusting other areas of your life. If you're reading a book on body language you'll start becoming more conscious of your own body language as well as those around you if you read a book on money management you start noticing a change in your spending habits and because of its ability to influence any part of your life in a positive way, reading is without a doubt one of the most powerful Keystone habits.
#02 Meditation :
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I have seen and read many videos and posts on meditation and it seems extremely helpful. The reason meditation is so powerful is because of what it does to your brain it trains a part of your brain that's responsible for willpower for self-control and just like going to the gym if you train it. It actually gets stronger and this gives you the ability to do certain things.Things that I consider to be superpowers, for example, you'll find yourself more in control of your emotion and this is great because oftentimes we relapse or give in to our addictions when our emotions are all over the place another thing meditation trains you todo is focus longer. meditation is simply the act of trying to focus your mind on one thing and this is extremely hard for people nowadays when you start meditating and making it into a habit you'll notice a drastic increase in your ability to focus maybe in the past you were the type of person who couldn't even read two pages of a book without getting sidetracked a lot of people report increased focus being able to read entire chapters at a time after making meditation into a habit and the last superpower that Meditation provides is a sense of general well-being do you remember that sort of awe and joy you had as a kid when a little things in life would excite you meditation brings back that sort of mindset that sort of perspective where you can sit down on a park bench and simply be mind blown by just how beautiful everything around you is meditation is an extremely powerful Keystone habit because it in itself is a very very hard habit to stick to but if you can make it into a habit that you do automatically every day that means your levels of willpower have skyrocket dramatically and adopting other habits will become a piece of cake the third and final keys don't have it that we're gonna speak about today is...
#03 Fitness (Running, Lifting, Calisthenics)
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Fitness is extremely powerful keys don't have it because of its intimate relationship with diet. Researchers have found that most people who start sticking to a fitness regimen will often find themselves adjusting their diet as well even if they're told not to it makes sense because if you're working your ass off at the gym you're less likely to consume junk food right after because it quote unquote undo all of your hard work and because these two habits basically come in a package together it requires a lot of willpower to maintain. So if you can successfully make them into full-fledged habits you'll be able to take on smaller habits with ease for those of you that are curious as to how willpower works we're gonna cover all of that later on in the course but for now, just understand that it does work like a muscle the more you test it destroy it becomes on top of that the habit of fitness and diet has a huge influence on how you feel every single day many people report feeling tired or foggy and often times the problem stems from our diet or our lack of exercise once these people start adopting these two good habits they often report feeling much better and if you start feeling better on a day to day basis it makes it much easier to start adopting other good habits this ability to improve your body's day-to-day function makes fitness and diet an extremely powerful Keystone habit.
So again here are the three Keystone habits that we just talked about 1. Reading, 2. Meditation, 3. Fitness and diet now I know I know there are dozens of other good habits out there like cold showers morning rituals making your bed etc. But these three Keystone habits are without a doubt three of the most powerful habits that you can add to your life.
So what I like for you to do right now is to think carefully about which habit you want to work on for the rest of this course which of these habits are you going to commit to try to stick to until it reaches that line of automaticity that we talked about well you no longer even have to think about doing it that's the goal. it's also very important to note that you should only try to stick to one of these habits at a time we humans are extremely bad at multitasking although we tend to think that we're pretty good.
I can just about guarantee that if you're trying to adopt multiple habits at once that you're going to get overwhelmed and fail to stick to the single keystone habit you decide on it until it reaches that line of automaticity do not I repeat do not try to adopt any other good habits until that keys don't have it you picked is completely embedded in your life. so what I like for you to do right now is to think hard about which of these three habits you're gonna stick to for the rest of this course make your decision and let me know what you picked in the comments below. Take Care Guys!