just another lifestyle blog

Here are 10 small habits I’ve picked up over the years that help me have better days. Although some of them are very small daily changes, they can have an immense impact on the rest of my day and subsequently lead me to have good weeks and good months. Keep reading if you’re looking for some tips on how to make your day better!

1. Wake up at the same time everyday. This goes without saying that this is super helpful in training your brain to wake up. When I get into a routine of this, I wake up without an alarm. Albeit weekends are harder to stay on schedule, but as long as you stick to a loose bedtime wakeup time on weekdays, it will make all the difference in your work day. I highly recommend this as one of the 10 small habits you adopt in your daily routine.
2. Write down one thing you like about yourself each morning. This exercise really helped me with my self esteem. Identifying things that I like about myself in the morning trains me to choose positive thoughts rather than negative ones and has continued to set a good tone for the rest of the day. This is one of the best of the 10 small habits listed here – it’s small but very effective.
3. Do something nice for yourself before your day starts. Another item on my list of 10 small habits is doing something nice for yourself before your day starts. My thing is running or being active in the morning before I log onto my computer, but yours can be whatever you want that is healthy and doesn’t take too long – and helps you get out of bed excited in the morning. You could even switch this up each week or each day, but try to do something for 10 minutes every morning before you log on or start your day focused on other people beside yourself.
4. Make your bed. Making your bed also made my list of 10 small habits. This is literally so overdone by everyone but it is really helpful in feeling like you have your life together (even if you don’t). Also then your room just looks cute which is a necessity for someone like me who works from home in my room.
5. Close your laptop during lunch and put your phone away. This is one I struggle with – I’m such a workaholic so it’s hard for me to unplug when working, especially when working from home. Closing my laptop during lunch has helped me separate break time from work time – putting my phone away during lunch allows me to fully unplug and not go back on my computer right away if someone inevitably pings me for something.
6. Read one page of a book a night. You will most likely end up reading more, and if you don’t, you then get to feel accomplished in reaching your goal of one page! Often we set grand goals in hopes to change our lives overnight, and sometimes it’s better to set smaller goals than you expect, to help get your motivation momentum going & start gaining some small accomplishments. Then you can tackle the bigger ones.
7. Write down one happy moment from the day before bed. This exercise is so fun to me. I started doing it in 2020, and I love looking back on all of the happy memories I created – especially during such a hard year. I decided to carry this habit over to 2021 and further, because it helps remind me that there is always at least one happy moment you can reflect on each day, even if every other moment was less than ideal. It also helped me identify what really makes me happy (i.e., i started seeing my morning run being my happy moment during quarantine, so i made that a priority habit moving forward. Optimizing your time so you don’t have to think about your schedule & doing more things that bring you joy are key!)
8. Drink water before you drink coffee or eat anything else. I always forget to drink water, so making the cues easy (like a glass right after I wake up) is a good way to get ahead of my daily midday dehydration (working on that). This is an easy one to put on this list of 10 small habits because it’s fairly easy to do and to remember.
9. Eat one whole fruit or vegetable a day. Eat an apple for a snack. Eat a whole meal of veggies in a salad for lunch. Whatever it is, make sure you eat one piece of healthy food a day. This has helped me replace what would have otherwise been unhealthy snacking or meals to increase the amount of healthy foods I eat, while not feeling overwhelmed or restrained on a diet.
10. Remind yourself you’re okay. For being such an anxious person, I have to do this one multiple times a day. Reminding myself that I am, in fact, okay, in this very moment, has helped me talk myself down from the ledge of overthinking sometimes and let go of whatever worrisome thoughts I was spiraling into. Easy to do but very effective for me.