50 Simple Habits for Living Well

10 Mar 50 Simple Habits for Living Well

Posted at 14:27h in Uncategorized by
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If you’re familiar with my work then you’ll know I’m a big fan of habits.

I’ve written a whole series of Audible Original audiobooks / podcast based on the notion of positive habits.

It started with Habits for Happiness, then moved on to Habits for Happiness at Work, and then I’ve added Habits for Happy Children, for Good Sleep, for Greatness, for Humanity and … well, you can check them all out HERE

Positive habits can make positive behaviours routine and automatic; which makes self-care just a normal thing you do. And this is a fantastic goal to work towards.

But with a view to sharing some other ideas from other people, check out this Psychology Today article by Ilene Berns-Zare …

KEY POINTS

  • Philosophers and psychologists have long studied factors that make life worth living.
  • A habit is a well-learned behavior that is often performed automatically.
  • Forming habits can lead to creating long-term behaviors that can change your life.

In this ever-changing, diverse world, there are perhaps as many ideas about what habits help us live well as there are people (Park & Peterson, 2009).

Throughout millennia, humans have pondered the question of how to live fully, how to live well. The philosopher Aristotle believed that life’s goal was eudaimonia, happiness or flourishing and attaining the character traits that foster a well-lived life. Sigmund Freud proposed that love and work are cornerstones for living well. During the past 25 years, positive psychologists have studied factors that make life worth living, exploring the importance of positive emotions, meaning, relationships, engagement, and building on strengths (Boniwell, 2012; Seligman, 2011; Fredrickson, 2009).

There are many recipes for positive habits and perhaps as many ideas about what habits help us live well. The word habit refers to a well-learned behavior performed in a relatively specific context with little or no conscious intent—automatically (Gardner & Rebar, 2019).

This list offers a few habits from my aspirational playbook—habits that I aspire to leverage in my own life. Take them or leave them—the choices are yours.

  1. When it comes right down to it, relationships and love matter more than anything (Fredrickson, 2013).
  2. Strive to be a stand-up person.
  3. Invite moments of quiet into the day (Kabat-Zinn, 2012).
  4. Let yourself be readily awed by nature’s majesty—the sunrise, the wind, a rainbow, babies, snow, the changing cycles of the moon, the lakes and oceans (Kaufman, 2020).
  5. Read.
  6. Aspire to distinguish facts from fiction, and then make your own decisions.
  7. Remember that it’s not about perfection; it’s about progress.
  8. Remind yourself that the process can be as important as the outcome.
  9. Continue to build your skills to rebound from life’s challenges.
  10. Understand that changes are part of living and that we have choices about how we respond to them (Bridges, 2009; Frankl, 1959)…

… keep reading the full & original article HERE