he natures of men are the same; it is their habits that separate them.
Confucius
Habits are actions that, thanks to continuous repetition over time, we carry out automatically without having to think about them consciously .
It is therefore evident that they can be a double weapon depending on how we use them.
In this article, I have put together 21 healthy habits that would be best considered to integrate them into our daily life.
Let’s see them.
The new healthy habits we should have
# 1 The famous 10,000 steps . Taking part in regular physical activity is a recommendation we often hear: in this article I give you 15 good reasons . Experts recommend a minimum of 10,000 steps per day, although almost everyone now agrees that it would be better to settle on 15,000 steps per day. But how to count your steps? Since we always have the smartphone with us we might as well take advantage of it, in fact, your phone can keep track of your steps quite accurately. If you arrive in the evening and you are still far from your daily quota of steps, maybe you should take a nice and relaxing evening walk.
# 2 Eat slowly . I’ve been trying to introduce this habit into my life for quite a while and not without difficulty. In fact I am a voracious devourer, probably thanks to the education I received. In fact, as a child I did not have time to finish what I had on my plate that I was obsessively urged to eat something else, without pauses and without considering if I was already full. Now I have control over my lifestyle if I don’t eat at the correct speed it is my responsibility.
# 3 Add vegetables to the dish . Vegetables are certainly at the center of a healthy and balanced lifestyle, which does not mean eliminating the rest or erasing from the memory the dishes that gratify us, but rather always accompanying our main dish with good seasonal vegetables to improve the caloric variety of our dish.
# 4 Go to bed 30 minutes early . I often recommend waking up earlier in the morning and everyone asks me what is the magic recipe to do so. My answer is always the same, we have to go to bed earlier, there is no escape from here. If the topic appeals to you, read the article on how to sleep well .
# 5 Digital detox . I am an advocate of technology and of the benefits obtainable in all fields in which it is applied. Like everything, however, we must be careful not to let ourselves be controlled by it. If you find yourself slightly obsessed with your smartphone or TV, consider a media diet .
# 6 Homemade hygiene . I have occasionally visited dirty and poorly maintained houses. Apart from the aesthetic aspect, I really have a hard time understanding how to live in a filthy house. Cleaning and keeping in order the place where you spend most of your time has not only hygienic advantages but also from the point of view of discipline and consistency. Read this article to learn more.
# 7 Smile spontaneously . Contrary to what many fantagurus say , the smile should not be forced to seek an optimistic and cheerful emotional state. We just have to laugh heartily when we feel the feeling arise within us, if it does not happen often, maybe it is the case to select our friendships .
# 8 Writing something by hand . We are actually losing the ability to write by hand. This sort of evolution is not a bad thing if the technological tools are more effective. The fact remains, however, that handwriting still offers several advantages ( here I talk about it a bit) and it is therefore useful to maintain this good habit by writing with pen and paper from time to time.
# 9 Keep your mind fit . We can establish this new habit every day by doing small calculations in mind, for example at the supermarket, or by voluntarily stimulating our mind: in this article I explain how to do it .
# 10 Open a damn book . It would have been impossible not to find reading in this list of new habits. We don’t know what the future holds but in the current state of things, reading constantly is one of the best habits we can establish.
# 11 Doing fun exercises . As we saw in the first point, physical activity is always present when it comes to psychophysical health. But what if we don’t like running or playing basketball, for example? Finding a stimulating activity is the only way to do it, perhaps by going to a sports center to try the activities present until we find the right one for us.
# 12 Brush your teeth . There isn’t much much to say in this case. Surely in the future you will thank yourself for brushing your teeth. Find the other things you’ll thank yourself for as an old man in this article .
# 13 Take off your shoes before entering the house . Since I was a child I have always had the excellent habit of taking off my shoes before entering the house. Although none of my family members did, it always seemed sensible to me not to bring in the dirt that shoes have accumulated in the outside world.
# 14 Stop eating when we’re full . Food professionals tell us that grandma’s advice to get up from the table just before being full is a very effective strategy for staying healthy. In this case we connect to point # 2, in fact if we eat slowly we can realize with greater accuracy that our stomach is filling and not waste food. In the article dedicated to how to lose weight I reported many other useful tricks.
# 15 Cut back on salt and added sugar . Sugar is a “food” (put in quotes because by some scientists it is not even categorized as a food, read this article to learn more) naturally present in nature. The real danger, however, is represented by refined sugar added in food and drinks, in particular in carbonated drinks and fruit juices: it is better to get used to consuming drinks without added sugar.
# 16 Meditate . There is now so much research on the benefits of meditation that it is no longer possible to deny its effectiveness for concentration, discipline and many other qualities. If you don’t know where to start, you can start reading this excellent meditation manual or start attending a dedicated course.
# 17 Keep a small bottle of water handy . Water, along with air, is the most important source for our survival and according to studies in this field, we don’t drink enough. It seems paradoxical because nobody forgets to breathe, yet it seems that we do not hydrate our body enough. For this reason it is useful to keep a bottle of water on your desk to drink even when we are not particularly thirsty.
# 18 Stop photographing anything . In recent years we have been taking more photos than we really need and are getting into the habit of looking at the world through a screen instead of directly with our eyes. Let’s stop taking random photographs and focus more on the here and now.
# 19 Losing . When I told you about the idioms to delete, I explained how learning to lose and fail is vital (I didn’t say important but really vital) to be able to express 100% of your abilities: if you want to know more, you just have to read the article.
# 20 Being outdoors . Staying closed in an office, in a car or in buildings in general is not good for our lungs, plus the outside world is also useful for stimulating creativity and a good mood.
# 21 Be silent . We are surrounded by people who blab only to air the tonsils and if we also have a habit of talking too much, we may regret what we say and lose our ability to truly listen. Talking less and more reasonably is a great new habit to consider.
The new habits of life
These were the 21 most impactful new habits that can make us happier in both the long and short term.
Obviously, if we lack many of these habits, we must integrate them little by little until they are fully and automatically established.
Installing new healthy habits is very important for personal growth because it gives us the possibility to improve automatically without having to think about it.
