7 Key Habits for Creating a Life You Love

the process of changing your life doesn't usually look like it does in the movies it's not some heroic win or climactic moment when everything suddenly falls into Town up a bit Moment by moment to create something slightly different each day something slightly more like the life that you want to live we are what we repeatedly do Excellence then is not an act but a habit this is a quote of will Durant paraphrasing Aristotle and Aristotle and philosophies I found that genuine change occurs through cultivating systems of habits simple repeated actions we can take every day that might not be very flashy but which are the true key to creating positive lasting change in our lives these are the seven foundational simple habits that have transformed my life and I'm pretty sure they can transform yours too and hopefully help you live a life that you love my name is Izzy I'm a Cambridge graduate and a doctor without further Ado let's get into the video the first habit is to drink water first thing in the morning and rehydrate a lot of tiredness or the urge to snack or brain fog or headaches can actually be down to dehydration and since overnight we don't drink any water or at least most of us don't drink much water and we can easily wake up slightly dehydrated every day for me every night before I go to bed I fill up this water bottle with some freshly filtered water and I just pop it by my bedside table and as soon as I wake up the first thing I do is I drink the whole bottle is what I aim for this also helps me to get in all of my water needs for the day because as soon as I wake up I've drank 500 milliliters of water which gives me a reasonable Baseline to start with by hydrating immediately first thing in the morning you're rehydrating your body and immediately letting your body get all the positive effects of hydration like boosting your overall energy and your mental acuity and also helping to promote a healthy metabolism and digestion as well habit number two which has changed my life so many ways I just I can't even express how much this has changed my life is meditation meditation to me is essentially a way of working actively on your mind whichever way you want to cultivate your mind you can do that with meditation because there's so many different types and styles of meditation that you can definitely find one that will work well to you just like we work on our physical body by training it and exercising to keep it healthy it's important to take care of our minds and meditation is a really powerful way to do that the first type of meditation I would recommend is a mindfulness of breathing style meditation this is really good for centering the mind and bringing you back to a place of calm the second type of meditation I'd recommend is the metabolism meditation this essentially works on generating a sense of loving kindness towards both yourself and also others I found that this particular style of meditation has had the biggest impact on my interpersonal relationships by bringing an extra little bit of warmth into them the third style of meditation I really personally like is vipassana and over the last summer I went on a 10-day silent for passing their meditation course which really really changed my perspective on so many things and helped me to develop this sense of equanimity finally just recently over the last couple of months I've been getting into zen style meditation and koan meditations as well there are so many more other than just these ones that I've mentioned I'd also really recommend an app called waking up by Sam Harris so I'll leave leave links to all of my favorite meditation bits below and if you're looking for a way to encourage yourself to do it regularly every day I actually bought a zafu so this is just essentially like a kind of like a bean bag but like a bean bag made for sitting on to meditate and this is just in the corner of my room and it helps to remind me to meditate another thing I do to make sure that I do this habit is I try to Habit stack it in my morning routine so in my morning routine I wake up I drink my 500 mL of water then I go brush my teeth in my skincare Etc and then the next thing I do is I sit down to meditate for at least 10 minutes so if you're just starting out then just aim for even just one or two minutes per day just to get yourself onto the cushion or wherever you're sitting to meditate and start building up that habit and then you can gradually work up to 10 to 20 minutes per day which is usually what I do the next habit is a daily movement so some kind of movement or exercise there are so many mental and physical benefits to daily exercise you even just a little bit of a walk or just some gentle stretching in the morning aerobic exercises like running cycling swimming even walking to an extent shown to boost your mood so the runners high is real when we exercise all sorts of endorphins are released in the brain and this helps to make us feel good and stabilize our mood additionally we might think that doing exercise would drain our energy and leave us feeling more tired but actually one study found that doing some aerobic exercise increased the perceived energy levels of participants who did the exercise so actually it can end up energizing you instead of draining you I don't really need to tell you about the enormous physical benefits of exercise but essentially you can train your body to be more capable more functional you can aim for aesthetic goals as well or in terms of longevity having some kind of physical exercise every day will help you to stay fitter and healthier for longer I've also personally found them when I've gone through times of intense stress in my life so for example exam terms at Cambridge incorporating in some kind of physical activity and exercise would de-stress me and help to stabilize my mood and bring me back to a place of feeling more calm and okay about things I would say the key thing here is to find some kind of exercise that you actually enjoy so for me I absolutely love doing yoga and yoga is something I can just do every day probably for hours and still not get bored or like not dislike it at all I also enjoy weight training because I can see a certain progression with my lifts and see myself getting stronger and stronger each week personally I haven't found a way to fall in love with running yet even though I know there's so many benefits to being able to incorporate that level of cardio so if you guys have any tips on how to fall in love with running then leave them down below because it's a little personal project for this summer if you love the kind of exercise that you're doing and actually enjoy it you're more likely to stick with it and be able to do at least a little bit every day the next habit is to clean and tidy up for just 10 minutes every day just 10 minutes just tidy up for 10 minutes again I have it stack this with my morning routine so in the morning I'll spend 10 minutes who I start the day and start journaling and start figuring out what I'm doing for the day just tidying at my desk making sure it's nice and clear putting away any laundry that was freshly brought up to my room and maybe vacuuming the floor a little bit or wiping the table this helps us to every day take some small steps towards maintaining a really nice lovely environment that we enjoy being in there are also some studies that have shown that the visual sparseness helps us to focus on what's important and prioritize our tasks and overall be more productive visual sparseness is the opposite of visual clutter so essentially if you avoid cluttering your desk or cluttering your space with things and instead have things in the place that they belong and have areas clear then that will help you to not get distracted by all of those random bits of clutter and instead really laser focus into what you're trying to achieve and what's really important to you in that moment I'm not naturally a tidy person but building in this habit has helped me to maintain a space that I enjoy being in I literally set a timer and just cleaned for 10 minutes it's absolutely time boxed to do that as soon as the 10 minutes is up I stop whatever I'm doing whatever I'm in the middle of cleaning I stopped doing that and I move on with my day so maybe try this out even if for you it's just two minutes to start with and then you can build up that habits duration over time because I promise you it's worth it the next habit is getting some Daily Sunshine or Bright Lights early in the morning first thing in the morning when we get bright light exposure into our eyes this sends a strong signal to the super charismatic nucleus which essentially modulates and regulates our circadian rhythm which is our body clock so often these days we end up looking at our phones or screens or having bright lights on late at night so by first thing in the morning giving your circadian rhythm and your body clock this strong signal the day has dawned time to wake up this can help to counteract some of the impact that all those blue lights and bright lights late at night can have on our body's Rhythm the most potent way to get this is by going outside for a short little walk in the morning or just sitting outside in your garden or on your balcony just for maybe 10 minutes if it's a bright sunny day then five to ten minutes outside is enough to give your body clock that strong signal and if it's a cloudy or overcast day then 15 to 20 minutes is what will help to give that signal to your body one thing that I also like to do is I installed an app on my phone that is a lux meter so Lux is essentially a unit in physics that represents light intensity and so this can be a good rough indicator of how much light is going to be getting into your eyes so with my phone's app I just check out how many locks are indoors versus outside I promise you you'll see a massive difference indoors versus outside in terms of the Lux even if it's a cloudy day a lot of light does get in through the clouds it's just scattered a little bit so going outside is really beneficial in addition to going outside and getting direct light exposure from the Sun out there I personally also have a light alarm clock so I have the somnio light alarm clock I've featured to end another one of my videos I'll link it somewhere over here and also my desk is in front of Windows which means that when I open the windows early in the morning I do some of my morning journaling then I'm helping to get some of that natural light into my eyes the next habit is daily sunscreen I love this one and I feel really passionately about it ever since the age of around 16 or 17 I've been using sunscreen every single day understanding the impact of UVA and UVB light on the skin is really important because it helps us to understand what exactly the sunscreen is doing for our skin and what different sunscreens are doing for us I'll add a picture over here where the photo aging effect is really really clearly demonstrated majority of visible skin aging is actually due to sun damage and UV damage specifically UV rays comprise a few different categories depending on the wavelength including UVA UVB UVC UVA is responsible for most of the visible signs of skin aging including collagen loss leading to wrinkles or sagging age spots or hyperpigmentations spots causing freckles or dark marks to appear on the skin and also loss of volume in the skin due to this loss of collagen UVB on the other hand is also damaging to the skin and it actually causes genetic damage into the skin cells which can trigger skin cancers so squamous cell carcinoma is basal cell carcinomas even melanomas by putting on sunscreen every single day and protecting our skin from the Sun it helps our skin to look and feel and even function younger for longer and protect us against the risk of skin cancers I'll make a full video on skin care at some point soon and my evidence-based skincare routine I'll link it somewhere over here once the video is up so now we understand a bit about UVA and UVB rays SPF ratings actually only refer to the UVB protection so a sunscreen that says it's 50 SPF doesn't necessarily have super high UVA protection as well unless it states that separately so the UVA protection is actually represented by the star system on many sunscreens so for example here on my favorite daily sunscreen you can see here UVA 5 star rating and again on the back here has a five star rating this means that it's a broad spectrum sunscreen which protects you for both UVA and UVB wavelengths of light it's highly recommended to use at least an SPF 30 every single day I usually use an SPF 50. this is my go-to sunscreen and don't forget about your neck and your decolletage as well along with arms or the backs of hands which may be exposed and also the backs of ears in the back of your neck for other areas of skin other than my face I usually use the bigger bottles so there's the SPF 30 and also the SPF 50. I find that the 30 has a slightly nicer formulation I think the 50 can be a little bit sticky so sometimes I just put the 30 on my arms and hands especially if it's not a super duper sunny day it's worth noting though that UV rays can penetrate clouds and also windows so it's important to wear that good old SPF every single day taking care of your body and mind is something that compounds over time so by building in these habits early on we can help to ensure that all of the benefits of that have added up so by the time that we're 30 40 50 60 or Beyond we are making sure that we can make the most of all of the good things we're trying to do for ourselves the final habit is gratitude and looking for beauty and appreciation in the things around us gratitude journaling is a powerful practice that has been shown to increase mood and can decrease negative emotions like resentment and envy by expressing less negative emotion in our words and expressing more positive and grateful emotions we can really reframe the way that we approach Life One study by Dr Joshua Brown and Dr Joel Wong looked at college students who were looking for counseling mental health counseling they split them up into three groups and all of them receive counseling however each of the three groups was given an additional task so one group was instructed to write one letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences and almost get out all of those thoughts and feelings the third group didn't write anything at all they just went to their counseling what they found is that the group who wrote letters of gratitude reported significantly better mental health four weeks and also 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended so a gratitude practice can be really beneficial and have long lasting effects for me how I build this into my own life is I have in my bullet Journal a page just dedicated to gratitude and so each day I'll write one line of gratitude sometimes things get busy and I don't actually get the chance to write something but most days when I try to when I actually remember and I have the time to sit down and I'm not too busy with Hospital work then I'll write down just one line of things that I'm full of gratitude for that day I quite like this method because that means that on one page I can see a whole month's worth of gratitude and maybe starting a gratitude Journal either in this way or having a dedicated specific book where you do it or on notion or anywhere else could potentially bring a lot of positive energy into your life another practice that I try to incorporate every day is looking for Beauty and the world around us almost any item that you look at you can see some elements of beauty about it and when you just go through your normal life if you almost try to romanticize and and think of all the beautiful things about the world this can help to bring the sense of gratitude into your visual sense as well one practice that I personally did a lot almost every day or every other day during my final year studying medicine was taking a small compact camera going to the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and essentially doing some mindful photography where I would look for things that were beautiful look for a beautiful composition look at a beautiful plant or flower or bee and then also look at the bigger things like the landscape and interesting compositions and you'll find that there's hints of beauty everywhere and this exercise can really help you to connect with yourself and the world around you and feel grateful for the place that we live in because it is amazing these are some of the photographs that I took during this practice I'm far from being a professional photographer these were just mostly for me and for my enjoyment to take but yeah you can have a look at them as well let me know down below which habits you either already do or that you're planning on doing after this video there is some evidence that shows by setting an intention and saying I'm going to do this that you're more likely to do it so if you've got a particular habit that you'd actually want to try then share it down below and hopefully that will help boost your motivation to actually stick to it additionally let me know if there's any other habits that you would recommend trying out if you enjoyed this video then I think you might like this one over here where I talk about the nine crucial study tips and techniques that I use to get through Cambridge Medical School if you'd like to keep up with what I'm doing outside of YouTube then feel free to follow my Instagram over here at busy Seeley thank you so much for watching as always take care of yourself and I'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Dr. Izzy Sealey

Views: 200,887

Keywords: cambridge university, university of cambridge, cambridge medical student, doctor, izzy sealey, issy sealey, izzy sealy, learn mandarin, learn chinese, language learning

Id: Y7xVvnTRcLE

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023