9 LITTLE DAILY HABITS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

so you want to change your life [Applause] oh hold up hold up that's actually not quite what i mean i think one of the most powerful things i've learned is that changing your life is not about making big important choices like quitting the job getting accepted to college moving somewhere new starting a business but the truth is if you really want to change your life it doesn't necessarily require one big radical change but instead requires small meaningful changes every day getting one percent better every day counts for a lot in the long run while there are certainly some big moments that change my life looking back i can see it's the small little changes and habits that i've adopted that have made the biggest impact on my life and myself so today i want to share nine little habits i've adopted over time that have totally transformed my life sure none are groundbreaking or spectacular or while worthy but it's these little consistent changes that have allowed me to grow and improve all right habit number one i almost hate to even say it because you're gonna be like oh my god i'm so tired of people saying this but that is waking up early i know you've probably heard this like a bajillion times but the truth is waking up early has changed my life and there's no getting around it so here we are it is one of the habits that changed my life i started waking up early in college because i realized it was the only way i could go work done i just wasn't someone who worked well late at night i loved having a little quiet time in the morning to start my day and as i got a little older i used these mornings to start blogging and making youtube videos well i had a full-time job and ultimately that led me to being able to quit my job to work full-time for myself as a blogger and youtuber and when i became a mom these mornings became a very key component to my day allowing me some time to check in with myself have a little time for me before starting the day with my babies where i usually had very little time to myself and as a mom this me time has been so important to my mental and emotional health so overall you can see just how key these mornings have been for me being able to get up early and start my day is a little habit but it has led to so many big and important changes in my life habit number two might surprise you given the name of my channel here on youtube but i stopped drinking coffee when i first wake up a little while ago i heard something that totally blew my mind it was that when we wake up our bodies begin producing cortisol for the first hour of our day you may have heard of cortisol it is often associated with stress since we create more of it when we are under stress but it also helps to regulate our energy it can make you feel more alert and the reasons our body produce more cortisol when we're under stress is because when we're in that like fight or flight situation the cortisol helps increase our alertfulness in these situations and i actually don't know if alertfulness is a word but you know what i mean is why our body naturally produces cortisol in the morning the problem is caffeine interferes with our natural production of cortisol usually causing us to over produce and then leads to an afternoon slump now i'm somebody who has struggled with the afternoon slump so bad for so many years right around 3 2 p.m in a huge slump i feel exhausted i want to snack on bad food i just feel blah so as somebody who drinks coffee the minute they wake up in the morning when i heard this i decided that i had to try it so for one week i waited one hour to have my morning coffee and i made sure to have something to eat first and you guys it was amazing the afternoon slumps seemed to like almost disappear sometimes i would still have a little be a little groggy or tired at that time i mean hello i do have like a two-year-old and an infant at home but it was so much less than before in my afternoons i didn't get in that major slump at all all right next up number three is eating at home we used to eat out so much so much more takeout going out to restaurants so much more and not only was it killing my budget but overall a way less healthy and less well we eat at home way more now than we used to and i love that it's helped us slow down spend more time at home but truthfully the only reason that this habit has become a habit is because i've also developed the following two habits one is meal planning i've gotten super good about meal planning all of my meals for the week ahead of time i write them up on our calendar so i know exactly what we're having each night this saves me so much time and hassle during the week because i always know exactly what's for dinner and it makes planning ahead super easy not to mention it saves me tons of money at the grocery store because i don't end up overspending or having to go back to get more because i didn't plan and i have way less food waste as well so overall it's just like a win win win win win win the other key to helping us eat at home more has been prepping dinners ahead of time like i said i have a toddler and an infant at home so trying to cook dinner at 5 pm is basically impossible i don't know what it is about children but like five o'clock they go crazy so the key for me has been prepping it all around lunch i get as much dinner as i can ready before 3 p.m then when the dinner rush hits i literally have one or two steps to do i just have to like warm something up and now i know this isn't an option for everyone many of you don't work from the home but another thing i do sometimes that could help you in this case is i usually have one afternoon a week that is dedicated to meal prep so for me this is usually monday or tuesday but i'll do tons of prep for the meals for that week so i'll slice the veggies make any sauces marinate meats maybe make up some cutlets this way i have even less steps the following days when meal time hits moving right along to our next habit which is never go to bed with a dirty sink i've shared this habit before and it is honestly the first little habit that i adopted in my life that changed things so much for me that it made me really realize how much little habits can turn into big changes so to me there's nothing worse than starting your morning with a dirty sink no matter how tired i am every night i make sure my sink is cleaned up and the reason that this habit works so well is that cleaning the sink is a really little easy task so even if i'm exhausted i can convince myself to take five or ten minutes to clean it and every morning when i wake up it sets my day off so much better to walk into a clean kitchen sink ready for the day and what i love about this habit it's a true testament to how little habits can create big change because this is a habit i started about four or five years ago it started with just the sink and then over time it really became the whole kitchen i found that taking a little time at night to tidy the kitchen every night was so helpful that i now do a full tidy of my downstairs before bed every night it just took a small habit of cleaning my sink every night to ultimately create a habit where i now tidy a lot before bed every night and it makes my mornings so much better i'm a big believer in starting your days right and like starting your day to a messy kitchen or coming down to a mess from the night before can start a day on the wrong foot next habit is adding salt to my water and i know that this sounds weird but hear me out now again i'm not a doctor very clearly not a doctor but i'm just sharing something i learned and how it worked for me so for so long i worked on increasing my water and tank everyone talks about how important it is to drink more water and so i really really tried i was drinking water all the time and i was peeing all the time and i still felt dehydrated actually the weirdest thing for me was the more water i drank the more thirsty i felt it was so bizarre and then i heard someone talking about how plain water doesn't always hydrate us properly because instead of absorbing into our cells it often just flushes through our bodies without actually entering our cells now there's a ton of science behind this again i'm not a doctor i'm definitely not a scientist i'm just giving you my cliff notes here but basically by adding some salt to your water you want a mineral rich salt like a celtic salt or a pink himalayan salt it allows your body to better absorb the water into your cells because sodium is an essential electrolyte so i started having a glass of water with a pinch of celtic salt two times a day usually in the morning and then afternoon and then just plain water the rest of the time and i can tell you i feel so much more hydrated throughout the day i don't constantly feel thirsty like i used to i'm not like instantly drinking and then having to pee immediately after that and the issue of drinking water only to need more and more water has totally gone away i definitely consider you doing some of your own research on this but for me after i read about it and i tried it it has been a huge impact on my life next habit is learning to hit the reset button you know when you're having a bad day like it seems like everything's going wrong your toddler wakes up earlier than usual then you spill your coffee and the dog tracks in mud and you rip your favorite sweater while you're trying to fix your sweater your toddler spills his cheerios all over the floor and this is all before 8 am and i'm speaking from personal experience it's really easy for us to take a day like that and deem it just crap but this is where hitting the reset button comes in basically the idea is instead of writing off the whole day is bad or hard or unchangeable because of a bad moment or series of moments you decide right then and there right in the heat of things to push the reset button and start over here's the thing we as people tend to wait for a special time to restart we wait until monday to start a new diet wait for january 1st to start a new resolution or say i'll try again tomorrow the reason people do this is because these are like concrete time markers they indicate past and present and looking at time this way with distinctions of past and presence allows us to disconnect from the past the setbacks the failures that happened and say okay that's behind me you know it was yesterday or last week or last year and then you can look forward with a new positive outlook but here's the trick guys you do not need to wait for one of these concrete time markers to do this yeah that's right there's no real difference between starting fresh in the morning we're starting literally right now but our perspective of it you can literally start fresh at any moment now it does take a little practice it's something i've been working on pretty much since my son was born so about two and a half years but i find that now i can almost immediately hit the refresh button at any point and get the same renewed feeling that other people might get from waiting to start fresh tomorrow okay cali so how do i do that well not to fear i will tell you this is how the process looks step one you're going to acknowledge that you need a reset so you might be like okay today is going downhill quickly acknowledge that you're feeling like a day is going downhill or you're feeling flustered or in a rut or grumpy or whatever step two is to start the refresh so okay my fresh start starts right now what happened in the past it's done it's over i can't go back and fix it i can't put the cheerios back in can't un rip my sweater but it's not going to have any weight on what is coming next just because those things happen this morning does not mean the rest of the day will continue that way starting now it is a fresh start like i said it's going to take a little practice to do this but the more you do it the more you'll find how it works and the more successful you'll be at it and a little trick that i find helps when you first start i'm trying to practice doing the reset button is to pair your reset with some type of feel-good event so when you first start using the mental reset button sometimes pairing it with like a concrete action can help you so maybe you say i'm gonna run and get a coffee and then i'm gonna reset or i'm going to take a 10 minute walk and then i start my reset when i get home again this helps our brain distinguish the pass for the first the present so we can move forward and focus on the future all right my ninth and final habit is becoming an obsessive list maker i make lists for all of the things and the reason for this is i'm just in a season of my life where i wear a lot of hats i'm a mom and a wife and homeowner and a blogger and a youtuber and more on top of that and there's usually never less than like 500 tabs open in my brain at any given moment of all the things i need to do and have to get done and all of that so i've started making lists for everything i need to do no matter how little and the reason is because 99 of the time when i think of something i have to do i'm not in a position where i can currently do it so what i used to happen is i would think of something i have to do then i would forget and then a few days later i'd remember again that i had to do it but not be able to do it and then i would forget and you see this is going so now the minute something pops into my head i write it down i've started using the todoist app recently and i love it because i always have my phone nearby i can just quickly open it write down the task but i also love it because i can use it for brain dumping which i've talked to you guys about before sometimes we just have tons of tabs open in our brain it's overwhelming so brain dumping is the process of emptying all of those thoughts out so whenever i feel overwhelmed like there's too much to do on my plate i don't know when i'm going to get to it i open my to do this app and i brain dump just everything i need to do and want to get done then once it's all out of my brain and in front of me as a list i can start scheduling it out into a manageable way and this has helped me so much to feel less overwhelmed and be way more productive with my time all right my friends there you have it nine small habits that have changed my life like i said none of these are groundbreaking but these little habits consistently over time have made huge impacts to my life let me know a small habit that you adopted that ended up making big big changes in your life in the comments down below as always thank you so much for stopping by and watching and i will see you all in my next video [Music] you

Channel: But First, Coffee

Views: 356,616

Rating: 4.9486179 out of 5

Keywords: healthy habits, habits that will change your life, daily habits, habits to change your life, habits of successful people, how to change your life, habits that changed my life, life changing habits, healthy habits that changed my life, personal development, daily habits that will change your life, daily habits to change your life, healthy habits that will change your life, success habits, simple daily habits, change my life, morning habits that will change your life

Id: 7FbsS9xDbck

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 04 2021