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Before introducing new useful habits into your life, it is worth inspecting how you live: perhaps some practices “slow down” you, prevent you from developing and achieving your goals?
1. The habit of pretending that one area of life does not affect others
You may be the type of person who thinks you are “too busy” for certain things. Perhaps you are sure that you “just don’t have time” to start, for example, eating right. Or do a workout. Or meditate. Or spend at least half an hour a day taking care of yourself. Most likely, because your priority is work and career, and the rest of your life is built around them.
But you cannot endlessly deny the fact that the consequences of all the decisions you make are connected. That is, there is a stable relationship between your income and how much you sleep and how you eat. And if you eat or drink stress because you have “such a job”, sooner or later it will affect your efficiency.
So it’s time to stop fooling yourself. It’s time to review your life, because it is, in fact, the sum of our daily habits. It is impossible to achieve success in one of its areas, completely ignoring all the others.
2. Multitasking
It has already been proven that our brain is physically incapable of multitasking: the structure of its cortex is such that when we jump from one task to another, the brain has to first switch the focus of our attention, then deactivate the rules for the previous task and activate new ones. So when we feel like we’re working on multiple tasks at the same time, we’re basically just switching from one to the other—very, very quickly.
And although our brain, of course, is a very powerful thing, in this way we only give it extra work, which inevitably affects our productivity and cognitive functions. In short, if it seems to you that you are saving yourself time by doing five tasks at the same time, know that this is not so.
If you are one of those who dreams of achieving success in your career and especially in business, most likely you are subscribed to various entrepreneurs on social networks. You may be watching a lot of commercials, hoping to adopt the habits that made these business gurus successful.
It is likely that these idols of yours really have something to learn. They have come a long way and sometimes share valuable tips, strategies and tactics, but they are only useful if you can actually put them into practice – and do it.
Alas, for 90% of people this is impossible: they are on too different levels with their “teachers”, which means they are just wasting time listening to lectures and reading posts.
4. Attachment to the wrong people and things
If right now you are in a crisis and think that you have not achieved anything in life, perhaps you should take a closer look … at the ideas of minimalism and conscious living.
Yes exactly. The fact is that minimalism is not just an approach that allows you to get rid of unnecessary things in the closet. This is a life philosophy, guided by which you decide what you are ready to leave and bring into your life, and what not, what to spend your money, time and energy on.
This approach allows you to slow down, cut off everything that distracts you – including people who do not support you, with whom you have not had a close spiritual connection for a long time.
5. Addiction to dopamine
This happens every time we scroll through the Instagram feed. Or watch something new on YouTube. Or we see new “likes” under our post on Facebook. Or we eat ice cream. In all these cases, our brain receives a new dose of dopamine, the hormone of happiness. The word “dose” is not accidental here: with frequent releases of dopamine, the brain “sits down” and requires more and more.
In order to break this addiction, it is important to include a “dopamine detox” in your schedule: some researchers say that this practice improves productivity by teaching our brain not to be distracted.
Of course, we all have habits that are difficult to break. And, of course, it will not work to rebuild overnight – most likely, there will be disruptions, and more than once. But maybe knowing that giving up habitual practices can significantly improve your life will be enough to convince you to at least try?