10 Habits for Self Improvement (Life Changing & Motivating)

hey balancers and welcome back to another episode of the balance the podcast I'm your host Erica and if you're somebody like me who is curious to learn more about themselves who is on a self-development a self-improvement journey who is interested in curating and creating a life that is more aligned authentic and balanced for them than this episode is for you today I'm going to share 10 cherry-picked habits that I think are incredibly power power ful for anybody in a selfimprovement journey we're not only going to talk about what those habits are but why I have

personally made an episode dedicating time to talk about their importance in the self-improvement and self-development journey I think when we talk about habits I could go on a 50-page tangent of all the different things I do that I love that are great for my motivation and my discipline and all these things but the reason I wanted to dedicate it to habits specifically for the self-improvement journey is because that is what this podcast is about and I really feel that if you can have a routine that gives you both the time and space to be in

your own thoughts and think about the things you want why you want them and have the energy to do that as well that is the most important and the most critical way you're actually going to make long- lasting impactful and align change in your life some of these habits may be ones you've heard before may not necessarily be new some might might be uh interesting you may not have thought about them in terms of being a habit or including it in your routine and I'm really excited to share these because I feel like before I

implemented a lot of these I was very chop and change with my discipline when it came to my self-improvement and what I mean with that is I would sometimes feel very grounded and connected with myself and sometimes I wouldn't I would constantly be kind of like chopping in and out of what I call alignment feeling really grounded in myself so these in combination have worked really well for me you may listen and and choose to adopt maybe a handful of them or maybe one really scks out to you this isn't a perfect list for you

this is what's currently working for me and I just hope that some of them uh inspire you if not to think about your own habits and whether they are playing a key role in your selfimprovement journey or whether they're ones that you can adopt on your own path as well and I have saved my favorite and what I think is the best until last so make sure you stay tuned till end okay the first habit that I think has been indispensable for my self-improvement journey is movement so I'm not necessarily talking about going to the

gym every single day of the week I'm just talking about moving your body every day there is something magical and beautiful I just about being in that Mind Body Connection for me it's quite a flexible routine throughout my week so I do have a gym program that I do but I do like mixing that up with Pilates with walking with yoga it's just you know there's obviously the science aspect of it which I'm not a professional or qualified to speak on in terms of the endorphins it gives you the Feelgood hormones all that that's quite

obvious to me after I've done a workout how good you feel but it's just also in terms of telling yourself you're going to stick to something and then showing up for yourself that practice has such a key role to play in terms of your uh discipline in terms of creating and sticking to things you're basically building up evidence of telling yourself you're going to do things and sticking to them and if you want to improve or grow as a person having that Foundation of knowing you can do things that you stick to is really really

key and crucial in terms of growing the third reason I think that's really really important is like I said that Mind Body Connection actually being very present when you're moving feeling how your body feels in different things pushing yourself I don't know there's just something really magical about it and I really feel a difference on on the days I move my body versus the days that I don't for example I mean it's nice to have breaks and go on holidays but even things like my posture feels off I don't feel as energetic it's just crazy

the range of benefits that come with it but this discipline or this habit has been critical to me improving as a person and actually being committed on that Journey so having a very committed movement habit I think is really important for anyone that's serious about growing as a person number two this is a golden pillar for me it's a no phone rule so I have a rule where for the first let's say two hours of the day and the last hour of the day I have my phone on do not disturb and I really try

and not go on it unless it's for something I absolutely need to and the way I do this is I use on the iPhone it's called the do not disturb feature which basically means you won't get any notifications po up on your phone it doesn't put it on airplane mode or anything like that so everything is still coming through they're just not popping up on your home phone which means you're not being distracted first thing in the morning this is very very important for me this is when I'm doing my movement so I'm waking up

and I'm going straight to the gym or I'm going straight for my walk it's something I like to do first thing in the morning if I had my phone not on do not disturb I'd be waking up to my alarm and instantly seeing all my notifications and what that does is it puts me in an iMed immediate space of distraction so that means I'm not I don't have that space and time for myself right the phone is such a beautiful tool we've got we can access the world in our pockets but it also means our

attention is grabbed constantly and so I find using this do not disturb feature or the no phone rule is a way for you to commit time for yourself and keep that sacred and what I love doing is when I'm ready to be distracted that's when I take my phone off Do Not Disturb in the morning and it's this really nice practice of I've just had 2 3 hours to myself and I'm now choosing that I'm prepared to be distracted so this this really nice way of just controlling your energy and conserving it for yourself and

the other thing I'll say is especially with the night one think about the energy and pace of you scrolling on social media constantly right it's like dopamine hit dopamine hit you're just distracted very very short grabby style energy right you're just like always needing something to top it up to top it up to top it up and it's very like quick frantic energy if you can actually switch that off a decent amount of time before you go to bed that actually gets your energy back into this just slow not distracted kind of neutral state if

you have scrolled and then try and go to sleep it's highly likely that it takes you quite some time to go to sleep and for me personally I can only put this down to the way that I get revved up just being on my phone especially the way we consume short form content and social media so having that rule has been incredible for my sleep it's been incredible for my own connection with myself and just really protecting me from being distracted I mean we've got all day to be on our phone a lot of us

use our phone for work it's basically on my desk all day when I'm working so I'm never without it so I can choose to just switch that off and use that do not disturb feature as kind of like a barrier for my own time so this has been a habit that I have found incredibly profound to just create that time and space for myself and opt in and out of Destruction and just as a quick aside like if you're someone who is trying to build a different life for yourself if you're trying to focus if

you're trying to be a little bit more organized or disciplined use this feature throughout the day as well you know if you've got an hour to do work it's really hard sometimes to have the phone face down because you're tempted to look at it and you know we check it we have those natural tendencies and urges but if you use a do not disturb feature it's still there you can see the time you're not distracted by that notification going off so this has been an amazing feature I really love it and using it as the

way I start and end my day has been really really powerful the third habit is for anyone listening who's like me who likes being very organized in the form of lists to-do lists uh C ERS things like that having a very organized way and having apps that actually help you organize your things and your time is very important otherwise if things are scrambled in your head they're going to be scrambled in your reality right the same thing as like if your environment is a mess you're going to feel like messy and Scattered and all over

the place so I won't go on too long about this because I know different people have different preferences for how they like to be organized or would do these lists I I actually used to be pen on paper very old school type girl where I'd have my to-do list but I think since I've moved into like planning ahead more and doing more quarterly six Monon yearly goals it's just been impossible to keep track of that on paper so I like to use two apps the first one is called uh sunama this app is basically a

calendar but if you're like me and you have a lot of different email accounts I've got one for the podcast one for work one for personal one for my e-commerce business it's very hard to keep track of all the meetings and due dates for things when they're all on different Gmail accounts all on different calendars so this app basically lets you uh pull in all your calendar in one and it'll display all the deadlines meetings things in each of those calendars in the one place which has been amazing the second one I really love using

is cenly so this is basically just a meeting booking type app but the reason I love it is I'm currently based in Dubai I do a lot of business and have a lot of meetings that take place in Australia in the UK in the US and having to sit down and work out the time zone difference is just goes over my head so this app basically lets the person booking choose their time zone you've set it to your time zone and it's just very seamless I mean I can't keep tra track of daylight savings and

all of that so this has been great uh I've put some links in the show notes if you guys want to check those out there've been two apps I really love using and then in terms of just keeping track of my goals my corporate uh brain has taken over this one and I really use a bland Google doc list um it just help it's helped me kind of build out the big picture goals in terms of yearly 6 Monon 3 month but this Habit in and of itself whether you do it through apps whether you

do it as written it just being organized is really important if you're someone who is focusing on growing and learning more about yourself you have to be organized with your time because then you can a see where your time is going you can vet your time which is really important to make sure that where it's going is conducive to who you want to be but also and most importantly when you are clear in the mind when you're organized it just gives you this peace of mind to think clearly because you're not scattered like the way

your calendar or your week is so um for anyone listening who already is a fan of to-do list you probably already across this but those are just some apps that I like to use if there's any you use like even with to-do list I know there are so many please feel free to drop them in the comments too so I can check them out so other people listening can check them out too but this habit is really really important if you are bettering yourself fourth one fourth habit that is very important if you're on a

self-discovery or a self-improvement journey is preparing your own food now I have spoken to so many people especially here in Dubai that tell me it's so much cheaper and faster to just order food every single day and I hear you the truth is it probably is but it's all about the quality of what we are consuming for me personally I have found that if I am ordering takeaway which generally has a lot more sugar and preservatives and and different things in there that are not clean food shall we say it really impacts my energy and

this is what this point this habit is all about it's about energy management because if you know what you're consuming and you're not having too much of a heavy meal your energy is going to stretch a lot longer every single day also just in terms of your General Health you know health I think is the foundation to anything you want to do in life if you've got your health you have the energy to show up and do the things that you want to do every single day so prepping food has been a great way for

me to actually manage my energy and make sure that I'm just on top of my health in general this kind of brings me on to my fifth thing my fifth habit which is having Sundays of as a planning day because a lot of people will say to me I don't have the time to Mill prep it's it takes too long all those kinds of things so in general Sunday for me is a planning day it's planning my meetings and what my week looks like it's making sure I haven't scheduled in too many calls that I'm

going to have no time to do my call things or my call Habits right because that's very important to my balance it's making sure that I have pre-ordered my groceries so on the grocery note let's just go to the side for a sec I generally plan and order everything on a Saturday I don't want to Discount the mental toll it takes to actually like plan out what you're going to eat think of all the groceries you need to order and then actually order them I feel very grateful I live in a city where it's accessible

to order food basically same day or next day delivery but if you can create like a two-day window where you plan and Order and then the food arrives and you prep it's a very easy way to just get into the swing of doing things because if you wake up on a Sunday and think oh what am I going to eat this week order it by the time it comes it's probably later in the day or even if you go and do your shopping it's just a lot of decisions you have to make in one day

so I found splitting it out just splits the mental energy required to do those things and Sundays are such a great day for me to just get ahead of my week you know that's assuming you have a Monday to Friday schedule if your schedules pushed forward or you work weekends or your weekend break or days off or during the week you could use that as your planning day too but it just gives me a level of comfort and peace of mind that in that week coming up I've organized the things that are non-negotiables to me

I have the time to do and spend the time doing the things that matter to me and I just have that Clarity going into the week so use Sundays to plan your week out or use your day off to to plan your week out whether that is food whether that is meetings and your calendar whether it is uh things you need to do like building out a to-do list and steps around that use Sundays as a planning day because when Monday kicks in and unexpected client work comes up you've got deadlines you weren't expecting it

can throw the week out so if you've already organized stuff for the week then those things don't you don't have to miss out on those things the sixth habit that's been really powerful in my own self-improvement Journey has been this concept of constant education so it's constantly learning and I feel like once you start this journey you realize you know it's that famous saying uh the more you know the more you realize you don't know and it's so true I think learning about ourselves and becoming better as a person is a lifelong Pursuit I I

don't think we'll ever get to a stage where we're just done you know like we feel like we've accomplished or learned everything there is to learn about ourselves I really do think we could do that until our very last day and so being engaged in constant education which you're probably already doing if you're listening to this podcast but through podcasts through books through interesting articles through Reading papers whatever you find inspiring Whatever Gets you thinking actually having that as a habit so not just ad hockly when you feel like it having as a habit for

example uh Monday mornings when you're walking on the treadmill that's your time to learn something new I do do that actually on a Thursday it's my 60-minute walk day and I always listen to a podcast on something I am interested to learn about at that period in time and and that topic area or the theme of that changes depending on what stage I'm at in life for example now it's a lot around pregnancy having babies it's it's really just firming out my understanding in that area because it's something I'm interested in and something I hope

you know to engage in in the next couple years of my life but that topic or what I choose to learn about for my own growth changes depending on where I'm at in life but I have that core habit of constant education so anchoring that into your week and actually having it as a regular habit is a sure way to guarantee that you're constantly evolving and growing in whatever area you want to focus on confidence public speaking uh YouTube whatever it is the seventh type of habit that I found has been incredible for my self-improvement

journey is having a mindful habit now I want to keep this one quite Broad and I never want to be the person to tell you that this is the Habit that you need to adopt and this is how you need to do it because we're all very different in terms of how we like to learn how we like to process so when I say having a mindful habit I'm talking about distraction free time and space for yourself so one could say that the phone free time that I shared before is a mindful habit but let's

go a little bit deeper you know within that time you can have no phone but if you're watching Netflix or doing something else and that is kind of redundant so what are we choosing to do in that time for me a mindful habit looks like meditation maybe journaling maybe just sitting there and just being with my own thoughts right thinking about them whatever you choose to make this mean I mean it could even be like going on a silent walk right where you don't have any distraction and you're just really present in the moment any

form of mindful habit I think is really key to anyone on a self-improvement journey because you have that time with yourself and if you're trying to grow and evolve as a person but you're not connected or plugged into what's actually going on in you right now what you're thinking where your heads at where your mindset is reflecting on the way you you think and feel about things you're almost operating from a point of assumption right you're you're assuming what's going on without actually plugging in so having a mindful Habit in your routine is really important

for you to establish where things are at where you're currently at so that any efforts you make or whatever you're doing in terms of your routine or your improvement is actually reflective or matches where you're currently at the eighth habit that I think is really key to anyone on a self-improvement journey is being clear on your priorities now bear with me as I break this down because I want to talk about it in the context of having having spare time and actually feeling it mindfully rather than just doing anything you feel like doing so when

I talk about the balance Theory and the concept of balance we talk about the three areas of our life so our health our relationships and our fulfillment we speak about these areas as Gardens now with Gardens they generally need a bit of sun and a bit of water in order to survive right and we call these and non-negotiables they're the The Bare Essentials that each garden bed needs in order to survive and non-negotiables that's our first type of priorities if I was to hypothetically add some fertilizer that's only going to bolster the growth and the

liveliness of that Garden it won't be dead without it it's only going to be a value ad and that is how I look at the second area of priorities which I call our wants so when I take you guys through the priority lists we've got our non-negotiables which are akin to our sun and water for our garden beds it's the Bare Essentials it's the things they need to thrive and then we've got our wants these are the would be nice to have and would only be a bonus value ad to those garden beds let's talk

about a practical example let's say that is in our relationships let's say with my romantic relationship so with my husband I have a non-negotiable that we spend quality time together we have kind of like a date night right at least once a week and we've also now evolved and we um cuz our working schedules are completely different right so when we sit down and have dinner we have a non-negotiable that there's no phones no Tech and we just we actually talk and communicate because it's really easy to get stuck in everything you're doing and not

share that with the person you're with so for us that's our non-negotiables that forms our sun and water on our non-negotiable priority list now if I'm talking about the wants it would be nice to have a second date night to maybe spend a morning together instead of a night so those things would go on my wants priority list why is this important generally what we do is we will build out our time our week with our non-negotiables so these are the things that for our health our relationships and our fulfillment are non-negotiable to make sure

that those areas are alive and well that they are tended to and that basically forms our balance but naturally we're going to have these gaps in time we're going to have this spare time and if we get to that spare time and we fill it with random stuff things that we've said yes to that we don't really want to go to those things can be really not conducive to the life we're trying to create so the intention or the aim to have this second priority list is basically to have a menu of options of things

that you can do when you do have that spare time because you've already identif ified that they would only be a value ad to the things that are non-negotiables so basically what I'm trying to say is instead of just feeling your time with whatever that's not really mindful that may actually not be contributing to helping these areas Thrive you can actually build out a secondary list of wants that if you choose to spend your time doing those things is going to bolster those areas if is something you're really interested in um I did do a

free 20 minute talk on stage where I actually take you through how to work out your balance how to do these priority lists there's a free worksheet that goes with it I'll drop a link on the video now and I I'll put a link in the show notes to it as well and you can actually work out what that looks like for you but basically the Habit here is filling your spare time with things that are still priorities so that your time is spent in a very intentional and aligned way there's a caveat to this

and this is the ninth habit which is this thing I like to call No Agenda time so I don't think it's realistic to have 24/7 of your routine planned and coordinated and organized right that's not the intention with having these priorities front of mind the intention with that is to be clear on what matters for you so that the things you're doing in your life actually align and make that a reality but I do think there is a value or a benefit in having just a bit of time and space where you are free to

just do whatever right there's nothing wrong with having having a good scroll SES or binging Netflix or doing those sorts of things so what I actually have coined or come up with is this concept of No Agenda time and generally I like to make this on a Sunday afternoon it's a 2-hour block and it's basically as self-explanatory as what it sounds it's a Time block with No Agenda which means when I get to that day I can choose in that moment okay what I feel like doing that's what I'm going to do whether it be

nothing whether it be watch something on Netflix whether it be be social go out stay at home go to the beach whatever I feel like doing I can just do in that time without the thought of priorities and all of that so this gives you that space to just do what you feel you need to do but I think this in tandem with being clear on the priorities means you have a really nice well-rounded schedule where your time isn't spent saying yes to people just because you've got nothing else to do or you don't have

that Clarity doing things you don't want to do or just getting caught being stuck not doing much at all definitely check out that video if this is interesting to you and if you're resonating and feel like it could offer some real benefit in terms of being a habit in your weekly routine the very last one I did say i' saved the best till last this has been a habit that really surprised me I used to be that kind of person that would look at my routine and my schedule in a very rigid and fixed way

you know I've got a BC things to do in the morning I've got to do those and then I can start my day right it was a very very rigid way of looking at my routine but the Habit that has been the most profound to my self-improvement journey is actually flexibility what I mean when I say that is you can have the perfect routine you can have a list of habits but if you don't have an element of flexibility it is virtually impossible for you to move with the es and flows that form life right

life happens if we get really fixed up and wound up that we have to do our routines a certain way that things have to happen in this perfect order it doesn't allow for the chaos and the unpredictability of life so flexibility in my routine and having flexibility as a habit or a skill if you will means you can wake up one day and have a gym SES planned but feel emotionally you're not there physically you need more rest so maybe you convert that to something low impact like a walk this happens actually to me last

week it means that when I said I was going to do a whole recording block on the weekend and I woke up that day and I wasn't feeling aligned and grounded in myself and I wasn't feeling like I had the energy to show up the way I wanted to I just postponed that and being organized is important for this because if you had no choice but to do a certain thing on a certain date then your hands are kind of tied and you have to do things irrespective how you feel right but if you're organized

and if you bring in this element of flexibility ility it means you can really Embrace things when you've got the right energy to do them and I only bring this up because it's been so powerful in terms of the way I look at my time and my balance but because I really used to be stuck in this rigid mindset where it left me was a position where I almost was landlocked in by it I was handcuffed to my routine and the point of a routine is to give you flexibility and Clarity in where you're going

and looking at it in a very rigid way was doing nothing but that it meant I was going against my intuitive nature it means I was being inauthentic for the sake of ticking things off my to-do list when I felt like my time would be spent doing something else better so again this is why like having the two different priority lists is really important because you can start to say okay I can see when something is a non-negotiable I can see when something is a want and I can see when I need to switch in

between the things I can see when a non-negotiable needs to be uh adapted or made a little more flexible because it's too rigid and I think just if you start thinking about the concept of flexibility in terms of your routine it's a really really powerful one to make sure you're not a slave to it basically that's where I felt like I was many many times in the past I was just a slave to my routine and it was really hindering the whole point of having one in the first place so that personally for me has

been one of my favorite skills or habits to implement in terms of me growing as a person and being on this self-improvement journey so those are the 10 habits that I feel have been incredible for my self-improvement journey they're the habits that I'm adopting right here and now in this moment and like what I always say with balance it's a changing concept so maybe in 10 years from now this 10 list of habits will look different or will be shifted a little bit but these are what's working for me right now I would love to

hear if you guys are currently already thinking about some these maybe you've got them in your routine already maybe you've got some other habits that I haven't spoken about that you'd love to share make sure you drop them in the comments below don't forget to hit subscribe and the bell notification so you don't miss any new content that comes out and it also really helps us reach more people like me and you who are on a similar path and really need the same kind of content or way of thinking to help them shift into creating

a life that's more aligned for them thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode and I can't wait to share next week's guests I'll see you all next week for the interview and until then stay balanced