Habits play an important role in shaping your life and personality. And they also shape your future endeavors.
The nature of multiple activities that you perform daily has been classified as motor, intellectual, and habits of character.
Motor habits are associated with movements or actions that you make with your body unconsciously such as walking, your posture ( the way you sit and stand, run or exercise), playing the guitar, pressing the piano keys etc.
However, Mental habits are connected with the psychological processes in your brain, like observation, perception, logical thinking, reasoning, the way you usually react and respond, etc.
The habits of character are those which originate in your traits. For example, when you consistently compliment yourself for little success and effort or tear yourself down after any obstacle or failure, these thought patterns become deep-rooted habits. Eventually, you'll instinctively praise yourself or criticize yourself without consciously identifying why that thought occurs to you. In other words, it is a behavior that we keep repeating or shaping our mental habits.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle
Our mental habits are beautiful things since these are healthy, for instance, praying, meditating, getting enough sleep, reading books, eating enough and healthy food, single-tasking, walking tall, thinking positive, being flexible, being assertive, finding reasons, finding solutions, learning from your past experiences, and implementing those in your life as well are some of the examples of habits that can improve your thinking process as well as thinking content.
People these days are concerned about their lifestyle. So you will hear from almost every person that "I'm looking for a better quality of life" or "I just want to simplify my life," etc.
For this, the nourishment of your spirit and soul is important. The more we learn about ourselves, our thoughts, and our feelings, the more we become clear and lead smooth life ahead. A higher level of self-awareness determines our daily quality of mental health habits.
Whereas constantly worrying, thinking about the opinions of others, dwelling on possible future disasters or past hurts, taking things too personally, taking inadequate sleeping, always staying upset can damage your life.
These bad mental habits create obstacles for better careers and can destroy relationships. Your mind works against you when you develop bad mental habits. Therefore, it is essential to identify them.
Here are the most common habits that sabotage our happiness.
Negative Self Talk: You always doubt your abilities and capabilities. You often think that I am not good enough. You find it difficult to enjoy your work. And you constantly think about your failures. You habitually remind yourself that you are stupid. This negative self-doubt will not help you to solve the problems.
The habit of blaming: You always makes excuses and blames others for not achieving your desired goals. Blaming and complaining is a bad mental habit that encourages a negative mindset. You often wrongfully blame others for everything without finding actual reasons and avoid taking responsibility with the mindset of perfectionism.
Trying to Please Everyone: You always try to make people happy by putting yourself aside. You always prioritize others and sacrifice your own needs and wants. Yet, you never say no. By doing this, you lose your identity, damage your personality, and begin to change your actions and beliefs to be accepted and liked by others.
Excessive Use of Social Media/Mobile: You unconsciously spend hours and hours on your mobile. You want to keep in touch with everyone and want to know everything on social media without realizing that it harms the mind. As a result, your anxiety level increases; you constantly feel sad and compare yourself with unrealistic things, you start losing your self-esteem, increasing your impulsivity.
Always stay in a Pang of Guilt and Shame: Guilt is a combination of feelings of shame, regret, anxiety, humiliation, and frustrations. You dwell with these emotions every time.
Self-sabotage: People have a terrible mental habit of making conclusions and predicting bad results after having just one bad experience. They ruin their career with this self-defeating mentality. They always forecast things negatively and abandoned the idea of try try again till you succeed. Their minds overestimate unknown threats and dangers.
Don't Ask for Help: You avoid seeking help from others. You think asking for help will make you small, or you are capable enough to handle the situation. You have some unusual perceptions, like if you go for it, you will be seen as a needy person.
To change your perceptions or mental attitudes, you have to practice until those become your behavior means you need to practice thinking in new directions.
There are some strategies that can help you build healthy habits.
Behave Wisely
When you encounter problems, behave intelligently. It would help if you learned to be persistent. Do not give in so easily. Analyze your problems, make strategies, and execute your plan to attack the problems you are facing. Only you and yourself know better the intensity of your problems. You know your situation better and can find solutions accordingly. Always find an alternative.
Control and Manage your Anger
In a state of emotions, we forget to use logic. So we speak those words that we shouldn't say at that moment's afterword we regret those words and actions. So always think before words come out of your mouth and control your tongue. It would be best if you thought before.
Listening
There is a saying that,
"Listening is the beginning of understanding
Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening.
Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance."
Listening is a skillful art. It has numerous benefits. This skill makes us compassionate and patient. When we listen to others, we collect new ideas, perceptions, insights and know different points of view of the same thing. We start thinking out of the box and come out of self-absorption. So, it will help manage your stress and anxiety and boost your capability of understanding your emotions and others. Experts say that listen fully is to focus closely on what is being said beyond just words. Generative listening is the art of developing more profound silences in yourself, so you can slow your mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed and hear beneath the words to their meaning.
Be Flexible
"If you never change your mind, why have one?" (Edward Debono)
Our mind is incredible. It can rewire, repair and become more competent once you are flexible. You develop and seek advanced approaches and have a well-developed sense of humor. Your mind is open to change while having information and data or reasoning, which contradicts your beliefs. Flexibility allows you to develop options and alternatives to consider. You understand the immediate reactions but also perceive the more significant objectives of constraints when you face them. So, the flexibility of mind is crucial for working with social diversity because you would be to think and predict from other person's of view that how they feel and anticipate potential misunderstandings. You show confidence in your intuitions involving logic and reasoning.
Positivity and Gratitude
Developing the attitude of gratitude and thankfulness is the best way to bring peace in life. You will be comfortable and have peace of mind when you are in a state of peace. In addition, your creativity level will increase because you can concentrate well on essential things.
Surround yourself with positive and encouraging people
Social connections impact us heavily. Our connections can make us and break us. If you are surrounded by negative people who constantly make fun of you, over criticize you, try to put you down then, quit them immediately, and get close to those who always encourage you, support you and help you out genuinely or you can get a coach who can help you out.
Sleep well
Good sleep is crucial for you. It is as vital as eating food and and doing exercise. Sleep is one of the pillars of good health and is especially essential for brain health.
Read a lot
Reading good books will improve your thinking and help you to amend your perceptions about life and people.
Meet friends
When we are upset, our healthy thoughts get muted, and destructive one echoed all the time but talking to your friends improve healthy mental habits. Hanging out with friends reduces stress, depression and anxiety and improves your self-confidence.