1 Waking up without an alarm

Understanding my sleep patterns has been a crucial learning for me. I am an early bird and after experimenting for a while I found my rhythm of waking up naturally without an alarm which is typically between 6 and 7am. I’m sure you are aware of the groggy feeling you sometimes get after waking up which even persists with the “right” amount sleep. Well, I’m sorry to inform you that often the amount of sleep is less important than the sleep cycle that you wake up from. If you’re forcing your body to wake up from a deep sleep cycle you’ll without a doubt struggle to get clarity right after waking up and you may think you need caffeine to truly wake up your body.

2 Tracking your sleep (whoop)

When I initially started my journey, I was in college and had lots of homework with unpredictable hours for classwork which led to my first habit of tracking my sleep and learning about my sleep patterns. In the past three years especially, I’ve been using Whoop as a tracker and learned a lot about my body and how my sleep gets affected by certain things that I do, eat or drink during the day. For example, I learned that sleeping with a humidifier running in the winter months increases my deep sleep by a measurable amount.

Whoop:https://join.whoop.com/54712ADD (1 month free + free device)

3 Finding sports that I truly enjoy

Movement in the morning has been something that changed not just my body but also my brain. I was never really curious about how different hormones turn into life happiness but I noticed it first hand when I started working out on a regular basis. Working out releases endorphins and your body gets used to this quickly – now when I don’t work out for a few days I don’t feel balanced and know it’s a signal for me to move my body even if it’s just dancing at home to music I enjoy.

4 Cut down on alcohol

Speaking of dancing, cutting down on alcohol also changed my life to the better. Alcohol is so ingrained in our culture, especially the beer culture that I grew up in, that it can be tough to turn down a glass or two when going out with friends but the truth is, at this stage of my life I just value productive and happy mornings more than parties at night clubs until 4am in the morning and laying in bed with a hungover most of the day after. That’s not the type of life I chose to live anymore because I decided I want more and a more healthy lifestyle.

5 Writing todo lists + brain dump

My brain usually works non-stop. I have so many things I want to explore in life and for a long time it was tough for me to slow down and organize my thou ghts in a way that made sense to me. I found a method that works great for me: Brain dumping my thoughts. Every morning, I get up and let my brain do it’s thing while I write down everything that comes to mind without judgment or assessment. Over time, sometimes days, sometimes weeks, I see patterns forming or things that keep coming up so I spend more time on them. This is for example why I started this channel! I had too many mornings where I woke up with things I genuinely wanted to share with this community and one day I decided for myself “Today’s the day. You’re gonna create this channel”.

6 No phone days

Similar with all the distractions that happen from my thoughts I also realized how my phone is distracting me quite a lot. I tried deinstalling certain apps, deleting accounts, etc. but I would always find different things to do on my phone. What I do instead is I designate one day every month as a no phone day where I leave my phone turned off for the entire day and spend the day without plans. Often I get up and realize how much time I suddenly have and how many things I’m missing on a daily basis. On those days I rarely make plans with friends and instead just leave my house and see where the day takes me.

7 Daily gratitude (research)

Another way to trick my brain on a daily basis is writing down three things that I’m grateful for every single day. Studies have shown that gratitude can boost neurotransmitter serotonin and activate the brain stem to produce dopamine which as a result makes you more happy and balanced in life. You’ve probably heard about this a million times before but it really is the easiest thing to do on a daily basis and it’s a win-win situation.

8 Tidy up space before sleep

I also try to tidy up my space every day before I go to bed. It doesn’t only help me start completely fresh the next day but also is a known tactic to reducing anxiety and improve sleep quality. When I know that my space is tidy, my brain has more space to explore things that I actually want in my life such as what I should film next for this channel or how to reach a certain goal. Now, do I love cleaning and tidying up? No but the way I do this every day is super simple: I set my phone timer for exactly 10 min and tell myself that for the next 10 min all you do is tidy up. After those 10 min, I stop and get ready for bed – when I’m setting a certain amount of time for this activity it’s easier for me to actually do it because I know 10 min is not a long time.

9 Being aware of my posture

Another big habit I started working on in the past few years was being very aware of my posture. One day I was walking around the city and realized that most of the people that I saw as super confident had amazing postures and great body language while I was literally putting my head down, shoulders rounded and making myself shorter than I actually am. The moment I started standing up straight and really reminding myself to keep my head up and not down was when people randomly started engaging with me in social settings.

10 Cold therapy + Breath work

The last habit I started implementing but honestly still struggle with is cold showers and breathwork. I learned this after reading about Wim Hoff who is also known as the ice man because through the way he focuses on bodywork and awareness. Fact is that our mind is often much weaker than our bodies are but there are ways to train your mind to have more endurance and become more resilient. Within a short span of 30 days, I was able to hold my breath double as long as before and stay strong for longer cold showers. Sometimes I even push myself to go to cryotherapy which is essentially a cold chamber to stay in for a few minutes.

I do want to mention that all of those habits are things that I learned and added to my life one after the other and you should check what works best for you at a given time. Not everyone has the luxury of going to bed as early as I do or their social circumstances won’t allow them to make radical changes in their lives. However, if you start one by one, your life may slowly change to a more mindful and productive life if that’s what you’re going for in 2023.

10 Habits That Changed My Life