“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant
Whatever it is you want to accomplish in your 20s or 30s, you know that it takes work, determination, consistency, and good habits.
And in this post, we’re going to talk a lot about habits.
Good habits to be exact.
But first of all, why are good habits important?
I could list here a hundred things why habits are important but in short, great habits help you achieve your ambitious goals while staying healthy, feeling happy, and living a fulfilling life.
The 7 habits we’re going to talk about are not only applicable for millennials they’re also for people of any age.
Sometimes we overcomplicate things by searching for the most life-changing habits that we could do.
But the truth is, these simple habits are already enough to improve the quality of our life.
These are super simple to the extent that we’re not that motivated to do them most of the time.
While I do all the habits below, I can’t say that I’m doing them perfectly and consistently all the time.
Sometimes I skip, I get lazy, or I’m not just motivated to do them.
I’m only a normal human being just like you.
But it doesn’t mean that we can’t try again and implement them.
Enough talking, let’s now talk about these habits you need to develop especially as a millennial.
1. The Habit of Being Grateful
Gratitude is one of the most important things you need to incorporate if you want a life of joy, happiness, and fulfillment.
To be honest with you here, I struggled to be grateful for the past few years.
I didn’t take any time to appreciate all my amazing blessings in life which are my family, my partner, my friends, and my job because I was too focused on achieving my next goal.
After I achieved it?
I became happy for a few hours and I immediately planned out again what my next goal would be.
If you can relate to this, I totally understand.
But now, (yes, here today) is the perfect time to slow down for a while and think of all the things that you have, all the goals you’ve accomplished, and all the struggles you’ve gone through.
And be grateful because if not for them, you won’t be where you are right now.
You don’t have to become a millionaire and achieve extraordinary things to appreciate everything that you have.
So what are you waiting for?
Pause reading for a while and be grateful.
Done?
Awesome!
Now do it every single day.
I listened to a podcast the other day by Steven Bartlet and he mentioned that being grateful is not natural to us humans because our brain tends to focus more on the negative.
With that knowledge in mind, we need to make gratitude a religion.
We need to practice it every day.
If you want to learn how to become more grateful, I’ve written a full article here that you can read (insert link).
2. The Habit of Journaling
Journalling is one of the best ways to become more self-aware as I talked about in this article.
As a millennial, knowing yourself is really worth your time because it lays the foundation for your career, health, and relationship success.
Writing every day in my journal is a habit that I started in January 2018 and now my day isn’t complete if I can’t write in it.
Journaling made me aware of my thoughts and my emotions.
It helped me get clear on my goals in life and what truly matters to me.
I observed that when I write whatever is in my head, I feel more calm, peaceful, and focused because my thoughts are not floating in my head.
Journaling also helped me a lot when I was struggling with anxiety and a quarter-life crisis.
Sometimes, there are things that you’re not comfortable sharing with the people that you love and trust.
So the best thing for you to do is to grab a pen and paper and pour your heart out.
You will be amazed by how you instantly feel less stressed about it.
I am so much aware of how journaling can make a huge impact in your life, especially in your 20s that’s why I highly recommend it to every millennial I know.
Start small but most importantly, start now.
3. The Habit of Exercising
This specific habit is not only for you reading this but it’s also for me.
All my life I struggle to exercise and move my body because all I want is to sit in front of my computer and work or sit on my favorite spot and read.
I’m not also athletic, I don’t enjoy dancing, and I don’t have any hobby that requires my body to move.
If you think it sounds terrible, you’re right, it is.
But as I dive deeper into personal development, I realize exercise is a very important aspect of your life if you want to be healthy, happy, and productive.
What I’m starting to do is setting a goal of exercising for at least 30 minutes 3 times a week and making sure that I walk every afternoon with our dogs after sitting for too long at work.
If you’re with me on this journey, start small and simple.
You don’t have to go extreme in your first few months because you might get overwhelmed and not exercise at all.
What matters most is you’re being intentional and doing your best to take care of your body while you’re younger than most people.
4. The Habit of Meditating
Meditation helps you to become calmer and grounded and it’s something I’ve been doing for a year now.
Meditation, the same as journaling, helped me with my anxiety.
Before meditation, I was an extreme overthinker, control freak, and worrier.
I wasn’t connected to my body at all.
When I first started doing it, I thought it was too woo-woo for me.
But since I love to do a lot of research, I discovered that meditation helps you become more focused and clear-headed.
You can check out this article for more science-based benefits of meditation.
I started doing meditation last year for 10 minutes every day and I never looked back.
As a millennial, it’s more important than ever to meditate because we are constantly bombarded with information, news, gossip, and trends on social media.
Our brain becomes over-stimulated that which makes it hard to focus and think clearly.
If you haven’t started meditating yet, I recommend starting for at least 5 minutes every day.
You can also download guided meditations from YouTube or you can use meditation apps like Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer.
5. The Habit of Eating Healthy
This one is not the easiest since our generation loves great-tasting foods.
Think pizza, cakes, sugary drinks, potato chips, and more.
I was obsessed with eating these foods before because they’re undoubtedly delicious.
Fruits and vegetables for me were bland, boring, and tasteless not until I started to become more conscious of my health.
One of my goals in life is to feel good every day and I realized I won’t be able to achieve it if I continue to feed myself a bunch of garbage.
You might not feel the negative effects of the unhealthy foods you’re eating because you’re still young but I know that it will eventually catch up on you.
Almost every successful person I admire highly encourages us to start living and eating healthy especially if we work in a high-stress career.
Yes, it’s very tempting to eat from a fast-food restaurant but please know that these food companies pay a large sum of money on food scientists to make their food as addicting as possible.
There’s nothing wrong with eating chips, pizzas, and fried chicken once in a while but don’t make it your daily consumption.
You can follow the rule of 80/20 when it comes to your food by eating 80% of natural foods like fruits and vegetables and 20% of other foods.
The most important thing is that you nourish your body by eating nutritious and healthy foods because these are what your body deserves for you to function well.
6. The Habit of Setting Goals
Goal setting is one of the first things I needed to learn when I started being self-employed.
When you don’t set goals, you’ll get nothing done because you have nothing to work on.
Now I’m not telling you to be obsessed with your goals.
What I want to emphasize is that you need to set a goal in every area of your life to keep improving.
When you have goals, you know where you’re heading.
It also makes you focused because your attention is set to something more important than your distractions.
As a millennial, you can set goals for your career or your business, your health, your relationship, and your finances.
If you just live your life aimlessly having no direction, you don’t feel motivated and purposeful.
Set aside time to think about all the things you want to do and all the goals you want to accomplish.
Break it down into small actionable steps that you can do every day.
Personally, I love setting exciting goals because they make me jump out of my bed every morning feeling motivated to crush them.
I know it can have the same effect on you too.
7. The Habit of Constantly Learning
Highly effective and successful people are avid learners.
They constantly learn new things to make their lives better.
In your 20s, one of the best investments of your time and money is to educate yourself about the things that would help you move closer to your dreams.
One of the things that I recommend is to read a lot of books.
I’m grateful because I started to love reading in my elementary years.
It helped me tremendously to become the person I want to be.
Books are very inexpensive but they hold great lessons that other people took long years to learn and share with us.
If you want to up-level your learning process, study courses about your chosen field to improve your skills, and widen your knowledge.
You can also hire a coach if you want more accountability and guided experience.
Set aside a time every day to learn and fill your mind with knowledge and wisdom from people who are way ahead of you and your future self will thank you massively.
Word of warning: all the things you’ve studied and learned are useless if you don’t put them into action.
I know a lot of people who know a lot of things but haven’t implemented a single thing and are still stuck to where they’re at.
Always be learning but always be taking action.
Final Words
All of these habits are extremely simple but if done consistently, they can make a huge difference in the way you live your life.
To be honest, they are very basic but since it’s basic, not a lot of people give their attention to them.
I know you’ve already heard all of them on other blogs, social media posts, and YouTube videos.
There’s honestly nothing new but I want to share with you my personal stories for each of them to give you extra motivation and to let you feel that you’re not alone in this journey.
What habits are you going to start doing today?
Share it with me in the comments below!
