I’ve been spending time working on re-creating my life over the past five years and came across these 8 Habits.
They are borrowed from a Harvard Study, which found that we can control eight big decisions in our lives pretty directly: Smoking, drinking, body weight, exercise, emotional resilience, education, relationships and to some degree, our financial security.
I personally work on every single one of these habits daily.
I do this because I am a work in progress and like to consider where I could invest a little more time, energy, or thought on a regular basis. I do it because I need time to incorporate a new habit into my life and I need the repetition of reminding myself of what I am trying to change or manage. I do it because I hope to continually become a better person as I age.
Choosing a healthy and emotionally balanced lifestyle, for me, means making a list of the specific things I want to be able to do in my next several decades of my life and then doing the daily work to make sure my body is strong enough to achieve those goals.
Following these eight habits helps me stay focused…
Don’t smoke – If you already smoke, quit now. You might not succeed on your first try, but the earlier you start the quitting process, the more smoke-free years you can invest in your happiness account.
Watch your drinking. Alcohol abuse is strongly correlated with smoking, but plenty of other research shows that even by itself, it is one of the most powerful predictors of winding up sad and sick. If you have any indication of problem drinking in your life, get help now. If you have drinking problems in your family, do not take your chances: Keep that switch turned off. Although forgoing alcohol can be difficult, you’ll never be sorry you made this decision.
I personally have had my moments when alcohol got the better of me and accordingly, I accepted that there was no longer any place for alcohol in my life if I was to pursue the healthy lifestyle I wanted to have. It took me a few tries but I succeeded because I was honest with myself…
Maintain a healthy body weight. Eat a diet with lots of fruits and vegetables and moderate serving sizes.
I switched to a plant based diet five years ago and I consider it the most life changing decision I have ever made. I continue to read about it daily and make adjustments while I pursue my best body weight and health.
I have a series of fitness goals I intend to pursue for the next 30 years because just as I wanted to retire with enough money saved up to sustain us for the rest of our lives, I also want to reach an older age with enough of a ‘reserve’ of muscle and bone density to protect myself from injury and allow myself to continue to pursue the activities I enjoy.
By doing a little bit daily, the cumulative effect should make me a dynamic 90 year old or perhaps, a feisty centenarian.
Prioritize movement in your life by scheduling time for it every day and sticking to it. Arguably the single best, time-tested way to do this is by walking daily.
I ‘run’ 10K five days a week and it has simply become a part of my life now. I bike 30 – 50 K a week and swim a mile or two also plus I lift weights and do core exercises. I move as much as I can. Yim and I love hiking and hope to continue hiking well into our eighties. You can read many posts on this website about our past hikes.
Exercise is a privilege and a gift to yourself — both today and in the decades to come.
Practice your coping mechanisms now. The earlier you can find healthy ways to deal with life’s inevitable distresses, the more prepared you’ll be if ill luck strikes in your 80s. This means working consciously—perhaps with assistance from spiritual practices or even therapy—to avoid excessive rumination, unhealthy emotional reactions, or avoidance behaviour.
For me, this means weekly reading on subjects like contentment and gratitude and it means intellectually practicing them every chance I can. By doing this, I have learned that my spiritual beliefs are fairly atheistic. I’ve read the Buddhists principles because I hoped that would become a guiding light but have trouble accepting that human life is all about suffering but I do accept their belief that meditation can help anyone. Introspection makes sense to me. I have also read Thich Nhat Hanh and I value some of his writings, just not all of them, which I think is healthy for me.
I believe being grateful is critically important to ones mental well being.
Keep learning. Continuing education leads to a more active mind in old age, and that means a longer, happier life. That doesn’t mean that you need to go to Harvard. You simply need to engage in lifelong, purposeful learning.
It will probably come as no surprise that at this stage in my life, I read mostly non-fiction books on subjects like Nutrition, Health, Buddhism, Travel, Exercise and Investment books. Almost every week I read new studies regarding the foods we eat and how to eat better. I started to cook almost a year ago and am now quite proud to say I could easily prepare myself 7 – 10 meals without much effort. And I’ve learned to make my own salad dressings so I don’t buy store bought dressings any longer.
Do the work to cultivate stable, long-term relationships now. For most people, this includes a steady marriage, but other relationships with family, friends, and partners can fit in this category as well. The point is to find people with whom you can grow, whom you can count on, no matter what comes your way.
I have a handful of friends whom I believe will always be there for me.
Work on achieving long-term financial security. This last point I added as I think it is necessary for happiness. Others may not agree with me but having reached retirement age and having a secure financial future, I know it plays a large part in my happiness.
Achieving financial security is not as difficult as it seems but it does take discipline. I began in 1978 when I opened my first RRSP and I contributed additional funds into it every single year for 41 years before retiring. Sometimes more than other years but I never once failed to contribute. I lived by the motto of “Pay Yourself First”, which meant sometimes I put off paying some of my bills but never missed making the monthly contribution to my own future security. That was always clear in my mind…
Everyone loves a happy ending, especially in the story of their own life.
Start writing your ending today.
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