10 Self-Improvement Habits You’ll WISH You Knew Sooner

Hey Balancers and welcome back to another episode of the Balance Theory 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, then this episode is for you. Today I'm going to share 10 cherry-picked habits that I think are incredibly powerful for anybody in a self-improvement 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 and 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 aligned change in your life. Some of these habits may be ones you've heard before. They may not necessarily be new. Some might be interesting. You may not have thought about them in terms of being a habit or including it in your routine. 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. 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 chopping in and out of what I call alignment, feeling really grounded in myself. These in combination have worked really well for me. You may listen and choose to adopt maybe a handful of them or maybe one really sticks 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 inspire you. If not, to think about your own habits and whether they are playing a key role in your self-improvement journey or whether they're ones that you can adopt on your own path as well. I have saved my favorite and what I think is the best until last. Make sure you stay tuned until the end. The first habit that I think has been indispensable for my self-improvement journey is movement. 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 about being in that mind-body connection. For me, it's quite a flexible routine throughout my week. I do have a gym program that I do, but I do like mixing that up with Pilates, with walking, with yoga. 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 feel-good 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 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. 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. I really feel a difference 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. 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. 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 pop up on your phone. It doesn't put it on aeroplane 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 immediate space of distraction. So that means I don't have that space and time for myself. 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 two, three hours to myself and I'm now choosing that I'm prepared to be distracted. So it's 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 here, dopamine here. 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 distraction. 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. 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 we check it. We have those natural tendencies and urges. But if you use the do not disturb feature, it's still there. You can see the time, but 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, calendars, 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? It's 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 do these lists. 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 month 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 Sunsama. 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 pull in all your calendars 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 Calendly. 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, it 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 track of daylight savings and all of that. So this has been great. I've put some links in the show notes if you guys want to check those out. They've been two apps I really love using. And then in terms of just keeping track of my goals, my corporate brain has taken over this one and I really use a bland Google Doc list. It's helped me kind of build out the big picture goals in terms of yearly, six month, three month. But this habit in and of itself, whether you do it through apps, whether you do it as written, 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 for anyone listening who already is a fan of to-do lists, you're 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 lists, 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 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 as a planning day. Because a lot of people will say to me, I don't have the time to meal prep, 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 core things or my core 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 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 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. Sundays are such a great day for me to just get ahead of my week. That's assuming you have a Monday to Friday schedule. If your schedule's pushed forward, or you work weekends, or your weekend break or days off are 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 plan your week out. Whether that is food, whether that is meetings and your calendar, whether it is things you need to do, like building out a to-do list and steps around that, use Sundays as a planning day. When Monday kicks in and unexpected client work comes up, you've got deadlines you weren't expecting, it can throw the week out. If you've already organized stuff for the week, then 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. It's constantly learning. I feel like once you start this journey, you realize it's that famous saying, the more you know, the more you realize you don't know. It's so true. I think learning about ourselves and becoming better as a person is a lifelong pursuit. I don't think we'll ever get to a stage where we're just done. 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. 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. Not just ad hoc-ly when you feel like it, having it as a habit. For example, Monday mornings when you're walking on the treadmill, that's your time to learn something new. I do that actually on a Thursday. It's my 60-minute walk day. I always listen to a podcast on something I am interested to learn about at that period in time. 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 really just firming up my understanding in that area because it's something I'm interested in and something I hope to engage in in the next couple years of my life. 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. 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, 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. When I say having a mindful habit, I'm talking about distraction-free time and space for yourself. One could say that the phone-free time that I shared before is a mindful habit, but let's go a little bit deeper. Within that time, you can have no phone, but if you're watching Netflix or doing something else, then that is redundant. 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, thinking about them. Whatever you choose to make this mean, it could even be like going on a silent walk 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. 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 head's at, where your is reflecting on the way you think and feel about things, you're almost operating from a point of assumption. You're assuming what's going on without actually plugging in. 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 spare time and actually feeling it mindfully rather than just doing anything you feel like doing. 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. We call these our non-negotiables. They're the bare essentials that each garden bed needs in order to survive, our 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 add. That is how I look at the second area of priorities, which I call our wants. 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. Then we've got our wants. These are the would-be-nice-to-have and would-only-be-a-bonus value add 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, at least once a week. We've also now evolved, because our working schedules are completely different. When we sit down and have dinner, we have a non-negotiable that there's no phones, no tech, and 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. 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. 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. 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. If we get to that spare time and we fill it with random stuff, things that we've said, that we don't really want to go to, those things can be really not conducive to the life we're trying to create. 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 identified that they would only be a value add to the things that are non-negotiables. Basically, what I'm trying to say is instead of just filling 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 this is something you're really interested in, 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'll put a link in the show notes to it as well. You can actually work out what that looks like for you. 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. I don't think it's realistic to have 24-7 of your routine planned and coordinated and organized. 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. 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. There's nothing wrong with having a good scroll sesh or binging Netflix or doing those sorts of things. What I actually have coined or come up with is this concept of no agenda time. Generally, I like to make this on a Sunday afternoon. It's a two-hour block. 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. 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'd save 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. I've got A, B, C things to do in the morning. I've got to do those and then I can start my day. It was a 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 ebbs and flows that form life. 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 unpredictability of life. 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 sesh 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 happened 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. Being organised is important for this because if you had no choice but to do a certain thing on a certain day, then your hands are kind of tied and you have to do things irrespective how you feel. But if you're organised and if you bring in this element of flexibility, it means you can really embrace things when you've got the right energy to do them. 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. Again, this is why 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 adapted or made a little more flexible because it's too rigid. 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. 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. 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. Like what I always say with balance, it's a changing concept. Maybe in 10 years from now, this 10 list of habits will look different or will be shifted a little bit. These are what's working for me right now. I would love to hear if you guys are currently already thinking about some of 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. 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. I can't wait to share next week's guest. I'll see you all next week for the interview. Until then, stay balanced.