Healthy habits are a vital part of our personal growth and life direction. Habits determine our direction, and direction determines our destiny. So it’s critical to our overall well being that we are intentional about cultivating healthy habits. If we are to become the best versions of ourselves that God has created us to be, we have to pay attention to our habits.

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Five Steps to Cultivating Healthy Habits

1. Choose Your Habits Wisely

Life is mostly always busy, and often times hectic.  If your not careful, you can form unhealthy habits simply from not paying attention.  In order to cultivate healthy habits, you will need to work on self-awareness.  You need to be aware of factors like your strengths, weaknesses, lifestyle, and daily schedule.  You need to be aware of, and sensitive to negative habits forming in your life, and replace them with positive ones you have intentionally chosen. Some examples of positive habits are: Establishing a habit of prayer and Bible study, exercise, healthy eating, practicing generosity each day, etc.

2. Incorporate healthy habits into your schedule

If you don’t have a specific plan for sticking with new healthy habits, other things in your busy life will crowd them out. You will be too tired, stressed, or hurried to pay attention. You will find it all too easy to begin making excuses for bad habits and the inability to create new ones.

It’s important to set aside some time each day to actually practice your new healthy habits.  A lot of people find it easiest to do things early in the morning before the day gets busy.  Others, like to focus on personal growth just before bedtime.  You have to work your new habits into your schedule at a time that works for you.

[bctt tweet=”A Morning Routine is a Great Healthy Habit.” username=”edkendrick”]

3. Get others involved

You will enjoy more success if you have others involved in your process.  You should share your new habit goals with some friends.  They can offer you support, and hold you accountable to your goals. Another great way to gain support and help is to hire a life coach. If you want to know more about how a coach can help, get my free ebook. Some healthy habits others can help you with are things like:  setting goals, adopting healthy eating habits, exercise, etc.

4. Set Goals and Use Rewards

A great motivator to help make forming healthy habits a reality is setting goals for your habits and rewarding yourself as you reach milestones. An example would be forming a new healthy habit of going to the gym.  You could reward yourself with a new piece of gym clothing after ten consecutive days of gym attendance. The idea is to reward yourself for incremental accomplishments and successes until your new habit becomes a way of life.

5. Self-Evaluation

As you move in the direction of your new healthy habits, regularly monitor your progress.  Ask yourself if your new habits feel like a good fit for your personality and lifestyle. Do your efforts feel natural or unnatural.  If you aren’t happy with your progress, ask yourself what you can do to improve. Or, decide on another habit to work on.  Remember, you own the process, it doesn’t own you!  Don’t beat yourself up.  Be flexible and work on your plan until you feel good about it!

Can you think of other ways to establish healthy habits?  Share in the comments!