Good Habits for successful women over 30
Good habits become part of your lifestyle once you develop them. When you are 30 years and above, making your daily habits align with your goals will ensure you meet your bigger goals effortlessly.
According to Dr. Maxwell Maltz it takes 21 days to form a habit but many studies give other theories. Me in My Opinion, 21 days are enough.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND HABITS
A habit is an automatic behavioral pattern in response to a cue. It’s the result of repeating a behavior in the same context again and again. It happens when we buckle up our seat belts when we get in a car, jump onto Facebook when we are feeling bored, or remember to take a notebook with to a meeting.
Repetition strengthens the connection in the brain between a cue and the associated behavior. With enough repetition, our habits move from being initially conscious behavior to unconscious habit.
From my research, the below habits have been recommended to be instrumental to successful people. If you pick just a few that work for you, you will be on your way to being one of those successful people.
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Mission statement
If it is important to have a mission statement for your business or job, why don’t you have a mission statement for your life?
what is your mission in life?
For you to identify your purpose and passion you need to come up with a mission statement. You can figure this out from the ikigai method or any other method that works for you.
Mission statements describe what you value, how you achieve your goals, and how you contributed to previous success, as well as what you do for yourself and others.
INC.com has captured this aspect well in their article.
Here are some examples of personal missions statements
“To be a teacher. And to be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be.” — Oprah Winfrey
“To have fun in [my] journey through life and learn from [my] mistakes.” — Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group
So that you will always remember what your purpose is, your mission statement must be written, printed, and displayed where you can see it easily. Just like the way missions’ statements are posted on walls in offices.
2. Morning Routine Good Habits
Starting your day on the right footing determines how your day will go.
- Drink water in the morning. Being hydrated leads to very good health benefits. It helps your skin, reduces headaches, clears your gut.
- Exercise at least 10 minutes every morning. Seating is the new smoking. Moving is important to keep you healthy. commit to moving for 10 minutes, then grow from there.
- Have 10 minutes of silence to gather your thoughts. This can be meditation or prayer or what you are comfortable calling it but these are 10 minutes alone with your thoughts.
- You can have your affirmation and gratitude statement at this time. I like to be grateful for at least 5 things and think about what I wanted and how I would like to do to get things done.
- This is also the best time to visualize your goals and come up with the process you need to take to meet your goals
- Plan your day: “Planning everything is boring!” Being organized is not about planning your every move, it is about being able to do all the things you would like to do without being stressed or overwhelmed.
Children do better when they have a routine and a scheduled plan of what to do at a given time. it helps them know what to expect. We were all children at one time and if we continue with the planning and having a system, we will be more organized and less stressed in our adults in our life.
3. Write down your ideas.
Brain dump means writing down all your ideas as raw as they come to your brain. This should be done during your most creative time of the day. This could be early in the morning or late in the evening when it is quiet. I find I get those light bulb moments when am having a bath or shower.
As women, we are very busy with our family, careers and other aspects of life that rob us of quiet time to think and come up with good ideas that will propel our lives to success. that is why we have to be more intentional.
Once your quiet time is over those ideas often fly out of your mind, that is why we have to write it down because we can’t rely on your memory. Then we can review and edit them later.
Whenever I put down an issue that is stressing me, I can look at it from a different perspective and find new solutions.
40% of your actions are not conscious decisions but habits. So habits are a big part of your life – and a lot of the time you don’t even notice it!
4. Prioritize your tasks:
Do you find that you have a long to-do list that you never finish and keep postponing the tasks to the next day? Write down only three tasks to be done today and only one major one that MUST be completed.
This will force you to prioritize your tasks and remove all the tasks that are not
When I started this method I discovered that there are days when I spend all my time doing other people’s tasks and none of the tasks that will generate a result to my personal goals.
With this method, I only do the tasks that add to the major goals that I have set and progress is easy and measurable.
Sometimes you will have an extra achievement which you have not planned for like meeting a long-lost friend. We have to keep our life’s exciting even with the planning and organizing.
5. Journaling:
You should have a notebook or app where you can write your thoughts. because thoughts turn into ideas. Practice makes perfect.
Journaling makes your ideas into something tangible. Write something every day. Your way of writing depends on how you prefer to have your thoughts. You can have bullet points or just stories of your life.
Journaling has helped me in my self-awareness journey.
6. Ask open-ended questions,
Avoid questions that the answer is yes or no. what do you think about? How would you? What’s your experience with?
This will help you get people to give you more information rather than yes-no answers. Please like to give their opinion on things if they are asked.
7. Take stock of your day.
Analyze what you have done for the day and evaluate whether or not you have accomplished your daily goals. When you review your day you will always see little successes and you can see progress in your life.
8. Time blocking is one of the most productive ideas.
That means you can put aside the time to do your creative work during your most productive time of the day.
Turn off all notifications and put a do not disturb sign on your door to ensure you are focused. I still struggle with this because I find my mind wanders when I try to concentrate. I need background noise to concentrate.
To sort this out I take my time blocks shorter. Every 30 minutes and then I take a break and I find sometimes I even get more creative as I write from the disruptions.
9. Be intentional with creating relationships and growing them.
Make a habit of being the first to call, text your friend or family, this will make you learn more about people in your life and appreciate their role in your life.
Hug people, you care about often. I hug my children every morning and evening. Hugs are a physical show of love and this will keep your family knowing you love them regardless of how busy everybody gets.
10. Give more than you take.
Try to give people, things, money, time, advice. This will create a good community. Since you don’t have another earth to live in, make it endurable by helping neighbors. Donate to charities, give to the poor.
Be conscious of your environment, recycle, and avoid things that may cause harm to the environment.
Conclusion how to build good habits
To create these good habits, we can follow 3 simple steps.
- Cue– is any trigger that tells your brain when and which habit to use.
- Routine– is an activity, emotion, or behavior.
- Reward– is how your brain determines if a loop is beneficial to you or not.
For example Cue – You’re feeling bored. Routine – You grab my phone and scroll through social media. Reward – You feel entertained and happy.
Which good habit above is most likely to make the biggest change in your life and assist you in achieving your goals? Leave a comment below.
