self-improvement – The Wishing Wellness

DO NOT: CTRL-ALT-DEPLETE (The Happy Chemicals)!

I felt like I had a mental breakthrough when I first starting learning about neuroscience and the brain… wow, that sounds fucking lame doesn’t it?

But I actually did. Like almost an epiphany, when realising that the chemicals in our brain *directly and non-coincidentally* affect us depending on their presence. Like why we may feel euphoric at times, or the opposite when we’re depleted and down in the dumps. This is largely down to those chemicals in our brains/bodies.

Personally I find neuroscience fascinating. And I’ve barely scratched the surface.

But I think true value and perspective can be found through basic awareness of these chemicals – and when I say basic, it’s because for a neuroscientist, this chapter is probably about the difficulty equivalent of a child’s Mickey Mouse colouring book. But if like me, you don’t know much but want to know more, hopefully this is a good place to start.

Firstly, there are sooooo many different types of chemicals in our bodies – and the following information was written to bring an awareness solely to the ones that contribute to making us HAPPY – because that’s the business The Wishing Wellness is in, health and happiness! Yay, happiness for everyone!

So, in short, Neurotransmitters and Hormones are your body’s chemical messengers. They carry messages from one nerve cell across a space to the next nerve, muscle or gland cell. Pretty bloody important messages I might add. Messages that keep us moving, feeling, eating, stretching, breathing, living, and masturbating.

These little messages affect how you feel about EVERY THING – your mood, motivation, willingness, understanding. Basically ALL behaviours and attitudes. How can I say this better? THE MESSAGES CONTROL EVERY FUCKING THING IMAGINABLE. THEY CONTROL YOUR LIFE.

And there are SO many messages. Like shit tonnes (not accurate).

For context, waaaaaaaay more than what poured down Harry Potter’s chimney chute on Privet Drive. Like waaaaaay more. Let’s say 500000 billion trillion more messages than that (again, not accurate). So you better believe there IS post on Sundays.

Now if it still isn’t clear that there are an UNIMAGINABLE amount of these things, you’ll need more than a trip to Hogwarts to fix that understanding.

But you get the point, there’s are lots of messages. And by messages, I mean neurotransmitters and hormones.

So we know that trillions of these little chemical messages get sent around our body to keep us living.

But HOW do the chemical messages get sent, I hear you ask (in an extremely polite and curious manner)?

Well, (glad you asked)… when our cells receive new information – information that we need to action, it is received by our brain cell’s neurons, which create an electrical impulse that triggers the release of neurotransmitters. And in the brain cells, neurotransmitters get escorted via tiny little bubble-like compartments, known as vesicles, where they travel to the edge of the cell, and wait to be released.

‘Vesicles’ are the things that hold together different kinds of neurotransmitters. And each vesicle can contains THOUSANDS of neurotransmitter molecules. When it’s time to be released, the vesicles fuse with the neuron’s membrane (kind of like a skin, which separates the cell’s content and the outside of the cell) and they dump their contents into the gap between other cells, which is called the synapse (the synapse is the area where two cells come close enough together, to be able to transfer chemical signals from one cell to another). The gap itself is called the ‘synaptic cleft’, which is around 40 nanometres wide. And just to put the size of this gap into perspective, a human hair is 75,000 nanometres wide. Mental. Literally.

Once in the synaptic cleft (the tiny gap), the neurotransmitter molecules then interact with receptors on the neighbouring neuron membrane, causing an action in that cell as a result. For those (lazy-ass) little neurotransmitter molecules that get stuck in the synaptic cleft and become unused, they do one of three things: disappear or drift away in a process called diffusion; go back to the original neuron via ‘reuptake’; or get devoured by demonic enzymes, where component parts of the neurotransmitters then get sent back to the original neuron. More on that another time. We’re staying in Mickey Mouse territory, remember.

So the amount of messages/transmissions/Harry Potter Hogwarts invite letters is CRAZY. Genuinely incomprehensible.

Because the SCALE of this operation is incomprehensible – as each neuron has anywhere between a few to HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of synaptic connections, and these connections can be with itself, neighboring neurons, or neurons in other regions of the brain. I’ll say it again – mental. Literally. So every millisecond of every day, there is an INCOMPREHENSIBLE string of events occuring in the brain: where billions of neurons transmit signals to each other at TRILLIONS of synapses.

… Maybe then, the human body is the best definition of ‘organised chaos’, ever?

However, IF this process breaks down and neurotransmitter release fails, we begin to run into some problems.

Many brain disorders and nervous system diseases, including autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, and even certain kinds of bodily poisoning, have been linked to problems at the synapse. This is why it’s SO important to maintain a healthy balanced lifestyle, which contribute to looking after these processes…

That’s kind of vague, granted, but just have a quick Google as to how we can maintain a healthy level of synaptic transmission, if you want more on that part.

You fucking (admirable) nerd.

SO… onto happiness! Yay! And all the other great things that our neurotransmitters help with.

There are too many types of neurotransmitters and hormones to discuss entirely, so I’m going to focus on some of the main ones – and the ones that you can manually influence to a large degree, in order to naturally increase your happiness.

The three* ‘happy chemicals’ are:

Dopamine
Serotonin
Oxytocin

*(We’re also going to take a quick look at Endorphins, as they too are pretty bloody useful…)

1. Dopamine is technically a hormone, but functions as neurotransmitter. It acts as our ‘reward system’ – where we experience pleasure, motivation, learning, alertness, focus, and mood changes. This is naturally increased by: regular exercise (hence the ‘runners high – which is dopamine being released), socialising, meditation, random acts of kindness, having a nourishing diet (eating foods that contain tryptophan – the highest sources of which are from eggs, salmon, cheese, pineapple, tofu, nuts and seeds, and turkey), eating enough protein + healthy fats, meditation, yoga, massages, playing with a pet, walking in nature or reading a book, sex, focused work or fulfilling a task, cleaning or being productive, cold exposure, or having a phone detox. A lack of dopamine -which can happen if we go down the unnatural route too often – can lead to: addiction, obesity, ADHD, and more. Moderate accordingly!

2. Serotonin is technically a neurotransmitter. It promotes happiness, calmness, and regulates emotional stability.

It can be naturally increased by getting good regular sleep, (as it works with sleep/wake cycle), being outside – sunlight, exercising, eating healthy, calmness, meditation. A lack of serotonin can lead to a disconnect from human instinct, and ultimately depression. (This is why people who suffer from depression can be treated with medication such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)).

3. Oxytocin is technically a hormone, although it functions as a neurotransmitter – and is known as the ‘love drug’ or ‘love hormone’.

It’s main function is actually to facilitate childbirth – fertility/maternal behaviour and lactations – it triggers labour, stimulates contractions, and regulation of lactation.

HOWEVER, we’re focusing on it as a hormone for it’s other reasons, which are: establishing and maintaining social bonding, sexual pleasure, anti-stress like reducing blood pressure and cortisol, promoting growth and healing, and cognitive function including memory.

Oxytocin and the stress hormone cortisol oppose each other, so it’s essentially impossible to be in a state of one when experiencing another. When was the last time you were stressed out of your mind whilst having sex?

A lack of Oxytocin can lead to poor communication, poor connection, irratibility, inability to feel affection, heightened anxiety + fears, lower sex drive, and lower empathy.

4. And finally… Endorphins. They are technically peptides, which are short chain of amino acids. Not one of the ‘happy chemicals’ per se, but I think important to be aware of either way. Endorphins when released block perception of or alleviate pain, increase feelings of wellbeing leading to lower stress, and they improve your mood. The body releases endorphins when you do pleasurable activities such as eating, exercise, have sex, or laugh.

A lack of endorphins can lead to a sedentary lifestyle, aches, pains, depression, mood swings, and addiction.

We can unnaturally increase all of our happy chemicals via: alcohol, drugs (and not just those deemed ‘bad’ – ie. caffeine), compulsive/risk-taking activities such as gambling, watching porn, or eating junk food. Sure we all have our vices, but moderate accordingly to maintain consistent health and happiness – I think following the 80/20 rule in life, generally, is a great method to being consistently healthy but also enjoying yourself along the way.

Now unfortunately I do have to circle back and triple-underline the dangers of always taking the easy option in releasing your brain chemicals unnaturally. And I really don’t want to sound like I’m a member of the fun-police here, but there is for sure a much more sinister side to ‘unnaturally increasing our happy chemicals’ than the majority of society (that does this) realise.

This is where my GENIUS phrase of CTRL-ALT-DEPLETE comes in.

…(I know, GENIUS isn’t it!!!)

(Really chuffed with that one)

Essentially the last thing you want to do, for sustainable health and happiness, is to be constantly depleting your brain chemicals via unnatural ways of increasing them. There has to be a balance.

So let’s take Dopamine as the example, and a phrase you may have heard of is ‘Dopamine Depletion’. This is when there is a lack of dopamine available in the brain, which leads to a whole range of physical and mental issues if not balanced accordingly. As mentioned above, there are SO many things you can do to naturally balance your [dopamine] levels, but the problem we face in today’s world, is that there are SO many immediately accessible and unnatural ways to get a hit of [dopamine], literally at our fingertips. Hence why doom-scrollers are stuck in a daily perpetual loop of short-form videos, 99% of which likely have absolutely no value.

That means society as a whole is increasingly more and more using these unnatural methods to release these chemicals, way more frequently than ever before. It’s part of the reason why obesity is higher than ever, depression is higher than ever, divorce rates are higher than ever.

The government website published an Obesity report in May: “In 2023 to 2024, 64.5% of adults aged 18 years and over in England were estimated to be overweight or living with obesity. This is higher than 2022 to 2023 (64.0%) with an overall upward trend since 2015 to 2016 (61.2%).” Scary stuff!

Let’s go online…

Scrolling TikTok for hours is one free dopamine hit after another, and if you don’t get that ‘reward’ (which is your brain releasing [dopamine]) from one video, you move on to the next within seconds, sometimes less than a second, and BAM! IN YOUR FACE there is that release again you’re so desperately looking for – whether it’s someone riding a unicycle using just their head or a dog making pancakes. Either way, this immediate and constant barrage of ‘pleasure’ via dopamine hits is not natural. (Contradiction: I could easily watch videos of dogs all day).

Over time, this means it takes more and more of these amazing chemicals to get the same feeling(s) we once had with lower amounts of the same thing, and over time you will generally maintain lower levels than what you would have done if you were regulating them naturally. This can result in what initially seems to be small things but overtime can have a sinister effect on you and your life: little motivation to complete tasks or achieve goals, not feeling pleasure for things you once enjoyed, little energy, difficulty concentrating, sleep trouble, memory loss – and that’s not mentioning even worse things like depression and conditions like Parkinson’s disease (the list goes on).

And I think it’s really important to bring cavemen into this. (Didn’t expect that sentence did you).

Because as humans, we haven’t evolved fast enough to be able to deal with these new ways of processing information and reward-seeking behaviour. Technology is evolving exponentially faster than us and we don’t have the tools to balance everything accordingly with all of this information. A natural dopamine hit is what cavemen released when they successfully hunted down and ate food, and it is exactly that release, and subsequently that feeling, which promoted them to go and out and find more food the next time. I’m pretty sure if you drove the DeLorean back to those times and handed a cavemen a smartphone with Tik Tok, they’d probably starve to death. Because they would get that chemical release they so desperately seek over and over and over instantly, 1000 times a day, as opposed to minimal amounts a day after their hard-fought efforts to find that food. Albeit that release would feel no way near as good/be as high/natural as the one when successfully finding and eating food.

Now I don’t blame individuals nowadays for succumbing to these unnatural means of releasing [dopamine], it’s impossible not to get dragged into this way of living with the way of the world nowadays when we are FUCKING BOMBARDED by everything around us. Every single app is competing for our attention, trying to maximise the time we spend in their world – every food chain is filling their products with the tastiest (irrespective of health outcomes) additives to make us eat more – Big Pharma is giving us instant relief for various symptoms when the focus should be on treating the longer-term root cause of our issues, as opposed to it’s multiple symptoms (think of it like treating the branches of a tree instead of the roots) – the list goes on (again).

So if I haven’t made it clear already – it’s SO important to regulate ourselves and our reward systems accordingly via promoting our brain chemicals naturally. That’s how we achieve consistent health and happiness throughout our lifespan, and stay away from adverse effects such as illness and addiction. Granted, I’m not saying our modern day addictions are as drastic as being addicted to crystal meth (I know, extreme example) – but arguably these ongoing minor addictions we have with our screens can be just as damaging in the long-term (I mean, probably not as much as crystal meth but you get the point). We are slowly and negatively changing the way we’re wired with these addictions. Like with the above on obesity, no wonder the whole world is in a mental health crisis.

Anyway. Sorry to hammer that home and fill you with dread.

FEAR NOT THOUGH! There’s no need to be scared because THIS IS ALL IN YOUR CONTROL!

Replace CTRL-ALT-DEPLETE with your own controls!

And quite simply I think it boils down to: don’t take the easy option all the time. Work for it, whatever department that is in.

Now in some cases, there might be a need for an unnatural boost of these things, which in turn can have incredible results.

For example: “MDMA-assisted psychotherapy with 75 mg or 125 mg resulted in marked improvement of PTSD symptoms in veterans and first responders with chronic PTSD who had failed previous treatment.”

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2215036618301354

Didn’t expect that tangent did you!

Now this is not me encouraging you whatsoever to go out and gurn your face off with MDMA in the hope you will release brain chemicals. This is just an example to show how sometimes – in very niche circumstances – those who really need help with this release, can truly benefit from unnaturally increasing their brain chemicals, in order to solve bigger health problems. There is some amazing research going on with a lot of what society currently deems ‘bad drugs’ – but hopefully it won’t be too long until the correct ones are made available for those who need them the most. I won’t go down that rabbit hole today (!).

Generally though, for 99.9% of us, we should be doing the natural things as much as possible in order to achieve the correct balance of these amazing chemicals, in order to promote health and happiness.

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SO, we now know we can have a direct knock-on affect to our brain health and how we feel, by promoting and maintaining the right levels of our body’s chemical messengers, through our actions. Natural or unnatural, you CAN manually influence these things – and hopefully this blog has shed some light on deciding which path to take. Sure we all need to indulge in our vices from time to time, but I think deep down we all inherently know when we are relying a little bit too much on those unnatural hits, and when we need to get back on the natural side of things. Be honest with yourself!

Maintaining a healthy life is all about moderation and I think having good perspective on how our brain chemicals work, and how they directly impact us, so we can make healthy, conscious decisions in the moment, or on average over a longer period of time, really does contribute to this.

If you generally make good decisions when it comes to naturally promoting your body’s FUCKING AMAZING chemical messengers, your movement, mobility, feelings, digestion, breathing, living, masturbating – as said literally EVERY BLOODY THING – your health and happiness – will get better!

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That’s it for this brief delve into this topic.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this there is a vast amount of information out there to be explored. One of my favourite brain gurus is Dr Daniel Amen – and you should check out his book ‘The End of Mental Illness’ should you wish to (literally) see via brain scans what goes on inside your skull. It’s truly fascinating.

There’s also a great book called ‘Dopamine Nation’ by Anna Lembke who talks about “Why our addiction to pleasure is causing us pain”.

If you don’t want to read the whole book, start with this article on it: https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/aug/22/how-digital-media-turned-us-all-into-dopamine-addicts-and-what-we-can-do-to-break-the-cycle

And for easily digestible facts and data on the brain, check out TJPower, and NicolaNeuroscience on Instagram (open it INTENTIONALLY for this reason and do NOT get distracted by doom-scrolling!)

As always when it comes to wellness I don’t want to advise on what you should be doing with your life/health practices, I want to outline the information that helps you inform your decisions when acting on them. Hopefully this has given some helpful perspective.

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Written as part of The Wishing Wellness – visit HERE for more content on habits.

Habits: profoundness from James Clear and Ed Sheeran

People say I have ‘good genes’.
However, to maintain being fit and healthy you need more than just good genes. Granted, it helps along the way. And yes, of course some have to work harder than others to achieve similar goals – particularly those with disabilities or health conditions. But with or without ‘good genes’, all of us need to strain/exercise our bodies accordingly, to be fit and healthy. You don’t need good genes to do that.

It’s a load of bollocks to think that ‘good genes’ are enough to keep you physically and mentally fit without doing much else. Because they’re not. So regardless if you’re lucky or not to have good genes, it’s imperative to strain/exercise accordingly, in order to maintain health and wellness.

Use your body. Use the tools available to you. Or don’t. It’s a choice.

For those who tend to say “it’s alright for you, you have good genes”… ask yourself: ‘Am I exerting myself accordingly to achieve my own goals?’ (Be honest with yourself). I hazard to point out that you have the same human body as the person with good genes AND in most cases the same tools (ie a gym, a park) available to you.

[deep breath]

So just in case that wasn’t clear, when it comes to your health and fitness, and the way you look, it is down to more than just good genes. It’s how you physically strain your body and mentally exercise. I think consciousness, and faith, or in my case spiritually, has a great impact too – at least that’s what I believe.

Now, I’m not saying for one minute keeping on top of your health and fitness is easy – regardless of your natural disposition – because it’s not. But everything in life is hard in some way.

“Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard.
Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your hard.
Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Choose your hard.
Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard. Choose your hard.
Life will never be easy. It will always be hard. But we can choose our hard.”
– Devon Brough (?)

Let me personally elaborate on that quote: running full pelt around a squash court for an hour is VERY tiring, weightlifting is HEAVY and puts you under a lot of tension, stretching sore muscles REALLY hurts, having a cold shower is pretty much UNBEARABLE, etc etc etc. But these hards inform the easiness of being able to function properly, move easier, and breathe cleaner because they promote stronger muscles, a more efficient cardiovascular system, a heightened immune system, higher lung capacity etc. Ultimately, the hard choices have a knock-on effect to the rest of my life, making it easier for me in so many other areas. It’s Not A Coincidence*.
On the flip side, eating ultra-processed ready-made food is easy to buy and consume, but it’s harder for your body to process compared to natural ingredients. UPF’s provide comparably much less nutrients than whole-food meals, which in turn makes functionality harder. Not exercising is easy to do – your body isn’t under any strain, you don’t ache or have to recover from anything, you have more time in the day to do what you want etc. – but not-exercising is ultimately very hard on your body because of the repercussions that it has as we go through life: faster ageing, obesity, diabetes, disease, inflammation, infection, weakness, etc (we could literally be here all day).
*the name of my future book… if I write one…

BUT… don’t panic if this is you! Initially it can be daunting or difficult getting going, but health and fitness really doesn’t have to be that way. There are lots of things we can do to make the hards easier.

And one massive thing that makes everything in life easier is… drum roll…

Habits.

Profound isn’t it?

No? … well it is, so shut it.
Seriously, dialling down on your habits is a game changer.

Think of habits like ingredients that make up a recipe. The better the ingredients, the better recipe you’re going to end up making. In our case, the better the habits, the more happy and healthy you are going to be. And I believe that building habits really is the easiest way to get the correct outcome when trying to achieve longevity.

Life can’t always be purely formulaic but its foundations can, at least that’s what I’ve found, along with quite a few others.

And that brings me on to James Clear.
Because like with Cold Exposure and Wim Hof, there is only one place to start with habits, and that is James Clear – epitomised by his book Atomic Habits.
Buy it now.
Immediately.
In fact, right this second.
Stop reading this and do it!!!!!
(… although I urge you to deal with the FOMO of what else I’ve written. You fucking Judas.)

Before you do leave me though, let me share some spoilers AKA my favourite 3 takeaways from Atomic Habits:

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1. Identity-based habits vs Outcome-based habits

He discusses these via the ‘three layers of behaviour change’: outcomes, processes and identity.
As he explains, when people form habits they usually start with focusing on what they want to achieve (top right), leading to outcome-based habits.

However, as James writes: “The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.”

He goes on: “The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.”

When I first stumbled upon this concept, it really resonated with me. And when I started implementing identity-based habits (bottom right) as opposed to outcome-based habits, this was a true turning point in making them consistent.

Be that person who does the thing. Don’t do the thing now and again and hope you’ll just become the person.

2. Habit-stacking

A simple concept but when outlined makes so much sense: do habits together, one after another, with new habits and existing habits. Big habits or small habits.
For example:
Big – Stretch > Exercise > Sauna. Small – get out of bed immediately when your alarm goes off > make your bed > clean your teeth + floss > shower > moisturise > brew a cup of tea > meditate whilst the tea is brewing > take your cup of tea and start the first task of the day. Or something like that.

The point is is that you can reinforce existing habits with other existing (or new) habits. And before you know it, you’ve already stacked lots of good habits with each other. Resulting in health and happiness!Unsurprisingly enough though, this also applies for Bad Habits, so be careful.

And whilst we’re on the subject of Ed Sheeran (no I’m not going to quote the song), there’s a great clip of him on a radio show online talking about how his habits lead to other things:
“If I have one beer, then I’m going to want another beer, and then I’m going to want a shot, and then I might want a cigarette, and then I might want a Big Mac… but with healthy shit, it’s if I drink water all day long it makes me feel great, and then if I feel great I might exercise, and if I exercise and feel great I’ll have a good night’s sleep, and if I have a good night’s sleep I’m more likely to want to get up early in the morning and do it all over again.”

Forget the song lyrics Ed, I think they could be the most profound words you’ve said or written.

3. Habit-tracking

Habit tracking changed my life, in an amazing way. I started doing it during my Dad’s health decline when I was spending a lot of time at home, when trying to maintain a routine of some sort, and adjusting to the change of location, access to the gym and various other factors. It helped me gain and maintain a very good degree of health/fitness and massively helped my emotional capability.

Habit-tracking holds you accountable because it’s literally in black and white (pending what colour pen you use, you child) as to what habits you’ve completed. It’s direct evidence of progress. It’s also a reward system because, let me tell you, it’s VERY satisfying when you build up a series of ticks consecutively! (Yes, this is genuinely what excites me nowadays.)

Here’s a previous photograph of a habit-tracking month gone by:

The eagle-eyed of you I’m sure have discovered that I have 0 motivation or discipline with flossing, and as a result, I couldn’t even manage 1 attempt this particular month… we’re all human.

Apart from that, it’s a very decent month I’d say.

‘Not breaking the chain’ is a great and very rewarding process that James talks about, as is the power of ‘never having 2 consecutive days off’.
Although admittedly I struggle with the latter at weekends…

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SO if any of those 3 bits of information resonate with you like they did for me, I urge you to buy a copy and read Atomic Habits by James Clear. An excellent book and one that will give you 100000% (not accurate, but not far off) ROI.

Whilst writing this blog post, I stumbled upon this unpublished update report on my own habits (another sentence I never thought I’d write), found in the notes on my phone:
“So, 5 months after writing down (with a pen and paper, not a phone) my personal and professional short/medium/long-term goals and 3-4 months of habit tracking, I feel great physically and mentally great. Strong, but I prefer great. I’m happy. Despite grief, I really believe healthy habits and lifestyle choices can be a catalyst in helping to making you physically and mentally strong and healthy, which is directly linked to being happy in life.”

For me, this is [at the very least my own personal] proof of how habit-tracking can hold you accountable, massively help in maintaining discipline and motivation, but most importantly spawn those amazing results.
I won’t dwell on the grief part of that note – but I think it’s really helpful context for how I can still feel that good, if I habit-track, despite the shittiness of experiencing grieving.

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CONFESSION…. !
I hold my hand up, I’m a total fucking hypocrite, because I don’t habit track at the moment. Maybe in future again though… BUT… I did it for quite a few years.
IMMEDIATE VALIDATION EXPLANATION: I haven’t habit-tracked for a good few months, the reason being – and I promise I’m not a hop off-on bandwagon guy – is that I feel as though the habits I used to track/stack are very well engrained into my routine and psyche these days, meaning I do most of them daily anyway. So although I’m not manually recording results, I still feel as though I am achieving maintaining habits. And I also wear a WHOOP now, so I pretty much track everything digitally. I use a custom plan where I have added my ‘behaviours’, and closely follow my logs of sleep, strain and recovery.

Wait a minute…

Am I still habit-tracking? Just in a different way?

…

Is my WHOOP in fact a glorified habit-tracker?

[REALISATION WHEN WRITING THIS]

UPDATED CONFESSION:

Despite not using pen and paper to track my habits, I still do habit-track. And I find a great tool to do this is WHOOP.

Side note: it’s been a game changer for my sleep. Categorically helping me to focus on and improve my restorative sleep levels. For more on sleep visit HERE.

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I urge you to start forming habits. New ones around good existing ones, maybe lose one or two bad ones if you can, replace existing bad with good etc etc etc.

You might be thinking: Why though?
Fair point.

Results is why. Progress is why. Improvement is why.
Health is why. Happiness is why.

Back to Habits King James Clear one more time:
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiplies through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones becomes strikingly apparent.”

I think that’s the best thing to keep in mind about starting/maintaining habits – the bigger picture. And with consistency, results will happen. Guaranteed. Like actually guaranteed. And results will most likely be much quicker than 2 years. With wellness we’re talking weeks, even days. Just hold up your end of the bargain, and habits will get you results.

Hence, the pattern of my habits is always directly correlated to how I’m feeling at the time too – as in, the more habits I do, the better I feel. The healthier I am, the happier I am. Physically better, mentally better – in all aspects, there’s no catch. That’s because It’s Not A Coincidence*.
*the name of my future book, did I tell you?

Another great way of managing habits is via time-blocking. Literally blocking out windows of time, for different tasks, for various durations, throughout the day.

By no means essential but actually very useful. Especially if you have a freelance/not-consistent work calendar or non-typical routine, as in my case. I find it also helps with motivation, a LOT. And boring tasks. A LOT.

There’s one method which is 25 minute deep work/5 minute break – called The Pomodoro Technique – and I find this extremely effective. It’s enough time to get stuck into something, but short enough so that you don’t risk zoning out or wanting a break. I’m talking deep work. Deeeeeeeeep wooooooooork. No phones.

Wait what?
Yeah NO PHONES.

[Audible gasp from the young crowd]

Now if you’re Gen-Z DON’T PANIC. Life will (miraculously) go on. You will survive. And if you fall into this particular demographic (or hold similar traits), and NEED your actual phone to do actual work constantly for 25 minutes, get a separate work phone, or… a new job?Or failing that, GET A FUCKING LIFE?

Any other generation reading this though, The Pomodoro Technique (without phones) can be very effective.

As the psychiatrist Phil Stutz says, if you focus on your ‘Lifeforce’ – which is your Body, Relationships and Yourself – then every other thing you would love to have in your life will follow. And I believe prioritising habits can help you do that.

If you are reading this and are conscious that you want to improve your habits, or even just start doing some, because you want to be healthier and/or happier, I urge you to get start prioritising/forming them as soon as tomorrow.

It can be daunting starting a new routine and implementing new things, granted, but habits will hold you accountable and help you get there. Try it!
And before you know it… your body is in a better place, your mind is in a better place, and you feel better – scratch that, you’re healthier and happier. To be honest, that’s kind of how it happens. If you’re committed and follow through. Before you know it, everything gets easier. Generally. …Well, it doesn’t, but you get stronger. Try it. Especially in the tough times – despite my affair with hypocrisy during this post, I can at least vouch for that.

To quote our new friend Phil Stutz one more time, “there are 3 guarantees in life: pain, uncertainty, and constant work”. And surprise! Habits help navigate these entirely.

It’s Not A Coincidence*

*Still a name for my future book… although I can’t promise it will be as good as James Clear’s books or Ed Sheeran’s lyrics…

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Written as part of The Wishing Wellness – visit HERE for more content on habits.