I was fifteen years old at the time and habits were the last thing on my mind.
My mom and I were having dinner, and I began to spill out my emotions to her. I was having a difficult time playing for my high school basketball team. The experience was giving me a steady diet of anxiety that I was unable to process healthily at a young age.
I was so riddled with anxiety that I broke down and started to cry.
The experience of being overwhelmed with severe anxiety was crippling.
Right before every practice, I would succumb to stomach aches, constant worries about screwing up a play, and anxiety over letting down my teammates and coaches.
Basketball was one of many areas of my life in which I struggled mightily with obsessive negative thinking that stemmed directly from anxiety.
LATER IN LIFE
It wasn’t until much later in my life that I finally broke down and gave in after years of excessive amounts of stress and anxiety. I had had enough. The thought of going another day, week, month, and year being swept away with worry was no longer an option.
I finally chose to heal myself.
Although I had made this same choice dozens of times over the years, this time was different. I was in my mid-thirties and ready to create the life of my strongest desires and deepest dreams. Building this life was nearly impossible when anxiety and fear controlled so much about me, both internally and externally. My anxiety conquered my career, friends, dating life and girlfriends, finances, and goals, and dreams.
This form of fear held a tight grip over my conscious mind and wouldn’t let go without putting up a fight.
Around this time, I began learning more about habits.
And specifically, why habits are so crucial to changing the anxiety that had such firm control over me.
WHAT ARE HABITS
Habits are defined as “a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior.”
Although everyone may be familiar with habits, most people from my experience do not understand what makes a habit nor how to create healthy habits while replacing unhealthy ones appropriately.
Author James Clear’s bestseller “Atomic Habits” is an insightful read on creating better habits.
And Journalist Charles Duhigg’s bestseller, “The Power of Habits,” covers the power of habits within businesses, politics, and organizations.
Both are beautiful reads on the topic of habit formation.
One of my premiere focuses is to help educate people on the power that habits have on our anxiety and overall mental health.
When describing habits, think in terms of building blocks.
Healthy habits are robust and reliable building blocks in which to create a sustainable foundation. While unhealthy habits are quite the opposite, they are the damaged, broken building blocks that crumble under any kind of pressure.
Think of each like this:
HEALTHY HABITS = STRONG, STABLE BUILDING BLOCKS.
UNHEALTHY HABITS = WEAK, UNSTABLE BUILDING BLOCKS.
Now, what do habits look like in our lives?
Habits can encompass anything from getting up at a particular time, dietary preferences, thought processes, to workout routines (or lack thereof). They also can be more subtle activities like brushing teeth, putting on shoes or socks and turning on a specific radio station when getting into your car.
The critical aspect of defining habits in your life is being aware of them.
WHY HABITS ARE IMPORTANT
This may seem relatively apparent at first glance.
Our habits dictate much of how we go about our daily lives and, more importantly, how we respond to adversity. Habits may seem inconsequential if you feel your life is in reasonably good order. But if you start to abandon one healthy habit a week, for instance, brushing your teeth, the impact to your health would be felt immediately. Eventually, you will form cavities, your teeth would rot and fall out, and you’d have to spend a fortune on false teeth to replace the ones you lost.
Another example would be not paying your bills. The cable and phone bills come in this week, and you simply don’t pay them. Guess what? Soon, you will be without the internet or phone. Everything you do online is now hindered. You can’t communicate with friends, family, and co-workers, have no quick access to information, and can’t even check the local weather report. All because you chose to skip the habit of paying your bills.
These examples are overly simplistic, but I do this to make a point.
Habits, even those we take for granted, are incredibly crucial to the way we live our lives.
Now, try to imagine your anxiety levels if you could flip anxiety-inducing habits into anxiety-reducing ones?
HABITS AND HEALTHIER LIFESTYLES
It took me over thirty-five years to understand the importance of habits and lifestyle in managing anxiety.
What do I mean by lifestyle?
Simple answer: the way you live your life.
This encompasses everything from diet, exercise, thought patterns, relationships, career, values, and beliefs, etc.
The healthier your lifestyle, the less likely you’ll be prone to stress and anxiety.
Your habits and routines play a significant role in lifestyle. One of the simple facts you’ll learn about anxiety is that it does not like routine. Any area of my life in which I had a healthy, steady routine was usually an area where anxiety was not as prevalent. Going back to the building blocks analogy, routines, and habits are the brick and mortar of a healthy lifestyle. Without them, you will flutter in all areas of life, including; career, relationships, and physical and mental health.
Developing healthy routines can lead to the formation of healthy habits.
Once you begin to habitually act in a way that promotes a healthier lifestyle, managing your anxiety becomes an easier task.
That is one of the single greatest lessons I have learned through my journey of becoming less anxious.
Your stress levels decrease, daily anxiety goes down, and overall mental health begins to improve.
AWARENESS AND DECONSTRUCTING
The first step in creating healthier habits and routines is to become aware of what you are presently doing.
When I was much younger, I hardly noticed that when I went to bed late while partying, ate loads of junk food, and didn’t exercise, my anxiety was heightened.
The same was true with my relationships – I was often jealous, insecure, and needy. Yet, I wasn’t aware enough to observe my behavior and make the appropriate changes.
There is a difference between spotting unhealthy patterns now and again and truly being aware of yourself daily. Most people live unconsciously, only observing themselves once in a while, while running on auto-pilot the rest of the time.
Becoming aware of your daily patterns, habits, and routines is the beginning of all substantial change.
After you become aware – then you need to deconstruct your habits.
You do this by observing and then tracking them.
This is where journaling can come in handy. I have used journaling to track my habits and routines to then see patterns in thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
Once you deconstruct these patterns, you then have the information you need to make the appropriate changes.
HEALTHY, UNHEALTHY, AND NEUTRAL HABITS
When thinking of your daily habits, there’s an essential element to consider; whether each habit is healthy, unhealthy, or neutral.
Healthy habits consist of eating fruits or vegetables, exercising, getting the proper amount of sleep, reading a book, socializing with friends and family, and spending quality time with your children. These tend to be easy to spot, but sometimes we tend to lump in unhealthy habits into the healthy column.
One example would be socializing with friends and family – this, in and of itself, is a healthy habit; however, if you continuously argue, or engage in heavy drinking or drug use with family and friends, then the healthy aspect begins to wither away.
So it’s essential to consider every angle when reviewing all of this.
One rule of thumb to go by – do these habits help you in some way (mentally, emotionally, or physically)?
Unhealthy habits are evident to most people, especially when observing other people’s lives, but not as much when viewing our own. They can get cloudy, and it can also be challenging to acknowledge our faulty behaviors. Unhealthy habits would include things such as heavy drinking, drug abuse, constant lashing out at friends or family, eating lots of junk food, porn addiction, watching TV instead of exercising, and arriving late at work every day.
Neutral habits are showering, washing your hands, taking out the garbage, driving to work, and doing the dishes. Sure, these are all essential activities, but you wouldn’t label it as “healthy” or “unhealthy.”
Now that you understand the difference, how do you track your habits?
TRACKING AND REPLACING
Imagine being able to take a broader perspective over your life.
You can see every aspect of how you live.
What would you change? What would you improve?
How would you manage your daily tasks? What would you deem the most essential?
These are all questions I asked myself before diving into the tracking process.
Author Chris Bailey wrote an excellent book called “The Productivity Project,” in which he outlines how he became more productive by tracking his everyday life.
Tracking your habits is one of the most effective ways of managing your routines.
But how do you go about doing this?
Simple – take a look at all of your daily habits. Keep a journal and write down everything you do, including free time or daydreaming, and track it for at least two weeks. This may sound time consuming and exhausting, and I admit it can be, but the benefits of this activity far outweigh the aggravation associated with it.
Make a list of every habit throughout your day and mark each as:
- Healthy
- Unhealthy
- Neutral
After the two weeks is up, take a look at all the items you have listed. For the ones you marked healthy, see where you can expand on these when applicable. Neutral habits remain the same. And unhealthy habits should be replaced and reduced depending on the habit. Sure, eating junk food every once in a while is usually alright, but eating junk food three times a day will harm your body over time, and therefore make your foundation less stable and increase the chances of increased anxiety. Try looking at healthier options. Other areas of improvement could be sleeping patterns, thought patterns (obsessive or worst-case thinking), exercise, relationships, porn or sex addiction, drug or alcohol abuse, and many others.
The key is to take unhealthy habits and eliminate and replace as many as possible.
This will have an overall impact on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being and anxiety.
EXPERIMENT AND ASSESS
The next area I’d like to cover is what I call ‘experiment and assess.’
When you begin to tweak and change your habits and routines, you’ll want to experiment with what is working and what is not.
After all, replacing a bad habit with another equally or worse habit won’t help you reduce your anxiety or stress levels.
Conversely, they’ll likely increase your anxiety and stress.
So you must be replacing unhealthy habits with healthy ones and experimenting to see which healthy habits work best for you.
You may want to speak to a mental health professional, counselor, or life coach for advice on which habits to implement. Some of this is common sense, but there are many quirks when reviewing each person’s habits.
When you are done experimenting, you want to assess your overall anxiety levels during this time.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Am I feeling less anxious?
- Have I been more productive?
- How do I feel emotionally?
- What methods work best?
- What methods do not work for me?
IN REVIEW
When managing anxiety, every little bit counts.
This is why reviewing your habits, even the most insignificant ones, can make a difference with increasing or reducing stress and anxiety levels.
Unhealthy habits can be challenging to break, but with the right tools and mindset, they can be changed.
The same goes for creating healthier habits. It may take some time, a little willpower, and some good habit-forming practices, but they can be changed for the better.
Remember that deconstructing and changing habits begins with awareness.
Once you become aware, you can then track, and after you track, you can determine which habits are healthy, unhealthy, and neutral, and then begin to chip away at the unhealthy habits.
Building a core foundation of healthier habits will create the environment for lower levels of anxiety.
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