I am officially at the age when climbing into bed at 8pm is perfectly acceptable and in a particular period when reading a book in the middle of a nightclub is a normal thing to do. These are both true, almost every night for the past month I have drifted away with the fairies around this time and for the only nights when I did stay up late, you could find me sitting in the middle of a lively bar reading a book.

I can’t say it hasn’t worried me either, I have thought about this behavior but see, the flip side of this is that my actions over the past month have brought forward the most rewarding changes and it’s largely down to some habits which have found their way into my lifestyle. With that out of the way, let me explain exactly what seems to have replaced some seemingly normal behavior.

3 habits that can improve your life

1. Get up early

When I look back to my late teens and every day up until quite recently, my lifestyle was an uncoordinated mess. I mean absolutely everything was a rush, from getting out of bed at the last minute, running for the bus, trying to catch up on emails at work and then searching for money to pay the bills. Did getting up earlier make everything right? No, but let me explain how it did help me make a start on doing so.

Getting up early has been one of the sole reasons I began making any online income as a travel content writer and one of the major changes which has allowed me to reduce stress. When it comes to Writing content, there is never enough time in the day to get it finished so the extra few hours helped but even with this aside, getting up early allowed me time to set out a plan for the day and be way ahead of schedule before it reached lunchtime. And when I talk about reducing stress levels, I do not recall ever feeling this relaxed in the past and it’s not really the early bedtime that feels so good either but rather the energy and freshness I feel upon waking the next morning.

2. Say the word “Stop”

I must admit, my mind is working overtime far too often and there are too many times when even I enjoy taking a break from hearing my own voice. But I’m not talking about that right now, I’m talking about the doubts, the worry, the fear and the sadness. These thoughts will always come, I don’t think it’s right to ignore this being the case, but for any of the brief moments in which something negative has come into mind these past few months, I have countered it by saying the word “Stop” out loud to myself. Yes, you heard that right but honestly, it has worked and I feel that something as simple as this is very powerful because it shows awareness while also being a conscious decision not to empower anything other than positive feelings.

3. Write shit down

Some time ago, I began writing everything down on paper and when I say that, I mean everything.

I would write down a list of every article I needed to finish that day, a note of every email which needed attention, every cent of money I had spent, my projected earnings for the hours ahead and a separate list with all the things which went right or wrong the previous day. My motivation behind doing any of this was because I seemed to be forgetting many of my best ideas and then getting lost in a haze of thoughts without actually getting enough done. However, this idea was also spawned from finding a TED talk by David Allen, his book “Getting Things Done” and what seemed like a very sensible theory that our minds are designed for creating ideas and making up information, but not storing it.

Writing shit down is the single most effective tool I have ever come across and when I think of it – this has always been the case, for writing got me through the cycle across Africa, writing helped me untangle my acute anxiety, writing gave me this career as a solo travel blogger and now writing replaces the unnecessary distractions with everything that can Improve my life.

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