What's the best habit that improved your life?

Walking. Long daily walks.
It changed (& helped save) my life.
Edit (to give some context):
When I started to walk, I was barely able to walk at all. Like, really, a few steps to get to the mailbox would kill me and have me lay on bed for hours. I was in a really bad, bad shape (in the head too). Nowadays, I will walk 8-10km every single day and, added to that, I will go everywhere walking if at all possible. I'm still not an athlete but at the least my body is not a dead weight anymore (I feel better in the head too). And it all changed the day I decided I would simply walk a little more. A few steps at first, and then more, and then more. I was impressed by the huge impact of a seemingly little change. I celebrated each 'win' (the first time I walked the block, the first kilometer, and so on) and I never blamed myself for the (many) fails. Instead, I tried to analyze the reasons why I failed so I could do better next time.
- Agreed so much. There is a good mental component to walking outside. It helps me de-compress the day. I also make a point to walk 6/7 days even if it's raining or cold or just miserable outside.
  It doesn't need to be much, a 20 minute walk each day is way better than none at all.
  
  It doesn’t need to be much, a 20 minute walk each day is way better than none at all.
  Exactly, I could see the effect on me (body and mind...soul?) very quickly, and back then I walked not much at all :)
- This is solid advice and a well-written post. Thank you!
  
  Thank you :)

Don't compare yourself to others, compare yourself to your past self.
- Oddly, that works in negatively for me.
  
  If you dream of a past high point and wish to return to it, it's better to use it as inspiration and look to create new high points that belong to your current self.
- If more of us were doing that, the world would most certainly be a much, much less shittier place than it is!
- I'm still fat by these rules ... damn

I deamericanized my social media on the wake of the Trump electoral win. Desubbed from US Youtube channels, blocked magazines here that mostly deal with US politics while keeping world politics, unfollowed Masto and Bluesky accounts using similar rules.
I thought it may be an empty gesture, but... no, no it wasn't. My social media is healthier, I'm more keyed in to domestic news. Apparently somebody shot an American CEO and I'm not sure when it happened or what's up with that because all my feeds are about France and South Korea, which are objectively way more important.
If you're not American, consider it. Walk away from the cultural imperialism. It'll only become a better choice over time now.
- I'd even say to consider it if you are American. There is so much great stuff out there that you only find outside the bubble.
- Thanks for this, I might have to try it this new year. I’m not conservative, so the coming Trump administration will emotionally affect me.

If I choose to do something later, put it physically in the way.
Trash needs taking out, but I'll do it in the morning? Put it in front of the door.
It is both a reminder and an obstacle to overcome.
- Are you my wife?
- I call this “physical memory”. If you struggle with remembering things, you can organize your space to augment your memory. It’s VERY effective and is often simpler/easier than writing things down.
  Also, if you are living with someone who does this, for the love of god, do not move their stuff without asking. You are basically erasing part of their memory and setting them up for failure.

Immediately tossing negative/intruding thoughts when i think them. It took a year or two to start doing it so naturally i didn't even realize i was doing it.
Huge game changer with depression, and just life in general.

Drink water. Just have a waterbottle within arms reach and take a sip every so often. Makes way more of a difference that you would think with very little effort and eventually becomes a habit, making it take even less effort.
- This is even more important as it may also force you to get up and go to pee now and then, which may save someone from building stones.
- My 1.5 liter water bottle is one of the most useful items I've ever bought in my life

Meditating (not very good at it, but getting better and it's seriously helping)
Blocking Reddit on my router, blocking political communities in Lemmy
A consistent, normal sleeping schedule (a bedtime routine is more important than a morning routine, imo)
Yoga every morning to help my body work with me throughout the day
Reading more books
Getting outside more often
Paying closer attention to the thoughts that cross through my mind and stopping them when they're not helpful - this also helped me realize the underlying anxiety that's been with me for who knows how many years
Drinking more water
Edit: Oh I also:
Quit drinking alcohol, almost at the 1 year mark
Quit smoking weed, almost at 2 months fully sober now
I did these things one at a time, not everything at once. Mostly just sharing what I did here, but if you plan to do the same - listen to yourself. Start with #7 imo so you get a better idea of what you're up against. If it feels like too much, take a step back and slow down. You're not failing when you do this, you're helping your future self not fail entirely.
- Oh at the first two words of point 8., I thought there is finally something not like what every adult would tell youngsters again and again, but no. Water. You said water. What a missed opportunity!
  But in all seriousness, very good tips, all of them. I'm implementing all of them (though I'm struggling with 4 and 6), I would add just one and a half:
  No phones in bedroom. This is the absolute prerequisite for number 3 (sleep schedule) and can be an enabler for reading books.
  You may or may not get enough excercise from yoga and getting outside. If needed, add more.

Flossing is great. Don't gamble with your long-term oral health, which can have devastating consequences on your overall quality of life.
- Using those small "circular toothbrushes" is even better, flossing forces the teeth to move a little when you force it in.
  Source: my dentist.
  
  Which one is that?
- Adding on to this, the easiest way of implementing this habit is to keep a bag of floss picks at your desk. Seriously, I don't even think about flossing anymore, I just do it when I'm bored or have an idle moment. My gums have never been healthier!
- Also, there's studies recently saying not flossing can lead to a higher chance of dementia, as the rotting tooth can go to the brain
- Even better, check out a Waterpik. Basically power wash everything out. Feels so much nicer than floss.
  
  Waterpik is great, but it’s not as good as flossing. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of done though!

Disabled the Shorts section on YouTube with an extension. Drastically reduced spaced out doomscrolling.

Using a calendar religiously.
- To remind you when it's Sunday?
- I have ADHD, and relying on calendar and reminders applications have been the single biggest improvement for me other than medication.

Taking walks

Taking walks. It made me more aware of how isolation changed my perception of the world.
Things are uglier now that I'm no longer used to it. The garbage, the decay, the lack of maintenance everywhere, things feel unclean. I feel unclean.
So I try to be cleaner and look after my own garbage. But man do I hate random people sneezing around me!
"Achievement unlocked! You now have Mysophobia! Your prize is a pack of tissues."

"Perfect is the enemy of good enough" This changed my view about so many things: Exercise, it's fine if I don't go 100% everyday. Work, it's perfectly fine to negotiate agreements. Etc.

20 pushups every morning before my shower. My back is a not cured, but a lot better for it.
- Just 80 more pushups a day then work on 100 sit ups and 100 squats a day. Screw the 10K run.
  
  What's so magic about the number 100?
- Started my fitness journey during covid and one thing I can recommend which is non-obvious to those who haven't been training all their lives is progressive overload:
  If you're doing 20 pushups this month, do 21 next month, then 22 the month after, etc. Keep pushing yourself and you'll get stronger than you ever though possible. Take it at your own pace though, if you push too hard it's easy to hurt yourself.

Loosing weight starts at the supermarket.
If you decide to buy sugary delicacies, you’ll have to resist the temptation at home, which you’ll inevitably fail. Just skip that boss fight entirely by not buying tempting things in the first place. Ok, maybe once a week, but certainly not every other day. You just need to resist the temptation for a few minutes at the store. Once you’re at home, you have no option but to eat normal food, because unhealthy food simply isn’t available.

Sorry this is unedited because I’m on a train, winding its way through Fukushima at the moment.
Let’s go the Moc masterlist:
Drinking coffee black. Used to think that I wouldn’t like coffee without milk and coffee. Turns out I love it, just needed a few weeks to wean myself off sugar and milk and learn to enjoy it. Lost heaps of weight by doing this.
Weightlifting three times a week. Gaining muscle mass helped me look and feel good in my 20s and now 30s. I was never a good looking teen, but now in my 30s I get compliments from people pretty frequently.
Losing weight. I have sleep apnea. Losing weight is the single most effective treatment for it.
Getting jaw surgery. I have TMD, and this constricts my breathing at night. As part of my orthodontic treatment, I opted to get my jaw extended by 7mm. This was very expensive, but I’m in a high paying profession and I’m good at saving. Between this and losing weight, I sleep much better and don’t snore at night. I never used to feel like I ever got any rest.
Getting my ADHD treated
Getting medicated. I have ADHD. If you’re clever enough, you can brute force your way through the entire education system; school, undergrad, and postgrad without realising you have ADHD. It’s only after a couple of years in a demanding profession (SWE in my case) that I realised I needed help. I was prescribed Ritalin (methylphenidate hydrochloride) and the difference is night and day.
Because I don’t have to wrangle my brain into submission the entire day, I’m no longer completely mentally exhausted after 4 hours of work. I can focus for long hours now and feel pretty normal at the end of the day.
Dealing with high cholesterol Listening to scientists instead of keto idiots. I went to my GP for the third year in a row for my physical and got told I have the highest cholesterol of anyone in their 30s he had ever seen (I was 31).
He wanted to immediately put me on statins, because he had never seen someone with my level of cholesterol who didn’t have familial hypercholesteroloeamia. I asked him if he could give me six months to try and fix it through diet.
I had been following fitness influencers, and had lost 10kg cutting calories and eating heaps of beef, butter, and eggs. I cut that out, and upped my plant protein, lean poultry, and fish protein instead. I feel and look heaps better, and am still gaining muscle at about the same rate I was before. I just try and eat heaps of fibre (veggies) and aim for about 100g of protein a day.
I went for my most recent physical and have the cholesterol of a normal person now. Doctor isn’t trying to put me on statins anymore. I couldn’t believe it.
Deciding to be an optimist
I, like my late father, was a pessimist. My whole extended family is and was locked in generational poverty. I took advantage of my intelligence and work ethic and got into university, but my pessimistic attitude towards life persisted. And it seriously limited me.
I had to actually decide to be optimistic, and believe in myself before things got better. I won’t go into too much detail on this, but my outlook is that;
Pessimists are more mentally prepared for hardship, but optimists and more emotionally prepared for hardship. Maybe, It’s better to weigh the risks, and still take risks than forever be risk-averse.
Years of pessimism grinding my spirit into a pulp has beaten this into me. It’s only by adopting an optimistic outlook, working hard, and taking risks that I managed to finally achieve a better life.
What I’m working on
At the moment I’m trying to get into the habit of journaling, and quit coffee (drinking green tea instead).
I need to do better with mental habits such as journalling, not browsing Reddit and YouTube, and doing hobbies such as writing and reading instead of playing video games.
- That is far more thought than I put into this comment.
  
  Ah just an ADHD hyperfixation/rabbithole mate 🙃
- Congrats! Sounds like the world is your oyster my man
  
  Thanks my dude! I’m still working on stuff— but I think we all are 😊

Getting rid of victim mentality. This is the biggest curse you can put on yourself (that being said I've not tried heroin).

Enjoying the menial tasks. I enjoy sweeping because of it, it's very meditative. My grandfather used to love it and I see why now.

I found Jesus. Well, he actually found me. Just kidding, it's booze. Don't take this world too seriously. It's an actual joke. Focus on doing the right thing, everything gets much clearer.
- Finding Jesus is unironically great. His golden rule was "Love your neighbor as yourself" with a side of "hate the sin, not the sinner", he called out hypocrites and corrupt religious patriarchs, comforted the sick. Jesus was based af.
  Institutional Christianity, on the other hand...
  
  No disrespect, but an awful lot of people figured out "don't be a bigot" and "take responsibility for yourself" without all of the religion. I think you're smart enough to just be a decent human without all of the dogma. If you need "Jesus", ok. I think you can do well without it.
  
  Yeah, but they're the same old teachings of every other religion before Christianity. You gotta remember it's super-duper young compared to most others. Every modern religion just gets the same old human morals we had before religions and bundles up a bunch of really bad shit with them so they seem good.
  If any of its true, the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he was God.
  
  Ngl, my neighbours are pretty hot, so I'd actually enjoy finding Jesus.

Drinking primarily water instead of sodas.

I stopped putting blame on people. I focus on the grand scheme of things - not the individuals involved in it. The list of people I have negative thoughts about throught the week is zero long.

Embrace stoicism.
- You adopted stoicism? I'm neather pleased not displeased by this.
  
  Your opinion is not mine to change, so it would be useless to try. I'll let it pass through me and when it has passed only I remain.

Reading books and news on my phone while on the train/ public transit more generally. Great way to actually be somewhat productive. Ironic that I’m on the train rn, but since lemmy is still pretty empty, I’ve ended todays meme session about now

I'm going to answer your question with what I've done for the last 30 years. Carry no debt. I do occasionally carry some debt in the interest of satisfying the credit algorithms but otherwise I have no interest in playing the interest game.
- Do you count a mortgage as carrying debt? Seems pretty unavoidable to me.
  
  Actually I do not. That's an investment.

Regular exercise, setting aside some time to enjoy reading.

Switched to a low carb diet. Originally had serious heart problems. First Dr said to eat no fat and eat healthy grains. Had more heart problems. Switched to low carb, minimal grains. Ate non-processed meats, fats, and organic vegetables foods in general. Lost 50 pounds without any dieting what-so-ever and have way more ambition. New Dr said my arteries were now "squeaky clean" after a cardiac catheterization. Seems my heart problems were not hereditary as the first Dr said, but rather I can't handle carbs because of my hereditary. Turns out about half of the population has genes that don't allow them to handle carbs well - they tend to put on weight and have health issues like clogged arteries, diabetes, arthritis or cancer, maybe MS too. The diet change took a few years to fully kick in though. The difference however, was noticeable after the first 100 days.

Waking up the same time every day. Or at trying my best to

Bidet hits all of those things

Getting my sleep fixed. Specifically: going to sleep at the same time every night, waking up at the same time every morning, cutting out caffeine completely, no or very limited sweets at night. My dad has bad insomnia (and habits) and I had sleep issues myself growing up. If I was late to high school one more time, I would have failed; and then I was late to graduation lol. Now I wake up every morning feeling refreshed and not tired. Every time I wake up before my alarm it's like 10 minutes before it goes off anyway. I set no alarm on the weekends and I wake up at the same time anyway. Caffeine is a shitty thing to get addicted to. You're not a soldier in a watchtower that needs to watch for an invading army every night, cut that shit out!

Taking time to just think about whatever in quiet. I do it outside if it's nice and it's so peaceful.

Following a weightlifting program has improved my life immensely. 2 years later my back pain is essentially a thing of the past, I look and feel better than my non active peers, my cholesterol and a1c levels are perfect , and I look like a brick shithouse
Anybody that wants to get started but doesn't know how feel free to drop me a line
- As someone who never expected to become a gym rat I second this.
  I started lifting as a purely whimsical decision with a mate and some dumbbells in his backyard.
  I've now been a powerlifter for 6 years (minus a year due to work related injury) and it's truly my happy place, am I sad? (Stronger) Am I angry? (Stronger) Am I happy? (You guessed it, stronger).
  Not only does lifting grow your body, but also your mind. I may have permanent function loss, but I work around it, and I'm building back (slowly) and stronger than before.
  Hardest part is getting started, followed by keeping with it.
  My DMs are also open to those who are unsure where/how to start.
- What do you recommend?
  
  If you want to know how it all works check out the fitness wiki (optional) otherwise: Buy a power rack, barbell and plates (optional), or you can go to a gym instead. Download the boostcamp app and onboard yourself on the 5/3/1 for Beginners program. The app illustrates how each lift is done, and you can watch youtube for tutorials, they are pretty easy to learn. Lift Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Walk or easy jog for 30-60 mins Tuesday and Thursday. Eat a bit more than usual, a slight surplus like 200 cals, make sure you get a bit of extra protein. Sleep more and better if possible, if your schedule is fixed try to improve your sleep hygiene. Be relentless about making this all a habit, it represents about 1 hour of your day each weekday, but will pay dividends. Stick with that same program for 3 or 6 months. You'll be practicing the same lifts over and over, practicing your strength. Your technique will improve, you will get shockingly stronger. I'm happy to answer any and all questions for Lemmy folk interested in this.
- I do. Struggling with lower back pain right now...
  
  It's just brutal.. everybody says it but it's really true, a strong core (abs, lower back, ass + upper legs) makes your back so much sturdier and resistant to "going out"
  If you want to go full on strength training, you could consider barbell training with a periodized program (531, tactical barbell, etc). You would essentially have to learn three or four simple lifts and then have at er. This is the route I went, would highly recommend it for anyone. These programs don't ask you to use strength that you don't already have, and the movements are very straightforward with lots of tutorials available on YouTube. It's all sub maximal training and slowly builds over time. Fitness influencers are always trying to baffle everyone with bullshit but the core recipe for getting strong is so extremely simple. Compound lifts, eat, sleep (And some token cardio)
  If you just want the strong core and back, you could do hanging leg raises or an ab wheel and some romanian deadlifts with a kettlebell every other day or so.

Stopped drinking alcohol.
Started walking more and taking the stairs instead of elevators whenever possible.

Stop complaining and start focussing on solutions instead of problems.
- That's what the CEO killer thought too!

Joining a sword fighting gym. Absolutely fantastic community, and while I'm currently laying in a hot tub to soothe my absolutely dead legs, I'm definitively in the best shape I've been in in my adult life.
- Geralt?
  
  One day, when I'm in actually GOOD shape, and have a bit more grey.

Without hesitation it’s making my bed in the morning. This video inspired me to this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zSg5yT0dJWk
- I wish I could remember what my motivation for it was but it was certainly the most beneficial thing I'd ever done, until I found out about "un-making" your bed. If you're not changing your sheets every day, and let's be real no ones got time for that, it is more beneficial to pull your sheets off and let them air out for the day.
  But goddamn that video might make me want to change my mind again.

Many of your thought patterns are actually just habits, rather than an intrinsic part of who you are. It's not easy and requires consistent effort like any habit change but they can be changed.

- I'm really glad you found something that works so well for you! Self-love is indeed wonderful. For others reading who might want to try affirmations, it's worth noting that research has found they affect different people differently. What helps one person might not help another, or could even decrease mood in some cases, especially if the affirmations don't feel authentic to where someone is in their journey.
  If you're curious about building self-love, you might want to experiment mindfully with different approaches to find what resonates for you personally - whether that's self-compassion practices, ACT, gradual behavior change, or other methods. Pay attention to how different practices actually make you feel rather than how you think they 'should' make you feel.

Journaling and meditating.
- This sums it up for me too.

I quit drinking for a while there and when I did I picked up this peculiar habit of drinking tons of soda water. Still do it to this day. Love my tiny bubbles.
- FYI Soda water is still highly acidic and will therefore erode your enamel on your teeth.
  I know a lot of people don’t believe in it, but fluoridated water is a proven way to combat this. If you drink a bit of water after a glass of soda water, it will protect your teeth against the acidity of the soda water.
  PS: I’m not interested in debating anti-science idiots on this matter. You don’t need to listen to this advice, if you don’t want to.
  
  Carbonic acid is a bastard

taking vitamins, drinking green tea, daily 30 minuet walk and trying to learn something new each day even if its something small.

Gaining just a little bit of control over my thoughts about myself

Started a savings account. Used to be what I had in my wallet was my life's savings, didn't think I earned enough to accumulate anything. I was wrong

Listening to audiobooks to fall asleep. I've had insomnia forever and it helps better than anything else I've tried.

Every week I write my weight on the giant whiteboard in the kitchen. I don't erase it, just keep the log running all year long, for anyone to see. It's an amazing motivator.

Eating oranges

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy exercises. I learned them well, and now I can do them wherever, whenever. Life changing.
Visible Thinking Routines by Harvard's Project Zero. Every time I want to learn something, I think visibly about it!