7 Life-Changing Habits To Start Today

Start these life-changing daily habits to improve your life and to achieve your dreams and goals.

7 Life-Improving Habits To Start Today

We’re always looking for ways to optimize and grow, aren’t we? We want to be healthier, happier, smarter, more efficient, kinder, more giving. It’s in our nature to strive for progress and to want to become a better human every day. And the good news is, we actually can do this. We can do everything we want, we can be anything we want, if we just put a little effort into the things we’re wishing for every single day. The easiest way? Adopting good daily habits. To help you out, here are 7 life-changing habits to start today, so that you can become everything you want to be.

1. Taking Responsibility For Yourself

You’re the one person in the entire world who has the most control over your life. Your physical and mental well-being and health, your finances, your relationships, everything.

If something isn’t right, if you’re not where you want to be in life, take responsibility. Make a little plan, then take action.

It’s easy to blame others for eating the wrong food, not getting good sleep, or not having enough money. I know, because I’ve played the blame game for a long time. But that game didn’t bring good results.

It just led to more complaining and blaming. And complaining and blaming is not empowering; it doesn’t build discipline or strength. It’s like gossiping or like a dog barking at someone passing by. You’re stuck and you don’t know how to get out. But barking and soaking in that frustration won’t help.

The more you blame others for the problems you have, the more problems you accumulate.

You don’t have power over many things, but you do have power over your own actions and thoughts.

Taking care of yourself and the things important to you is not just in your own best interest; it’s in the best interest of the people you love. They want you to be healthy and happy as long as you can, they want you to find success in whatever you do.

You’re not serving anyone when you’re depriving yourself of sleep, good food, water or a 30-minute walk outside without a podcast in your ear talking about something you will forget in 3 days. Live your life and take steps toward where you want to be.

2. Asking For And Accepting Help

I know you might think this one contradicts taking responsibility, but it doesn’t. Because asking for help is not the same as blaming, complaining, gossiping, or comparing yourself to others. That’s why the result is very different. Asking for help requires humility, not humiliation. And, yes you might get rejected every once in a while, but that doesn’t need to hurt you. It’s not the end of the world. And you’d be surprised to see how many people actually love to help!

When I had my child, I went through a truly eye-opening season. I realized this baby was coming into this world completely reliant on me, my husband and our family. That child didn’t have anything. No clothes on his back, no food, water, house or money.

But he got everything he needed, because he was willing to ask for and accept our help and the help of others who are more experienced than him. He did this mostly by being adorable and by screaming and crying.

When we grow up we forget we’re actually allowed to ask for help. We think we need to do everything on our own. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best at asking for help.

Then there are those magical times when life’s really generous and we’re actually offered help. Without asking. For free. But we decide not to accept it.

Why? Because we don’t want to feel incapable. We don’t want to depend on someone’s “mercy”. We want to feel in control and we want to do everything ourselves. Because, also, we do it best.

But you know what? You’d be surprised how many things others can do. You’d be surprised how much communicating with others, asking and accepting the help of each other can help us grow. And grow faster. And it can bring us together. It can build true friendships and good relationships.

Nobody can be an expert in everything and we don’t need to be. Life is so much easier, fun and rewarding when you share it with others.

3. Exercising

In my early 20-ies I used to exercise because I wanted to look a certain way. Now I exercise because it makes me feel like a brand new person. Well, it makes me feel like a younger and better version of my non-exercising self.

Exercise increases productivity, it relieves the little (or huge) aches and pains in my body and it makes me a happier, more fun to be around, person. It’s like magic, but it’s just movement.

I like to do different types of workouts. I like running, Pilates, weight training, dance workouts, barre and I love yoga. I try to do something every day, for at least 10-20 minutes. And it’s great, because it calms my mind when it’s racing and it keeps me present.

If you have the habit of overthinking, exercise is a great reminder that you have a physical body you can’t solve everything in your head. To me, it’s like training to take action instead of just thinking to take action.

4. Forgiving

The word forgiveness used to make me roll my eyes and forgiving was never something I was good at or something I wanted to do. I’d always think long and hard about the ways people did me wrong. Be it strangers or the people closest to me. And those thoughts didn’t lead to anything.

But like I said in the first section, complaining and blaming won’t do any good. It keeps you stuck in a negative feeling.

Everything changed when I realized, with time and by, basically, getting older that, no, I won’t be the gullible one if I forgive. It doesn’t mean I let people walk all over me. It just means I’m choosing to move forward in my life and not lay in toxic thoughts and feelings.

And, yes, I do think forgiving should be a habit and we need to do it on a daily basis. Because things happen, every day someone might say something that’s not quite alright with me, but when I forgive – I choose to make those words and actions insignificant in my own life and to focus on the good things in my life.

5. Letting Go Of Guilt

We feel guilty about everything. Not taking care of ourselves, not spending enough time with our husbands, with our kids, not calling our parents, not finishing our to do list, not being able to stick to a diet or a healthy habit.

For eating a cookie and not calling our friend for her kids birthday. For not doing exceptionally well at work today, even though nobody will notice.

Whatever we’re doing, there’s always something we can’t seem to get right.

And that…well it’s perfectly fine. We need to let go of guilt and of the desire to be everything and everywhere every single day.

This is the one habit I’ve struggled with a lot in my life, but over the last couple of years, I really learned to control it. I accept that I won’t be perfect in everything and someone will disagree with my decisions and choices, no matter how hard I overanalyze them. I try to do my best, and I trust that it’s good enough now.

6. Living With Intention

Set intentions for your life, it will change everything – the way you work, the way you dress, the way you talk to people. Intentions might seem quite woo-woo, but they do work. Find your own and set one every single day.

It could be anything like setting an intention to be more courageous or to not look at your phone for two hours. Having an intention is like setting a little challenge. A challenge to create more moments that make you feel better and to embrace whatever comes up with that intention in mind.

For example, when you set the intention to feel happy today, you take action on more things that bring you happiness. Maybe you want to go to a concert, to a gym class or to meet up with friends. At work, you do your job with joy, focusing on the good of every conversation and every outcome.

If your car breaks down, well, it sucks, but when you remind yourself of that intention – you accept the situation and move without complaining, being angry or sad. Try setting intentions for a week and see what happens.

7. Staying Focused

I could’ve listed many other habits here, but this one really sums it up. With that much information for free, we know what we “have” to be doing on a daily basis to live a better, happier life. Eat healthy, meditate, sleep, exercise, work on something we love, be social, move and think happy thoughts. And about 100 other things.

Yet, with this much information, it is kinda overwhelming. Just when you think you’re doing great and are actually working out enough, someone will come out of nowhere to tell you you’re doing it all wrong. And that will be your excuse to not do it anymore.

Sometimes we stop before we’ve even tried things, because we again find good reasons why this positive habit can wait and is not worth our commitment right now.

Pick one habit that you feel will greatly improve your life and do your best to practice it every day, forgetting the excuses and the doubts. Just do, you won’t believe how far a year from now you will go.

Originally published in September 2021, last updated in May 2025.