What are keystone habits?
Keystone habits are the basis of change in a life. They change one element of your life which leads to many more elements of your life being altered. Some examples of keystone habits are exercise and meditation. Exercise can ripple out into your life, and effect the way you eat, sleep and think. Meditation also ripples out into your life, making you calmer, more aware, and more grateful. If you feel unsatisfied with your life but you don’t want to make a lot many changes, try out a keystone habit. I have a list below with great keystone habits to change your life.
Related: 7 Easy Steps to Developing a Healthy Habit
How can you use them to improve your life?
Focusing on a single keystone habit
Like many others, I have sometimes thought that I should try to make as many habits as possible at the same time, to create the most change. But spreading yourself out like this will only increase the likely hood of failure. If you want to make some big changes in your life, focus on one big habit. The keystone habit I suggest for beginners is meditation. Meditation is a skill along with being a habit. You build up the time you meditate, and the success of your meditation. You can start with only three minutes a day, and have profound changes in your life.
Setting a routine to enforce that habit
This is a bit misleading. Habits can only form with three parts. The cue, the routine, and the reward. Foe example meditation, my cue is finishing my journaling. The routine is the meditation. My reward is a sense of calm and peace. You get to choose what your cue is, but remember that you can’t form a habit without all three parts. When choosing your cue, you should be able to easily do your routine. Meditation can be done anywhere, anytime, but I suggest early morning. Your cue could be waking up, or making your bed, or finishing whatever is first in your morning routine.
Track your habits progress
I suggest the app called Productive. It is the habit tracking app I use to track my habits. You can choose any tracking method, but make sure it tracks your streaks. Productive gives you rewards for your streaks, which makes sure you keep on going. You can use a written calendar or journal, or another habit tracking app. Just make sure you choose a tracking technique that allows you to track your streak. Your streak will give you motivation, to keep going. Thank you for reading!
