Good habits, good life

By: Emma Villarreal

 

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¨We first make our habits, and then our habits make us¨. -John Dryden. 

 

Have you ever had that daily habit that could be changed into something better? Are you used to doing something in your daily life that you know it is not the greatest decision? Well, I personally think that everyone has been through this moment and situation. Maybe what you where doing was small and almost spotless, or maybe it was really huge. The point in here is that when you change it, or at least try to, the whole scenario changes. Today I am going to talk about a small story that happened to me, and that I’m sure that most of you will understand too. I want to show you how small and daily habits can make great, huge changes heading you to a healthy, happy and enjoyable life. And if you think that you already have this, there is always more space to make it better. 

 

Here it goes, as most teenagers, I feel incomplete and that something is missing when I don’t have my phone around, it is like a small addiction. According to physiologists and many research and investigations, 59% of teenagers are “addicted” to their phones and 72% feel the urgency to respond to a text immediately. This is a huge amount of people, so it actually makes me feel less lonely. But the problem is still as importantly big and needs a huge change. Well, the point is that I am an elite gymnast which means that I also am a high-performance athlete. Because of this, I need to spend many hours in the gym training and practicing, leaving me few hours for school and studying and even less time for free-time and personal hobbies. In this “free-time” that I have, it needs to be used really wisely, since I have to get a lot done in this limited time. I need to replace and do the classwork of the school classes I missed on the morning and get all of the homework done.  And why am I highlighting this part? That is because I need to get all of this work done fast, so I can go to bed early and get a good night sleep and rest to get on to the next day and have my best performance at the gym. 

 

The big detail about that part was that instead of getting home directly to work and doing my chores, I got directly to my phone and specifically Instagram. I spent about 1 hour doing nothing and just surfing around it, then I got a bath then instagram again. After that, a little homework, then social media check again, and it went like that. The point is that I spent and approximate time of 3 hours per day! I have no idea how that was possible since I have a really tight schedule. A research found that the average time a person spent on Instagram was 53 minutes, and yet, I spent almost 3 hours. Still, I didn’t felt so bad and guilty since a normal teenager spends 7 hours and 22 minutes on their screens, and I didn’t get to that point.

 

After noticing this, I knew immediately that I needed to make a change, I needed to cut down my hours.  After this, I discovered that you could block your apps after 2 hours of use. This helped me a lot, but when I got to the limit and it blocked, I started generating anxiety since I wanted to use and navigate through the app. With time, this anxiety started to calm down. Then, I finally got to the point that it was getting easier and I could handle cutting it down to 1 hour and 30 minutes. When making this decision, I reflected and found out that the only thing that was going to take away my anxiety was if I really proposed to myself and decided that I was going to achieve this. After that decision everything changed. Now I rarely get to my time limit and I have discovered that my life doesn’t depend on Instagram. And if I don’t check it for more than 20 minutes, the world isn’t going to end. Noting that this vice and habit that I had, wasn’t going to affect my health like other habits, for example vaping and smoking do. Those type of habits need the urgency to be changed, and mostly with teenagers since they are affecting their health and future.  Well, this was a real life example that happened to me. Although before this change, I was super happy and enjoyed life, now I enjoy it even more. Today, I have more time for other things I love and enjoy.  I can discover things and new passions, but mostly I am secure, peaceful, and relaxed. I invite you to look around and find something that could turn from better to best, and go after it and achieve that goal and turn yourself even better. In conclusion, good habits= good life.

 

 

 

 

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