What’s the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy habit?
Healthy habits, according to Health Line, is: “A healthy habit is any behavior that benefits your physical, mental, and emotional health. These habits improve your overall well-being and make you feel good.”
A healthy habit is keeps your wellness at the center. It comes from a place of love–you love yourself so you want to take care of yourself. Healthy habits should take into consideration all facets of health: physical, mental emotional, spiritual, etc.
An unhealthy habit is rooted in shame, functions through restriction, and often while seemingly healthy in one area of health, leads to an unhealthy result in another.
Ask yourself
- What habits do I currently practice?
- Are my habits well rounded?
- How do they help me?
- Are there unhealthy consequences of these habits that I haven’t considered?
- How do my daily routines leave me feeling?
- Am I craving consistent wellness habits?
Think about why you want to build healthy habits in the first place.
Is there something you want to get better at? Are you looking to round out your wellness? Look at the root of your goals. Consider stress as well–are there areas of your life you would like to reduce stress in? Would building healthy habits and routines help you get there?
Healthy habits aren’t just about fitness or body-health.
In fact, the common ideas of healthy habits (disciplined eating, lots of exercising) can quickly turn into unhealthy habits if left unchecked.
Take regular exercising for example:
An unhealthy version of this habit would be *needing* to workout intensely everyday. If you cancel plans to work out, it’s impacting your social life & emotional well being. If you feel guilty when you don’t have time to exercise, it’s become a habit that is detrimental to your mental health. It comes from a place of punishment, restriction, or self hatred, rather than love.
A healthy version of this habit would be moving your body regularly (as much as you are able), and taking time every day–even if it’s just a few minutes–to listen to your body. What aches and pains do you have? Where are you holding your stress? What type of movement can help to relieve it?
Rather than forcing yourself to exercise intensely every single day, you can make it a habit to listen to your body & do things that make it feel good without hurting your emotional or mental health. This way, your habits take into consideration more than your physical health, and provides you with a well rounded set of healthy habits.
So how can you build healthy habits?
Learning to set healthy habits is all about learning to see your overall health as a multifaceted thing. What areas of your health have you been overlooking? When setting & practicing habits consider these three things:
- Keep in mind what is feasible for your daily routines–if you have a hectic schedule, getting to the gym daily probably isn’t going to happen. Try something smaller that fits into your schedule like taking the stairs when it’s an option or taking a walk on your lunch break.
- Consider more than just one facet of health–if something is good for you physically but causes a mental drain it’s not a healthy habit. Healthy habits should leave you feeling good, not bad.
- Remember to take time to regularly evaluating your habits. Are they helping you? Do they need to be changed? Your life is constantly changing so it makes sense that a healthy habit at one part of your life won’t be helpful to you in the future.
“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread each day, and at last we cannot break it.” –Horace Mann
Alyssa Mairanz, LMHC, DBTC
Alyssa Mairanz provides counseling and therapy services for life transitions, relationship issues, self esteem, depression, anxiety, and DBT and Psychodynamic therapy in a NYC group practice in the Flatiron District near Madison Square Park. She also serves the Village, Chelsea, Union Square, the Financial District and the surrounding areas.
Empower Your Mind Therapy’s mission is to helps our clients build the life they want and find more happiness and satisfaction.
