Stop These Habits that Are Hindering Your Personal Growth

Life can be challenging, but sometimes you can make it harder for yourself. In fact, the very habits you engage in can be the same things holding you back.

You may already realize that bad habits like pizza and hamburgers can increase your cholesterol, widen your waistband, and even puts you at risk for heart disease.

Some bad habits can be devastating to your physical health, while others are detrimental to your mental and emotional health. They can increase your anxiety, depression, insomnia, and stress, for example.

If you follow any of these bad habits, you may be putting your emotional well-being at risk:

Perfectionism

While doing your best is always an admirable and important goal, it can quickly develop into a harmful habit.

Practice makes perfect…but striving for perfection can be unhealthy

According to studies, perfectionism has increased among undergraduates in the US, UK, and Canada since the early 2000s. However, this increase in perfectionism doesn't mean we're getting better. It means we are stuck in a negative feedback loop of our creation. Perfectionism, for many, can undermine your efforts to succeed.

While there are healthy ways to achieve perfectionism, others tend to beat themselves up or feel like they don't live up to their parent's expectations. Furthermore, this bad habit has links to clinical issues like social anxiety disorder, depression, self-harm, OCD, eating disorders, PTSD, insomnia, and even suicidal ideation.

Those who strive for perfection may give up more quickly when faced with failure instead of enjoying the process of learning from their mistakes.

One way to sidestep some of the damaging components of this habit is by practicing self-compassion and learning to understand that your self-worth is not tied to your successes or failures.

Poor posture

Many of us slouch without even thinking about it, and we may not even be aware of how poor our posture is.

Aside from physical issues, poor posture can also be harmful to our emotional health.

Did you know that just sitting up straight can help reduce fatigue and negative self-focusing in patients with mild depression? Some studies suggest that improving your poor posture can even reduce signs of depression and improve self-esteem and mood levels.

The next time you're feeling tired or low, try to remember to keep your back straight and be mindful of how you hold yourself.

Social Media

Are you addicted to social media?

Far too many of us check our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all day long. It can even be the very first thing we check when we get up in the morning!

Often, it's a habit we don't even think about, but studies suggest that excessive social media can be bad for our mental well-being. It can reduce our level of happiness and increase our anxiety and depression. On top of that, the blue light of our phone or computer screens can impact melatonin, our sleep hormone, which increases our fatigue when we can’t sleep.

Have you ever stayed up past your bedtime because you couldn’t put your phone down? Studies suggest that social media can be addictive and hard to step away from.

If you're feeling a little off or anxious, try cutting down your social media use by 50 percent and see if it changes how you feel.

Spiritual and Self-Care

We’ve been talking a lot on what NOT to do in this article. Now, let’s focus on things you CAN do to level-up your personal growth.

Loving yourself and putting yourself as a priority in life is not an act of selfishness. In order to love others, we must first love ourselves.

Self-care is self-love

The Blissful Heart Wellness Center

This means taking care to look at how we feel, both inside and out. That means exploring our interests and who we like to spend time with. This means practicing self-care rituals. At The Blissful Heart Wellness Center, we offer an array of holistic healing services. We truly believe there is something for everyone here: meditation, yoga, massage, reiki, Access Bars, counseling, and more.