Habits are the building blocks of our daily lives. They are mental shortcuts created from repeated experiences, helping us navigate the world efficiently. According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, small changes in our daily routines can lead to significant transformations. His philosophy revolves around the idea of becoming 1% better every day, illustrating that tiny improvements can compound into remarkable results over time. The question then arises: What kind of person do you want to become? Here’s a guide for teenagers to incorporate essential habits into their lives to build a strong foundation for the future.

Good Sleep Habits

Getting enough sleep is crucial for physical health, mental clarity, and emotional stability. Teenagers, in particular, need 8-10 hours of sleep each night to support their developing brains and bodies. To establish good sleep habits:
Set a Consistent Bedtime and Wake-Up Time: Regular sleep schedules help regulate your body’s internal clock, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up.
Create a Bedtime Routine: Engaging in calming activities such as reading, listening to soothing music, or practising relaxation techniques can signal your brain that it’s time to wind down.
Limit Screen Time Before Bed: The blue light emitted by screens can interfere with your sleep cycle. Aim to avoid screens at least an hour before bedtime to promote better sleep quality.

Keep Your Room Neat and Tidy

A clean and organized space can significantly improve focus and reduce stress. Here are some tips to keep your room tidy:
Make Your Bed Every Morning: Starting your day with this simple task sets a productive tone and gives you a sense of accomplishment.
Declutter Regularly: Spend a few minutes each day tidying up to prevent clutter from piling up. Regular decluttering helps maintain an organized environment.
Designate Spots for Essential Items: Having specific places for your belongings helps you find things easily and keeps your space organized.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post Transform Your Life with Tiny Changes appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Flora offers a green way to stay off your phone, clear to-do lists, and build life-changing habits. Flora blocks distracting apps in a pleasant way to help you focus on what’s important. Plant a seed in Flora, and as you progress towards your goals, the seed will grow into a healthy tree. If you leave Flora for social media or games while growing a tree, the tree dies! If you don’t, you’ll unlock new trees. Create a to-do item and set a reminder; tag your trees with a to-do item to track the progress. Grow trees regularly to earn a beautiful garden, with each tree a record of your hard work. Daily, weekly or monthly statistics help you improve your time-management skills. Challenge friends to plant trees together; if you successfully stay away from your phones together, each of you will win an additional tree. You can also chat and share your progress with each other. Flora’s opt-in Price and Care service lets you plant real trees if you kill or successfully grow a tree in the app.

The post Flora – Green Focus appeared first on The Teenager Today.

As the clock strikes 12, the calendar resets and a new chapter is unveiled. Here are 12 resolutions that can help you revamp your life this New Year.

January 2024: The Healthy Wealthy Way

“Eat healthy, think healthy, and walk healthy.” Start right by speaking kind words that make you love yourself and others. Live the healthy way, work out and practise gratitude.

February 2024: Go Spick-and-Span!

Declutter your home and workspace, especially the digital space. Tidy your email inbox, organize files, and unsubscribe to unnecessary notifications.

March 2024: Penny Peaks

Identify your wants and needs. Take control of your finances, save more, and eliminate debts to become independent, secure and stable. This will widen opportunities for future endeavours.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post Change Your Life… One Resolution at a Time! appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Many people think that being confident means speaking in a massive auditorium or making a big career choice. Whereas the confidence people experience in everyday life can be something as simple as choosing the clothes you wear with confidence. There’s no worry present — just a decisive, simple, effortless, determined act of picking out the items that you want to wear. The word ‘confidence’ comes from Latin confidentia and confidere which means to ‘to have full trust’.

My definition of confidence is being comfortable in your own skin — authentic and natural. Just being yourself. Truly confident people are authentically themselves and they don’t need to pretend to be someone they are not — they feel perfectly good enough just the way they are.

Being confident helps us deal with unknown situations and uncertainty. This may be uncertainty about speaking in front of people, exams, what to study or what to wear. So confidence and self-belief are what we really need.

Confidence is a state of mind and body; it’s also a habit — a habit that can be learned and turned on at will. Here are five tools to give you inner self-confidence and a strong belief in yourself and your abilities to handle life’s challenges. Once you have practised these tools and techniques, you will be able to tap into your natural confidence whenever you want. You will be able to walk into a room, give a presentation, interview or handle a challenging situation with total self-confidence.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post Five Ways to Instantly Boost Confidence and Self-belief appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Your life is the product of the moment-to-moment choices you make. By working on instilling winning habits into your life you can achieve the direction or the path you’ve always desired. Eliminate your bad habits and instil needed positive habits in your life, and you can take your life in any direction you desire, to the heights of your greatest imagination. Let me show you how…

Human beings are creatures of habit. Aristotle wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Merriam Webster defines habit as “an acquired mode of behaviour that has become nearly or completely involuntary.” Psychological studies reveal that 95 per cent of everything we feel, think, do and achieve is a result of a learned habit or trait. Our habits and routines allow us to use minimal conscious energy for everyday tasks that is a general factor of intelligence. They help reduce decision making and handle most situations well. For example, brushing your teeth in the morning, putting on a seat belt in a car and healthy eating habits. Since we don’t have to think about the mundane, we can focus our mental energy on more creative and enriching thoughts. Habits can be helpful as long as they are good habits. A daily routine built on good habits is what separates the most successful people from everyone else. Their habits take them in the direction of becoming more informed, more knowledgeable, more competent, better skilled and better prepared. We, too, can instil good habits and become a person with winning traits.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post The Power of Habit: Installing winning habits into your life appeared first on The Teenager Today.

“Books give a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
~ Plato

Reading is a pleasure, reading is inspiring, and reading enriches our lives through our imagination. Reading allows our mind to go on adventures and explore new places, meet new people and understand different perspectives and opinions all in the words on a page.

In today’s digital age with social media and multiple entertainment sources, there are numerous options that make it hard to motivate ourselves to read. However, if your daily reading consists of social media and WhatsApp messages, you are missing out. If you need motivation to convince you that reading every day is an essential habit for success, this article is for you. There is a perfect genre of books for everyone from novels and classical literature, science fiction, romance to biographies, self-help guides and business books — there’s something for everyone.

Reading has many benefits, and one of the most obvious ones is learning new things. You can learn practically anything from reading a book — from how to be more productive, start your own business, to cooking to managing your time effectively, everything can be found in the pages of a book.

Subscribe to The Teenager Today print / digital editions to read the full article.

The post Today’s Readers, Tomorrow’s Leaders appeared first on The Teenager Today.

Habit defined

The Oxford dictionary explains habit as a settled or regular tendency, especially one that is hard to break or give up. Some people have a habit of interrupting people in conversation; others have good or bad eating habits, and many smoke or drink or lie because they say it’s become a habit.

A habit by nature, is repeated, nurtured, encouraged, and in many ways mastered, reinforced and automated. And as might appear completely obvious, habits are hard to break. It doesn’t matter whether these are good or bad; old habits are hard to give up, and new habits are difficult to inculcate. So how exactly are these habits formed, so literally etched onto our brains, and so impossible to be wiped away?

Habit redefined

The first time we do something and realize that we like it, there are chemical processes going on in our brains that we are unaware of. No habit has been formed yet. Let’s assume we smoke a cigarette, or go for a particular rock band’s concert, or eat a giant cheeseburger when we are upset, or do some yoga stretches that ease our stiff backs, or watch television to lull ourselves to sleep. Based on what comes out of these actions, our subconscious mind makes observations.

It affirms that smoking eases tension, this rock band resonates our tune, burgers are satisfying, yoga is a back pain reliever, and TV can help us slide into slumber effortlessly. Our brain makes casual relationships between actions and positive outcomes, and we seek the good feeling again. That is probably the reason why some of us…

… develop a smoking habit and feel it relieves stress.
… tend to listen to one genre of music and love it.
… begin to look at burgers or pasta as comfort food.
… do yoga or exercise daily and can’t survive without it.
… need to watch television every night before we sleep.

And we call all of these actions — habits.

Read the full article by subscribing to the print magazine or the digital edition.

The post Habit: A matter of choice? appeared first on The Teenager Today.