“What advice would you give to your younger self?”

“What would you do differently if you could go back in time?”

“What’s your biggest regret?”

One of my students asked me these questions last week. My first thought was “Same question, different clothes.” My second thought was “What makes you think I know the answer?” but that would be of no help to a young girl who was apparently looking up to me. (for whatever unknown reason)

Then I stopped momentarily to think and look back on my life. The trip down memory lane made me think of some things that vastly transformed my life in the past couple of years so here are five habits I shared with her, that I wish I learned sooner.

1— I Stopped Pretending Like One Aspect of My Life Wouldn’t Affect The Rest

For the longest time, I was one of those people who claimed I was “too busy” for many things. I “don’t have time” to workout and cook healthy meals or had “too packed” of a schedule to meditate or spend an hour to myself daily. I assumed that work was my top priority and I would make my all of my plans around my job.

What I didn’t understand (or refused to admit) was how these decisions were all linked to each other. My diet, my mental health, my income and my sleep schedule are directly linked to one another. My life is the sum of all those aspects and all my personas as a whole.

I was trying to compartmentalize my life as a defense mechanism to make my problems easier to avoid. I sliced myself into different personas and let them tear each other apart. My smoking and drinking habit was justified for the “busy professional me” because she had been stressed all week and deserved a nice break. Now, this was going to be a problem for the “healthy me” but this was none of my business as the “hungry me” and I would let them to figure it out on their own while I ordered a cheeseburger.

The bottom line is, everything is interconnected.

Eventually, I stopped lying to myself and took into account the importance of a holistic routine. My life is the sum of what I once assumed were benign daily habits. You can’t build one aspect of your life and ignore the rest entirely. Just because you avoid looking at something doesn’t make the consequences go away.

2 — I Stopped Pretending to Be Able to Multitask

Let’s get one thing straight. The human brain is physically incapable of multitasking.

There. I said it. The whole thing is a myth.

The cerebral cortex which is the part of the brain that handles “executive controls” is divided into two stages of goal shifting and rule activation. So when you switch from one task to the next, the brain needs to first shift your focus and then turn off the rules for the previous task and turn on ones of the new task.

When you think you are multitasking, you’re actually just switching back and forth so quickly that you get the impression of doing both tasks simultaneously.

As fast and efficient as our brains are, that’s a lot of unnecessary work we’re putting them through and not only does this not make us more productive, it actually lowers our quality of work and damages our cognitive abilities regardless of how much time we’re saving or how well we think we’re juggling five tasks at once.

3— I Stopped Listening to Biz Gurus

This one’s a little more specific but equally important. I know I’m not the only one who obsessively follows the content of some entrepreneurs on every social media that exists and watches their every move and tries to copy their habits. After all, we live in an entrepreneurship glorifying society and a “hustle or die” era.

Now, I’m not saying having role models to look up to is wrong nor am I trying to slam every business guru out there. That’s not my point.

Marketing gurus do have valuable advice and their tactics do work. But the only time their tips are effective is IF you are in the position to use them and 90% of people are not and will NEVER be in those positions. This ultimately makes listening to these business gurus a total waste of time.

Additionally, majority of their business is built around telling other people how to start a business. Talking about making money is how they make money. Most of their success revolves around teaching people how to be successful hence their profit is solely on keeping the rest of us stuck and poor.

4 — I Stopped Keeping Unnecessary Things And People in My Life

About three years ago I experienced what I can only describe as a quarter life crisis.(assuming I won’t die at 35). I was feeling unfulfilled with what I had achieved even though I was doing well for my age. I was in that mess of a headspace when I found out about mindful living and minimalism and it changed my life entirely.

As I’ve always said and will continue to repeat, minimalism is not about organizing your closet or giving away an extra pair of shoes. It’s a philosophy of life. It’s a practice of mindfulness — what you own, how you spend your time and money, and who you allow into your life.

There’s a key phrase I live by:What you own ends up owning you.

Minimalism changed my mindset both personally and professionally. It made me aware of how I spent my energy, who I spend my time with and what I spent my money on. For the past three years I have kept my life as clean and jumble free as possible and the effect it had on my peace of mind is indescribable.

5— I Stopped My Addiction to Dopamine

Like most other people, I spent the longest time being unaware of what Dopamine was and how strongly it affected our daily lives.

For those who don’t know, every time you scroll down Instagram, watch something on YouTube, receive likes on your Facebook post, or eat a spoon of ice cream your brain produces a strong hit of the neuro-chemical dopamine. aka the “happy hormone”.

Like any other addiction, the frequent stimulation of dopamine causes the brain’s baseline to keep getting higher which results in us needing more and more of it to survive.

One of the best habits that transformed my life was adding a dopamine detox to my schedule from time to time. It easily doubled my productivity by simply training my brain to avoid distractions in the most practical way.

You know what they say, everything has been figured out, except how to live!

We all make mistakes. We all have regrets. We just have to make sure we learn from those mistakes and improve as we move along.

We can’t move back in time but when you sit to analyze your life in 5 years, is there a habit you’d wish you stopped today?

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