Who doesn’t want to live a healthy lifestyle? Of course, that’s easier said than done because it will take converting your dieting and exercise plans, your new motivation triggers and your inspiration into a daily habit. So, what’s a habit? A habit is something you do everyday, or at least regularly without being conscious or even thinking much about it. You probably have this habit of scratching your you-know-what when you wake up in the morning or maybe, some weird, funny habit of eating apples and oranges with iodized salt (to each his own).

Habits become such an integral part of our routine that they become who we are. … “You remember Charlie? Charlie … the guy who’s got this gross habit of eating his oysters like his got a stereo loud speaker wired around his throat?” … “Ohh…that Charlie!” Bad habits are hard to break, but you can. And you should. It makes sense to get rid of them and start forming good ones. they’ll help you hit your full potential. Here’s why:

1) Habits set the foundation of your life. Since habits define you, the ones that you choose to have will set the tone for your whole life. If you’ve got this thing of greeting your kids with a  smile each morning, you’ll become a happy individual. If you’ve got this habit of eating, dark green leafy veggies with your daily meals and having your regular workouts at the gym, you may not become another Arnold Schwartzenegger, but hey, you’d be a healthy, fit person.

2) Habits are your first steps towards achieving success in life. If you’ve got a goal in life. It’s not the goal itself that will lend a hand to achieve your dreams. It’s the habits that you build along the way, the good, really important ones you follow while you’re trying to get there. Habits serve like building blocks to reaching any goal or experiencing success in whatever plans you might have in your career or in your life.

3) Habits do away with wasted time. We’re all humans, mere mortals. As such, we are prone to wasting a lot of time. For the most part, we would be the types who’d most likely shy away from doing anything hard or too challenging. Heck, perhaps at heart we’re really a bunch of good-time-Charlie’s, but once we decide to form really good habits, come hell or high water, we’d be more efficient and this will drastically bring down the time we waste on silly things.

Developing a set of good habits will bring great results. It will benefit our life from the day we start them, extending far into our future. It’s not a difficult task, especially if we start forming a habit of facing difficult tasks.

Let’s get you started in forming 2 very simple but good habits that create big results.

1. Exercise. Recent studies have shown that exercising creates the desire to make other positive changes in your life, like eating better, or moderating your booze or stopping  smoking altogether. And it doesn’t have to be an exercise extravaganza ala Broadway’s Westside Story. Starting off with just 5 minutes a day, every day will do the trick of getting the habit established.

1. Positive thinking. If you could change your mind frame to see your life and circumstances from a negative to a positive perspective, you will create an attitude of confidence and energy that will spawn other positive habits. Getting into this habit of positive thinking will create a sort of an energy that’ll make you change your mood and outlook even if you’re not feeling positive.

Food for thought: Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer extraordinaire, the most decorated Olympian in history is reported to have revealed in an interview that his powerful habit of visualizing a perfect swim before he jumps in the pool is what has helped him garner 19 Olympic medals. He pictures it all. He gets into the rhythm of seeing what he wants to see, seeing what he doesn’t want to see and seeing what he possibly could see. And these get him ready for anything that happens. The good habit of visualizing goals has been shown to raise performance in all areas of one’s life when applied to the desired net result.