Daily Habits for a Calmer, More Beautiful Life

Sometimes in life, we inadvertently fall into bad habits.  Perhaps we stop being organized, and our living space becomes a cluttered mess.  Or we may get into the habit of filling our bodies with crummy foods and alcohol.  Or we may start wasting our free time by filling our brains with nonsense on the television.  Those kinds of habits can lead us to feel generally bad.  Well, the good news is that you can become a calmer, happier person simply by getting rid of those bad habits and adopting good daily habits. 

What are good daily habits?  Well, they’re the habits that promote a quiet, relaxed mind.  For instance, watching crime dramas or horror films will create an agitated mind.  By contrast, reading a pleasant novel while sipping a cup of tea will lead to a quiet mind. 

Now, I’ll concede that’s obvious!  Frankly, you don’t have to be a genius to know what are good habits.  But yet, we all fall into bad habits from time to time.  And then, because change is hard, we delude ourselves into thinking that those bad habits are actually OK. 

However, at a certain point, we just want to feel good.  And we want our brains to be at peace.  To achieve that state of being, we have to get back to having good habits.

Below are some good, daily habits that you can adopt to make your day-to-day existence calmer, and so much more beautiful:

Start and End Each Day Intentionally

The way you start your day sets the tone for the rest of the day, so you want to start your day quietly.  Don’t start the day with noise or rushing.  And certainly, don’t have on a blaring television.

For example, I start each day by taking care of our gang of critters.  I approach their care in a quiet, meditative way.  I’ll start out by feeding the cat.  Then, I’ll let the dog out for a run, and I’ll fill the outdoor bird feeders.  After that, I’ll make myself a cup of coffee and take care of the bunnies.  It’s early in the morning, and it’s a silent time of the day.  While I sit on the floor with the bunnies, they’ll come up and sniff me or hop on my lap.  It’s a very serene morning routine.

Frankly, there are many quiet ways to start the day.  Regardless of which way you choose, the key is to start your day calmly.  When you start your day in a calm manner, you then can have a clear head to deal with everything that follows – your job, meeting the needs of others, etc.

And similarly, you should end your day in a quiet, peaceful manner.  For example, I don’t look at screens at the end of my day.  Instead, I engage in self-care.  I use nice smelling lotions on my skin, and I comb my hair with rosemary and mint oil.  I then sit and chat with my husband for a bit before getting into bed.  It’s important to me to end the day in peace.

So, get into the habit of starting and ending your day serenely.  Yes, you may have to deal with some nonsense during the day.  That’s part of life.  But if you can bookend your day with tranquil habits, you’ll feel calmer about life generally. 

Surround Yourself with Beauty

The older I get, the more I realize how important it is to have a tidy, beautiful space in which to live.  Note that I’m not saying that it’s important to have an expensive place to live.  When it comes to having a beautiful home, money is neither here nor there.  Rather, what’s important is to create a living space that is peaceful and inviting.  That doesn’t take money.   Rather, it takes intentionality.

To create a serene space in which to live, you have to curate your living space by carefully picking and choosing what goes into your home. Now, if you’re wondering where to start, my suggestion is this: Take a photo of the room that you’re working on.  When you look at a picture of the room, what needs to change will jump out at you immediately.  For some reason, if you look at a room via a photo, your eye becomes more discerning.  What is “not right” becomes readily apparent.

There are a couple of key things that you can do to make a room more beautiful and serene.  (1) Make sure there is enough white space.  You want to have a balance of objects versus empty spaces. (2) Incorporate houseplants.   They make a room feel alive.  Now, if you have pets who will eat the plants, then either place them at a level that your pets can’t reach or use fake plants.  (3) Choose to decorate with items that are cherished and personal.  Framed photos, well-loved books, and items with special meaning to you are excellent decorating items.

Once you’ve carefully decorated your living space, then the key is to keep it well-organized.  Tidying should be a daily habit.  Every morning, beds should be made and breakfast dishes should be washed up and put away.  Every evening, dinner dishes should be washed and put away, the house should be tidied and the laundry should be folded and hung.  And if you live with other people, insist that they do the same!    

It’s so important to make your living space a place where you can relax.  When you have a living space that is serene, you have a place where you can truly feel calm and at peace.

Curate Your Input

We live in a very different world today from the world in which I grew up.  I grew up in a world in which we had a television with 13 stations and the radio.  Today, in addition to the television and radio, we have the Internet, YouTube, social media, and X.  Moreover, nowadays, our televisions have countless stations, in addition to the streaming services.   

The problem is that if you let all the news, social media, television shows, movies and endless notifications into your world, you will be tense.  That’s because most of what’s out there is negative.  For instance, on the news, the politicians try to grab our attention with fear-mongering.  And the television and movie industries provide us with a steady diet of violent, salacious nonsense.

And my position on all that negative content is this:  That’s fine.  For the rest of the world.  If other folks want to live in a world of fear, negativity and violence, that’s their choice.  But for those of us who want to live calm, beautiful lives, we need to curate our input.  We need to carefully pick and choose what we give our attention to in terms of the news, reading and entertainment.

Now you may say, “Well, I can watch the news and violent television shows, and none of that affects me.”  If that’s your position, I’d challenge you to take a break from all that for two weeks.  Give up the news, violent television and films.  (I can assure you that nothing catastrophic will happen if you take a two-week news hiatus.)

Then, at the end of those two weeks, see how you feel.  I strongly suspect that you’ll feel much better.  You’ll feel calmer and more peaceful.  That’s because all of that negative input is bad for our mental health.

So, to have a calmer, more serene life, get in the habit of carefully picking and choosing what goes into your brain.  For instance, I’m very careful what I pay attention to.  I get my news once a day with a 15-minute news program from NPR.  And that is all.  I don’t need round-the-clock news coverage.  And I tend to not watch television.  If I do, I’ll pick something soothing, like a gardening show.  Or I’ll watch a light-hearted comedy. 

That’s because I’m in the habit of carefully curating what I put into my brain.  Society doesn’t dictate what I give my attention to.  Rather, I dictate what I watch and listen to.  And because I’ve taken control over what’s going into my brain, I’m calmer and more at peace with the world.

Focus on Having Peaceful Relationships

I wish I could say that every person in this world is delightful and a joy to be around.  But after several decades on this earth, I can say with confidence that some people are draining and a headache.  Now, I understand that there are many reasons why some folks are problematic.  And I have a great deal of compassion for those folks.  But if you want to have a peaceful, beautiful life, you cannot spend your time with those individuals.

I know that sounds harsh.  But if you want to be happy, you need to get in the habit of keeping difficult people at bay.  Otherwise, they’ll make you miserable.

I spent many years of my life trying to be kind and to engage with difficult people.  But at a certain point, I realized that, notwithstanding my kindness, the difficult people remained difficult. And I was just making myself miserable.

So, I decided to get into the habit of putting myself first.  And that meant that if people were difficult, I simply chose not to deal with them.  Now, I’ll concede that choice has resulted in some of my relationships ending.  And you know what?  That’s OK.  Because my happiness is more important than another person’s need to be difficult or a headache.

So, to have a calm, peaceful life, get in the habit of keeping draining people at bay.  The good news is that if you choose to stop giving your energy to draining, difficult people, you then will have more energy to give to the peaceful, kind people in your life!  And when you surround yourself with peaceful, kind, generous, easy-going individuals, you’ll find that your life is transformed. 

Be Consistently Peaceful and Kind

If you’re interested in having a peaceful life, peace starts with you.  Not only should you fill your life with peaceful, kind individuals, but you have to be peaceful yourself!  That means adopting a habit of always being kind and peaceful. No matter what.

Now, I’ll concede that being a peaceful person takes self-control and emotional maturity.  After all, when we’re tired, or in a bad mood, it’s hard to be peaceful. 

So, what do you do when you’re tired or in a bad mood?  Well, I’ll give you the same advice that I used to give my daughter when she was small: Go to your room.  Now, I didn’t say suggest that she should go to her room as a punishment.  Rather, my suggestion was this: Go to your room and be alone.  Don’t inflict your bad mood on others.  Instead, just enjoy some time by yourself.  Read a book.  Listen to some uplifting music.  Draw or do something else that is positive and creative.  And after about an hour, you’re going to feel far better about yourself and the world, and you’ll be ready to be part of society again.

Realize that advice doesn’t just apply to small children.  It’s an excellent habit that we as adults should adopt, as well!  Whenever we’re in a bad mood, we should all “go to our rooms,” so to speak.  And that simply means going off by yourself, and being alone.  Perhaps it might mean going for a walk.  Or sitting and reading a book quietly.  It may mean listening to music with your headphones in. 

If you get in the habit of simply leaving the room and being on your own when you’re feeling out of sorts, then you can be kind all the time.  You can be kind when you’re in a good mood.  And then, when you don’t feel terribly kind, you can go be on your own and not inflict your foul mood on others. 

Enjoy the Simple Pleasures of Life

When we’re unhappy, it can be tricky to figure out why. Now, sometimes our circumstances are the cause of our unhappiness. But at other times, we get in the way of our own happiness.

To figure out why you’re unhappy, it’s helpful to ask yourself the following two questions: At this moment, could I be happy sitting in a pleasant place by myself?  Could I just sit and read a book alone and relax?  If your answer to those questions is “no,” then your unhappiness isn’t due to your circumstances. Rather, you have an internal contentment issue. 

One way to become an internally more content person is to learn to find happiness in the simple pleasures of life. Realize that those simple pleasures abound. You just need to take the time to be still and pay attention. 

Consider watching the sunlight on the leaves of a tree.  Enjoy a hot cup of coffee.  Observe the animals, birds or insects in nature.  Listen to the wind or watch the rain. 

To learn to be internally content, it helps to adopt a daily habit of enjoying the small things.  If you do so, I can assure you that your outlook will improve! Realize that beauty and peace are all around. You just need to slow down and take notice.

If you are seeking to create a calmer, more beautiful life, consider adopting the habits above.  Remember that our life experience is dictated by our habits.  So, adopt good habits and create a great life! (To read about 30 habits for happiness and better health, click here.)