(via Lunamonchtuna)

good habits vs bad habits

So I've been thinking a lot lately about habits and some of the habits we think are helping us are actually making our lives harder. So let's talk about the habits that actually matter, the ones that are obviously terrible (but we do them anyway) and those sneaky habits that look good on paper but are quietly sabotaging your life !

The actually good habits (that don't require a PhD in self-discipline)

Morning Water Before Coffee: ur body just went 8 hours without water it's basically a human raisin. One glass of water before you caffeinate yourself into productivity mode helps everything work better. ur brain, ur skin, ur mood, ur ability to not feel like garbage at 2 PM.

The 10-Minute tidy: set a timer for 10 minutes and just put stuff back where it belongs. Not deep cleaning just returning things to their homes. This prevents the avalanche effect where your space gets so messy that cleaning feels like something impossible clothes back to the closet , that messy book shelf those simple stuff ..

Phone goes to sleep before u do: Put your phone in another room 30 minutes before bed or far from ur bed . ur brain needs time to shift gears from "consuming information" mode to "actually resting" mode. That last scroll through TikTok isn't relaxing you girlie it's like feeding your brain another cup of coffee and wondering why you can't sleep.

The sunday brain dump: spend 15 minutes every sunday writing down everything you need to do that week. brain-to-paper transfer , this stops your Monday brain from spending energy trying to remember what it forgot while also trying to function like a human.

The obviously bad habits ( and we keep doing them anyw)

The snooze button addiction: u are literally training your brain to ignore your own decisions. Every time you hit snooze, you're telling yourself "my word means nothing." Plus that extra 9 minutes of sleep is garbage sleep that makes you feel worse not better .

Stress eating ur feelings: food becomes the solution to boredom, anxiety, celebration, sadness ... . You're not actually hungry you're using food like a drug to change how you feel. The problem is it works for about 10 minutes, then you feel worse AND like sh!t

The comparison scroll: opening Instagram when you're already feeling bad about yourself is like pouring salt on a wound and expecting it to heal faster. You're voluntarily looking at everyone else's highlight reel while sitting in your own behind-the-scenes chaos and u start acting like a victim for the next days cuz u think u are not pretty as x

Saying yes when u mean no: this isn't being nice it's being dishonest y'know you're lying to other people about your capacity and to yourself about your priorities. Every yes to something you don't want is a no to something you do want.

The "good" habits that are actually destroying you

The productivity porn addiction: u spend more time organizing your to-do lists, finding the perfect app, and watching productivity YouTube videos than actually doing things. You've turned productivity into procrastination with extra steps. Your 47 different planning systems aren't making you more efficient they're making you feel busy while accomplishing nothing.

The morning routine obsession: You've created a 2-hour morning routine that requires waking up at 4 AM, journaling, meditating, working out, reading, making a green smoothie. One day you sleep in and the whole thing crumbles. Now you feel like a failure because you didn't do your 39 -step morning ritual (bruh 💀). A good morning routine should make your life easier, not turn you into a slave to your own schedule.

The Information overload trap: You're subscribed to 47 newsletters, follow 23 self-improvement podcasts, and have 12 books about habits on your nightstand. You think consuming information about improvement IS improvement no it's not. You're using learning as a way to avoid doing. Knowledge without action is just expensive entertainment .

The perfectionist planning: u spend three hours planning a workout routine that's so detailed and perfect that you never actually start it. You research the optimal time, the best exercises, the perfect playlist, the ideal pre-workout snack. Meanwhile you could have just gone for a walk. The perfect plan you never follow is worse than the imperfect plan you actually do.

The self-care performance: You've turned self-care into another item on your to-do list. Face masks on Sunday, meditation app every morning, gratitude journal every night. But you're doing it because you think you should, not because it actually makes you feel better. Real self-care might be saying no to plans, sleeping in, or eating pizza without guilt. But that doesn't look as good on Instagram so have ur OWN self-care ritual u are not forced to do a face mask on Sunday maybe it's a packed day, u can do it even on a Wednesday ?

The busy badge of honor: u wear exhaustion like a medal. "I'm so busy" becomes your identity. You pack your schedule so full that you don't have time to think about whether you actually like your life. Being busy feels productive yes yes but often it's just a way to avoid dealing with the fact that you're not doing what you actually want to do.

🧾 - last note !

You don't need a perfect system but u need a few things that actually work for your actual life, not the life you think you should have , start small, be consistent !

helpful blog - how to build a habit

@bloomzone

btw if you say 'i'm just a girl' you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotype that women are silly and ditzy and lesser than men. if you say 'girl math' you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotypes that girls are not good at maths. if you say 'pink jobs' or 'pink chores' to describe washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and cooking, you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotype that women belong at home or in the kitchen.

i personally am a humanities/social sciences student. frankly sciences and maths baffle me. but i love my female friends in architecture, engineering, medicine, maths, physics, and coding. i think they are so smart and cool!

please do not start contributing to the rise of 'humanities are for girls, sciences are for boys' this is bullshit!

also it should not, and quite frankly cannot, be separated from the rise of the arts being seen as 'useless' or 'mickey mouse' degrees. they are defunding the arts! be angry! they are saying that this what women should be studying and then they are making it harder to chose to study it! they are trying to remove women from academia!

also shout out to men in humanities, y'all are important to!

TLDR: women in stem rock, they are defunding the arts in an attempt to remove women from academia, your harmless jokes spawned from tiktok trends actively contribute to negative misogynistic stereotypes

What prompts you to write poetry?

honestly i don't really have a good answer for this. i'm not even sure what i write qualifies as poetry, it's most just my ramblings to myself. i just think of lines or concepts i want to write and then write it. poetry isn't something we get asked to write in our english classes, so i don't write very much. but every now and again i think of a line and then the rest of the poem just kind of writes itself? in my head?

I love you for your post about the “I’m just a girl” phenomenon - my eyes cannot roll far back enough into my skull when I hear someone say it in earnest

thank you! i'm so glad people agree with me on this! whenever i've brought it up to people i hear saying this they just argue thats its not that deep, but i think it is that deep!

on building mental discipline

do something small that challenges you every day for a week. something small, whatever that means to you. maybe that's drinking a cup of water with every meal, going outside for ten minutes, or going for a run, taking a cold shower. whatever a small but tricky task means to you, do that every single day for a week.

it will be hard for about three days and then it will be easier.

the week after do a slightly bigger task. again, do whatever the next step up would be. cook a meal from scratch, call your mum, schedule an appointment, make the bed every day.

it will be hard for three days, then it will get easier.

third week do an even bigger task. vacuum your apartment, go to the gym, iron your shirts. whatever the next step up is for you, do that.

over time your brain will find it far easier to pick up new habits. it will have become used to the idea that you do new things and it is hard for a few days, but you always stick to it. you've built up your reputation with yourself to the point that your brain automatically thinks of you as disciplined and hardworking.

work out what habits your ideal self will do, meal prepping, exercising, seeing friends, going to therapy, and do them. your brain will have learnt that you do things even when they are hard, because it knows they eventually will get easier.

build up your reputation with yourself.

why I don't use AI for school work, and I don't think you should either

I have been staunchly against using AI for as long as ChatGPT has been a regularly used tool, not necessarily for moral reasons but for arrogant ones. I firmly beleive that I can write a better essay then a malfunctioning robot. My teacher used it to generate photos of scrabble tiles for a wall display, and despite the prompt spelling the words exactly correctly, ChatGPT spelt them wrong. Why would you want to trust a clearly flawed machine with your grades? However recently the sheer amount of people I see at school using AI and supporting the use of AI is so horrifying to me I felt it was something I needed to talk about

Using ChatGPT prevents you from learning properly. Doing things quickly does not equate to doing them well. I understand how difficult it can be to schedule and make time for everything, but using ChatGPT is just like getting someone else to do your work for you. You will not learn! (Most) teachers are not setting difficult homework for the sole purpose of making things hard for you, they set the work to help you learn and to grow resilience.

People are using it for completely stupid tasks, that they could perform far easier without it. For our English Portfolio Essays the SQA requires us to have a certain amount of sources and so many people asked ChatGPT to find them articles. It was ridiculous and slightly horrifying. Have we lost the ability to simply look things up for ourselves? Or to, god forbid, read a real book? Do not use ChatGPT for tasks that could be performed to a higher level if you simply did them yourself! My mother has a friend who marks Advanced Higher Biology Assignments for the SQA, she recently marked one that had 30 references, none of which were right! ChatGPT is not a good tool!

Yes it can save time, but what would you do with the extra time? and surely there are other ways of saving that time. Don't use it to help format emails, there are human made email templates available online, don't use it to help find quotes, you can just search them up yourself on a normal search engine, whatever ChatGPT does for you, there will be an honest hardworking person willing and able to do for you, please go to them instead. If ChatGPT saves you fifteen minutes a day is that really worth it? and if it saves more time then what do you do with that extra time? scroll tiktok? watch netflix? you are not saving time you are wasting your life!

not my typical academic study content, but I have my grade 5 cello exam next Tuesday, so in five days time, and I am planning to do 50 minutes of music practice everyday between now and then. will update as we go!

the idea that your behind someone implies that you are going the same way, which is inherently wrong because no one is on the same path.

to use an orienteering metaphor (which y'all might not get bc my sport is a niche sport, so message if you want an explanation) if you reach a checkpoint and dib it, and your excited that you're halfway done, and someone else comes up behind you and is excited because this is their second last checkpoint, you aren't behind them, you are just running different courses. it might feel like you are going slower than them, but they are on a different route, they might have set of sooner, the route they are taking might be shorter.

but even if someone on the same course as you overtakes you, you aren't necessarily behind them. they might be better at running, or have more grippy shoes, or be more hydrated.

this also applies for passing others. you're not necessarily better than them, you might be more equipped, they might be lost, they might have taken a different route to avoid slopes because of an injury.

you don't know what help others are getting, you will never know their circumstances. so don't assume you are ever better/worse than anyone.

btw forgive and forget is a myth, you can forget sure, for your own peace, but forgiveness is not necessary, you are not sanctified by your loving and forgiving nature btw. you can hate forever and its ok <3

(this is about my history teacher)

propaganda a lot of y’all should fall for:

whispering “thanku” to your tea or coffee before the first sip.

telling your friends you love them when they least expect it. especially then.

googling “what kind of flower blooms twice” at 3 a.m. to feel hopeful again

deleting apps every two weeks and calling it a spiritual reset.

naming your plants like they’re ur friends. apologizing when you forget to water them.

believing ur younger self would still think you’re cool. even on your worst days.

using perfume before bed. for no one. for you.

making eye contact with yourself in the mirror when you cry. giving the pain an audience.

taking selfies when you feel awful. proof you existed even when the light wasn’t flattering :-)