13 Unhealthy Habits That Harm Your Holistic Health

Leading a holistically healthy lifestyle requires that we eventually end any and all unhealthy relationships, and this includes the one with ourselves. Unfortunately, ours is our longest-term relationship and the hardest to conclude. Our unhealthy habits can be hard to stop as they’re based on thought patterns and beliefs and actions that are all in their own ways negative to our overall wellness. Over time, this chips away at our confidence and ability to listen to and trust our intuition.

Ask yourself how many of the following points you can relate with and in what regards.

If you can see yourself in even half of these, it’s time to consider making some changes for your holistic health, meaning your physical, mental, and spiritual needs.

Reach out to positive people and professional help for guidance. Connection is an incredible key to succeeding in changing unwanted behaviors.

Letting go of these 13 unhealthy habits can decrease your stress levels and benefit your overall wellbeing.

It’s time to stop doing the following things:

1. Believing people are as they appear on social media.

Our feeds are nothing more than creative highlight reels of our best selves. They’re a fraction of filtered reality. Don’t let yourself get caught up comparing your real life to someone’s social media version.

While social media can serve as a means of communication and connection, it can also increase depression and feelings of loneliness. Be careful how much time you spend scrolling each day.

2. Fighting for people who won’t fight for themselves.

It’s an excruciatingly painful waste of precious time. If you attempt to ‘save’ or ‘fix’ someone who isn’t willing to do the work, you risk losing yourself in someone else’s story and being stuck in a never-ending chapter of cyclical behaviors.

3. Being too busy for self-care.

You need to be your own best friend. Don’t wait for others to tell you to slow down and rest so you feel you deserve it. Rest isn’t deserved; it’s needed. If you don’t rest, you can’t be your best and this has a ripple effect on everyone around you.

4. Messiness.

It’s time to get organized for the sake of your success, sanity, and serenity. Clutter clouds your energy. It creates unnecessary frustrations when you can’t find things. It’s not conducive to feeling energized and inspired in your space.

If you’re struggling to keep everything orderly, put the priority on your bedroom, kitchen, and working areas.

5. Staying in toxic relationships.

You need to appreciate how much time, energy, and attention any given relationship takes to keep alive and healthy. When your intuition tells you things have turned toxic, or you convince yourself with enough online quizzes, you need to make an exit plan. Whether it’s a parent or a partner doesn’t matter. Decide what your boundaries are, and if they are not respected, make your move.

6. Avoiding the doctor or dentist.

If I had a twenty for every time I’ve heard a grown adult with insurance say, “But I hate going to the doctor/dentist!” Yeah, you and everyone else. These aren’t supposed to be ‘fun’ activities, and they’re also not supposed to be optional, either.

Practicing preventative health care means saving money, stress, and potentially your life.

7. Pretending to like things you don’t.

Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. Someone we like says they’re into ‘this’ or ‘that’ and suddenly so are we. Sometimes we can keep up the charade and other times it’s obvious. Either way, it’s wrong. It’s deceiving, obviously, but it’s also infusing incorrect energy into the universe.

You can’t find compatibility by creating it.

8. Avoiding your feelings.

Denying your emotions is denying the very thing that makes you human. If you haven’t come across that chapter in life yet, sorry for the spoiler. Seriously though, repressing emotions is like borrowing money from a line of credit. There’s interest to pay when the time comes.

9. Saying ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no.’

Consider this: Every time you go against your needs and wants, you betray yourself. Is this any way to protect your most important relationship? Surely you deserve better.

10. Any sense of entitlement.

Forget feeling like you ‘deserve’ certain things to happen in your life. All this does is lead to great expectations that can easily go unfulfilled and lead to disappointment and eventual bitterness.

It’s best to see things as though the world doesn’t owe you anything, no matter how badly you want or work for it. If it is meant to be, it will be regardless of whether you ‘deserve’ it or not.

11. Oversharing on social media.

Honestly, this is something that should be left in your teens if it ever needs to happen at all. There is power in privacy. Remember that.

12. Thinking you need a romantic relationship.

It’s perfectly normal to want a partner in life, but it doesn’t do any good to cling to the idea that you ‘need’ one. You don’t. You need relationships, sure, but whether or not they’re romantic is just details.

13. Imposter syndrome.

When I first heard about ‘imposter syndrome,’ I was surprised anyone else out there felt as I did.

I remember the professor’s words of advice: When you feel like a fraud, don’t get discouraged. Revel in the fact you’ve fooled others into believing something you don’t yet feel. Hang onto that feeling until it manifests into confidence.