12 Life-changing Habits & Practices Every Young Man Must Adopt  

In a previous article, we talked about bad habits to avoid as a man. These are habits and indulgences that compromise your physical and mental well-being, limit how you much you achieve in life, and, in the long-run, rob you of your confidence as a man. 

In this article, we go through the opposite — 12 positive habits for men. Whether you’re a young chap in your early 20s still trying to figure out your life or a more experienced man trying to improve certain aspects of your life, this is a guide for you.  

Life is tough and a man’s life is even tougher. For this reason, you cannot just leave things to chance. It’s necessary to consciously prepare and arm yourself with the necessary tools to navigate through the difficulties. These “tools” are positive habits, practices, and perspectives that should influence and guide your life for a more productive, healthy and happy life. 

That said… 

In no particular order of importance, here are 12 habits and practices every intentional man should be aware of. 

1. Saving and investing  

Embracing a culture of saving and investing is a healthy habit every young man must form. 

Lavishing all your finances on unproductive activities and interests stunts growth and breeds room for frustration and depression.  

Saving, on the other hand, will help you cope with emergencies and make it possible for you to pursue opportunities that involve money. “Save for rainy days,” as the saying goes. Keeping some money aside is your safety net for when there is an emergency health challenge, a car breakdown, that dreaded call from home, or a sudden loss of income or job. It’s also an insurance for when you need to travel for that impromptu job interview or chase a sudden one-time opportunity.  

But.  

Understandably, it can be hard to save money. Especially when you don’t earn enough or when you simply lack the discipline.  

Here’s what you can do. 

Make it a habit, today, regardless how small or insufficient your income is, to put at least 20% of your after-tax earnings into savings. You can set up an automatic transfer to a savings account where your money can instantly go to the moment you’re paid. This automated process helps you maintain discipline and consistency with saving.  

While you save, also consider investing, too! 

It can take one big money problem to wipe out all your savings. Investing adds an extra layer of protection to growing wealth or ensuring financial security. So, save and invest. 

2. Sacrificial living 

Life is all about service. That’s the price we pay for being here on earth, and I personally believe it’s a thing to embrace with pride and readiness. Besides, we have all benefited from the works and sacrifices of past generations and continue to enjoy the care and support of those in our lives. 

Sacrificial living involves willingly giving, serving, and availing yourself to the needs and cares of others. One of the beautiful things about it is that the more we give, the more we get. As they say, “we rise by lifting others.”  

Great acts are made up of small deeds. We never can tell the depth of impact that our small kind gestures could have in the lives of others. Lending a helping hand makes our lives more purposeful and serves as an effective cure to the growing self-absorption in the 21st century. So, serving has healing and positive properties that makes it a good habit to adopt.  

Wayne Muller puts it nicely: 

“As we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well. It is not a question of who is healed first. When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy, more healing is made available for others. And when we serve others with an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.” 

Some of the ways to serve include availing yourself for responsibilities, engaging in community service & support, leading by example, and simply giving. 

3. Strategic positioning 

In business, every brand has to choose an appropriate strategy in order to succeed. It needs to place itself in the right position in the marketplace so that it can be seen and so that it can tap into opportunities. This is known as strategic positioning. 

Similarly, any man seeking growth must proactively search for it. He must socialize and explore opportunities to propel his life forward. The where, when, and how he does it, collectively, can be considered strategic positioning. 

I will give you an example from my personal life.  

I recently launched a paint production company, and I needed customers for my new business. Now, what sort of customers would typically need this kind of product? Obviously, house and property owners — or rich and financially stable people.  

Next, where can I find them? 

Within the context of my own reality, that would be the gym. Now note that I was not a gym instructor, but I was a fitness enthusiast, and I had a lot of fitness instructor friends. I spoke to one of them, and he allowed me become his assistant. He actually went on to train me on the job.  

Long story short, this decision to become a part-time fitness coach paid off — HUGELY! Just like I knew it would, anyway.  

At the gym, I was able to meet a lot of rich people, and these were mostly people who had housing or real estate projects. By the way, I was intentional about the kind of fitness centre I chose to work at; this one was exclusive to rich people.  

Why did I choose a gym as a place to meet my ideal clients? You know, I could easily have met them at an expensive lounge or even in my church (as we had a lot of rich folks there). I could even run an ad, too (I did).  

Well, the reason was that I needed to meet them in their most warm, easy, relaxed, and trusting state — when I was putting them through great drills or massaging stress off their bodies. Remember what they say about the king’s barber? 

Having that sort of trusting relationship with these rich people made it easier to sell to them afterwards. If they trusted me with their health and well-being, then they could trust me to make their building properties look their best. 

The above is a great example of strategic positioning. And the results have been incredible for me.  

As a young man seeking growth, you have to adopt a culture of socializing and exploring opportunities. And you achieve this by positioning strategically for best results.  

Improve your social skills and grow your self-confidence. Clarify your goals; define your target audience, with a focus on where and how you can find them, as well as what value you can provide them. 

Improving your positioning skills and social habits will open up a whole world of opportunities to explore for growth.

 

4. Exercise  

Regular workout offers a ton of benefits, which include improving cardiovascular health, strengthening the body, boosting testosterone levels, combating mental health issues like stress and depression, and improving physical appearance, to name a few.  

In deed, there are not many habits that will do a better job of guaranteeing life-long success and well-being than a routine workout program. This makes regular exercise a part of life that should not even be negotiable.  

One handy advice: make it a habit now — today — that you are young and full of energy, not when you are tired, out of form, or advanced in age with plenty responsibilities and limited time. 

Making exercise a lifestyle habit can be hard to start. However, once we make that decision and try to maintain consistency, things become progressively easy, and most people just continue indefinitely. And why not? 

The physical and metal benefits of regular exercise can become near-impossible to give up!

 

5. Eating right  

Many people think that they can eat whatever they like and get away with it with time in the gym. Unfortunately this is not true. Studies have established that healthy and balanced dieting is the most significant factor in maintaining a healthy body weight.  

While exercise will knock that potbelly inside, establishing good eating habits will make sure it doesn’t even grow in the first place, since your weight stays within healthy limits. Combining healthy dieting and regular workout, though, ensures quicker and enduring results — and this is the right approach.  

The key is to start healthy dieting now, or as quickly as you can. As we age and our metabolism declines, the unhealthy food we’ve had over the years catches up with us and the pounds start to accumulate.  

Good thing is that healthy eating doesn’t have to be complicated. Make that decision first and commit to it.

  

6. Health consciousness  

Health consciousness encompasses more than just healthy diet and regular workout. It also includes a culture of cleanliness, self-care, healthy habits, positive mindset, and even spiritual consciousness.  

Have you ever thought about it from these perspectives? 

Keeping your environment clean & safe and maintaining tiptop personal hygiene routine are personal cleanliness and self-care measures that will boost your immune health and your self-confidence. Practicing some of the tips shared on this blog are healthy habits that will transform you into a better man, which is great for your physical and mental well-being. Expanding your knowledge, setting and achieving goals, living a principled life, and meditating regularly will reframe your mind for good. Aligning with the spiritual side of existence can fortify and purify your mind, which is great for your physical and mental well-being. 

You are truly conscious of your health when you take care of all aspects of it — physical, mental and spiritual. That’s what health consciousness is about.

 

7. Spiritual consciousness 

In a world full of so much evil, chaos, distractions, and uncertainties, it can sometimes seem like everything is fighting you at the same time.  

This makes it necessary to have some sort of spiritual backing or side that you can fall back on when you need to fortify or purify your mind. You cannot just be secular or casual about life. Truth is that, life is deeper than the physical we are used to — believe it or not.  

As someone seeking growth or peace, you must learn to pray. Or meditate. Whichever one appeals more to you, the basic idea is to be able to connect to the supernatural part of existence. 

Prayer and meditation boosts your willpower, helps you manage stress, and improves your mental and physical health. What’s more, regularly strengthening your inner spirit can delay the onset of dementia in later years, studies reveal. 

Start and end each day with prayers or meditation. Purge yourself of bad energies and create space for positive thoughts, and watch your life transform and grow. 

8. Skill acquisition 

Skill acquisition and development will improve your life more than most of the other things you can do or acquire. This is so for three major reasons: 

• Skill offers monetary reward as a result of providing value to others 

• Skill builds character, as it takes dedication and patience to achieve competence 

• The hard work it takes to learn and develop a skill helps you to develop the right attitude to face bigger and harder challenges in life 

Almost everything doable is a skill at some level, which means you can become outstanding or at least very competent at them. Some of the best skills you can consider learning may include: 

• Survival skills: scouting, camping, paramilitary, paramedic, cooking, geography, swimming, climbing, self-defence, etc 

• IT/digital marketing skills: writing, graphic/web design, programming, social media marketing, VA skills, etc 

• Games/sports skills: health & fitness, games, board games, any sport, martial arts, etc 

• Social skills: listening, speaking, empathy, leadership, etiquettes, oratory, etc 

• Domestic skills: cooking, chores, plumbing, HVAC, stonemasonry, etc 

• Fun skills: drawing, music, dancing, language,  

• General self-improvement: self-care, health & hygiene, fitness, etc 

• Character/competence skills: hard work, punctuality, humility, excellence, dedication, discipline, mind reframing, positivity, leadership, etc 

At any point in time, there’s always a significant portion of the population who don’t have many of these skills. That makes you valuable automatically, as well as places you a step ahead of the herd.  

Aside external gains, learning a skill also makes you a more well-rounded individual. As part of your continuous self-improvement plan, make it a habit to rake up one skill after another.  

While you may not be the next Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Frankin, learning and developing as many skills as you can will give you the competence and confidence required to navigate through the complexities of life. 

9. Reading and reading some more 

Readers are leaders. Any authority in the educational field will tell you that one of the best indices of a student’s chances of success in life is in the fact of their willingness to read on their own without external prompting.  

This is no surprise.  

Reading expands the mind, boosts creativity, enhances critical thinking abilities, and improves focus abilities — ingredients for success.  

The more book you read, the more things you will know. And the more things you learn, the more places you will go. 

Outside of a dog, a book should be your best friend, as a young man aspiring growth or seeking loyalty. The commitments you put into reading will follow you through life.  

Worthy of note: while you handle those tedious, required reading assignments at school, make sure to also be reading lots of self-improvement books, as well as those for pure pleasure. There’s value in it all. 

Read and read some more!

 

10. Journaling  

Someone said that “a journal is a toilet for the mind.” And I agree with him. 

While this may sound rather crude, it’s actually a clever metaphor when you hear him out. According to his analogy, our bodies take a sh*t to maintain efficiency and keep things running. In the same way, our bodies, too, need a relief once in a while.  

Thanks for your patience. 

Like reading, journaling is an important habit to build. Make sure to always carry in your pockets two books — one to read and one to write in. There’s something therapeutic about the old fashioned pen-and-paper way to figure out your problems. Journaling can be an effective way to find solutions to your problems. These points are actually backed by research.  

The benefits of regular journaling often come to full blossom in the longer run. There is a sense of gratefulness to self that comes with having documented all the key highlights and events in your life. For one thing, it can be pleasurable reading your own journals from a distant past, say, childhood or school days. It lets you relive important points in your life, reminds you of earlier perspectives and goals you still want to maintain, and provides you with insights on how much you’ve matured as man. 

11. Planning and goal-setting 

Records show that individuals who plan their lives often achieve better life outcomes. A success plan should include identifying and refining skills and interests, exploring options within your goals (that align with these aptitudes), and setting plans on how to reach the target.  

As a young man, you should be living a vibrant life that largely involves setting, planning and smashing one goal after another. This could be learning a new skill, achieving confidence in your life, building relationships, or whatever.  

There’s a way to this, though, to avoid wasting time and resources. Or worse — not achieving anything. The answer is in planning.  

Planning provides a perspective and control (that otherwise wouldn’t have been there) for your life. It gives a wide and telescopic view of the matrix that must be navigated to reach your long-term goals, as well as the ability to handle the tiny daily efforts needed to achieve targets.  

The best way to manage your plans, big or small, long-term or short-term, is to break it into small easy chunks — say, weekly even daily targets.  

Daily and weekly planning helps you stay focused and grounded. Covering one milestone of task after another can be fun and encouraging, so that before long, you’re at the finish line.  

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. 

12. Experience gathering via travelling 

Life is all about experiences. Experiences shape our perspectives about life and guides our decisions most of the time. And like our shadow or reflection, they stay with us no matter where we go.  

Exploring ways to make the most of our life experience is a daily challenge we face — and should embrace gladly. As humans, we are constantly in search of meaning, and we try to place value on our pursuits. This purpose is healthy to our well-being, because we learn and grow from those experiences. Chasing our desires brings us immeasurable life lessons and broader insights about ourselves and the world around us.  

One great way to achieve all these is through travel and adventure. What’s not to love about these! There aren’t so many health or positive habits that are that much fun. 

Travel (in all its forms!) and adventure pursuits are a great way to disconnect from the pressures of daily life and rediscover yourself and what truly matters.  

We experience life in different ways during our travels, and that’s what makes this habit so enriching and highly recommended. We get to discover and enjoy new places, cultures, cuisines, traditions, and ways of life. These experiences can never be accessed at home. 

What’s more? 

Travelling gives us a better understanding of the world, challenges our beliefs and values in life, allows us to establish new relationships, and enhances personal growth. And speaking of “personal growth,” getting out of your comfort zone forces you to experience new things and think differently. This develops the resilience needed to tackle your problems, frustration, and fears.  

To conclude, travelling and adventure are a great life experience that every man should form a habit out of. New experiences are different from daily routine activities and will help you develop into a well-rounded individual — more competent and more confident. So go out and explore!

 

Summary 

That wraps it up on the 12 good habits and practices every man should adopt. The goal is to identify and embrace these healthy habits, and then develop the discipline to maintain and make them a default trait in your life.  

It’s not always going to be easy, but it can be done. Besides, doing these doesn’t mean being overly serious with life and shunning the fun aspect of living. It simply means creating a set of foundational habits that will serve you well now and throughout your lifetime. Practicing these habits will make you a more competent and confident person. It will boost your productivity and increase your outcomes for a healthier, happier life.  

Handy word of advice, though: habits are better to adopt earlier in life. The earlier the better. Changing old habits and embracing positive new ones, while still possible, becomes harder. It is, therefore, advised that you leverage your youth to transform yourself into the man you want to become. The healthy habits you cultivate as a young man will become a strong foundation you build on for the remainder of your life.  

On the other hand, if you’re a more experienced man, you can definitely still pick up some healthy new habits from the list. Learning is a continuous process, and self-improvement is a lifetime goal.  

That’s it from me. Over to you guys! 

What other foundational habits, not included in the article, do you think men should adopt? Share in the comments!