Wednesday, 23 December 2020
Paying Attention to Your Body's Signals for Optimal Health
Use these strategies to tune in to what your body is telling you:
1. Assess how you feel each morning.
The early morning hours are usually ideal for you to listen to your body’s signals. At that time of day, it’s usually very quiet, so you can pay closer attention to the physical signals.
Each morning, determine whether you feel different from the morning before. Determine if you experience any new aches when getting out of bed. Figure out if you wake up feeling lousy, even after a sound night’s sleep. See if you wake up with any ailments that you didn’t go to sleep with.
2. Compare the effects of different food choices.
As you go through the motions day by day, it’s sometimes tough to maintain proper nutrition. Especially if you’re always on the go, you may end up making some poor food choices. As you do that, however, it’s important to see what kind of impact your food choices have on your body.
Do you find that you’re more energetic when you have the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables? How effective are you in the gym after you’ve spent a day eating junk food? Does your mind function better at work when you eat vitamin-rich foods?
3. Get regular checkups.
Even if you haven’t seen or felt anything to worry about, it’s important to get regular checkups at the doctor just to make sure everything is intact. It’s sometimes possible, for example, for your cholesterol or blood pressure to be high and you have no idea.
If you’re about to embark upon a stressful month at work, now would be a great time to get a checkup. Put a routine in place for doing checkups and stick to it.
4. Know your body’s physical capabilities.
Although you may consider yourself healthy and in good shape overall, there’s just so much the body can manage. Whether it’s exercise or mental work at the office, it’s important to know your limits so you don’t end up burned out and physically exhausted. It’s okay to work out until your muscles feel worn, but you’ll know if you’ve overdone it if the recovery time is longer than you expect.
The same goes for mental exhaustion. You’ll feel like you’re coping through the long, stressful hours at work until you realize you’re motionless in bed when you should be up getting ready for work!
Paying attention to your body’s signals is a crucial part of maintaining good health. Remember that you rely heavily on your body to take you through the ins and outs of daily life, so you’re better off protecting it! Listen to your body’s signals and act accordingly!
Thursday, 24 September 2020
How To Lift Your Mood Instantly
If you’re feeling a bit blue, you might be surprised to hear that are
lots of ways to lift your mood in less than a minute. Skeptical? Try these and
see!
1. Put some drops of lavender
and orange essential oils in a diffuser. These oils have been shown to help
with anxiety and to promote calmness and positivity.
2. Have a snack. A handful of
nuts or a square of dark chocolate will send endorphins flooding into your
brain and lift your mood fast.
3. Get some sunshine. Go
outside and get some fresh air and some sunshine. Exposure to sunlight triggers the brain to release Serotonin. Serotonin helps to regulate mood and anxiety. Studies have shown that people
who have significant exposure to light have less depression, fewer sleep
problems, and are even more productive. If you can't make it outside, go and
look out of a window.
4. Go for a walk. Even
walking around the block will help to lift your mood, heart rate, and energy levels.
5. Close your eyes and focus
on your breath. Breathe in and out deeply three times. Focused breathing lowers
your blood pressure and calms the mind. Deep breathing can help reduce stress levels instantly.
6. Lift your shoulders up to
your ears and then let them drop. Do this three times and feel the tension ebb
away. It’s easy to hold onto a lot of tension and stress without realizing it.
7. If you’re feeling nervous
before an interview or presentation, go into the stairwell or the restroom.
Breathing in, open your arms wide, breathing out give yourself a big hug. It’s
almost impossible to do this without smiling.
8. Smile! Smile and make eye contact with a colleague or the guy in the coffee shop or the person serving you at the deli. The physical act of using your smile-muscles can genuinely make you feel happy. And it's contagious. Chances are you'll make them smile too and improve their day.
9. Stand up straight, lift
your head, and throw your shoulders back. Adopt a Wonder Woman or Superman pose
and feel the change in your energy.
10. A cup of tea or coffee
will instantly lift your mood. You probably know that caffeine is a stimulant,
but even low or no caffeine hot drinks will give you a boost or calm you down
whether it’s chamomile or green tea, a chai latte or hot water, and lemon.
11. Listen to music that you
love. You can choose custom mood music, or play your old favorites. Music has
been shown to have a powerful effect on mood.
12. Ask for a hug. Probably
not from your boss, but a family member or friend would love to give you the
instant comfort of an embrace.
Wednesday, 23 September 2020
Tools To Help You Achieve Your Goals
Some of the most popular motivational tools you can use include simple things like blogs, journals, online calendars, vision boards, and planners. All of these things can really help you stay on track and achieve your goals.
A blog or journal can really help you plan out your steps to reach your goal. You can keep a daily or weekly journal, whatever works best for you. Many people start off by using a weekly journal and then switching to a daily one. As they find that writing down accomplishments and struggles is really helpful, plus it acts as a reference in case the situation happens again.
Calendars and planners in all forms are available online. You can even download apps to your iPhone, iPad, or other mobile devices. This makes sure you can access your planner regardless of your location. There are even apps that allow you to share your progress in places like Facebook and Twitter. You can even challenge your friends and family to friendly competitions. This helps you set and achieve weekly goals, by incorporating a little bit of fun into them.
What motivational tool you use will depend upon your goal and your personality. You may enjoy writing and are automatically drawn to using a blog to stay motivated. You may be more of a private person and prefer the idea of using a planner or app for motivation.
You don’t necessarily have to make any of your writing or blogs public you can make them private and can only share with people you choose. Don’t forget that you can just use an online notepad or word processing software and create your own personal motivational book on your own computer. Another idea is to record videos if this is something that appeals to you. You can record a video about your goals, achievements, ups, and downs. Again, you can make your videos private or public.
Other great tools to use include using motivational tapes and quotes. Personal development tapes are great to take with you as you can listen to them while driving. Vision boards and quotes are fantastic for placing on your wall, mirror, or fridge so you can read them every day. Quotes are very good for reinforcing your goals and abilities on a daily basis, so don’t overlook using them.
Tuesday, 22 September 2020
How To Have A Clutter Free Mind
If your home and office are cluttered and disorganized, chances are your mind is too. Mental clutter is restless, moving from brooding over the past to worrying about the future.
It’s going through your mental to-do list and fretting over having too much to do. Above all, mental clutter is exhausting and fruitless. It stops you from getting things done.
Here are some top tips for getting back in control and decluttering your mind.
1. Declutter your environment
When you tidy up your space, things stop being overwhelming and you will be able to see if in fact anything needs doing.
2. Start writing lists
Use whatever method suits you best – a notebook, diary, planner, smartphone app, or an online tool.
3. Journal
Get all those worries, ideas, and what-ifs out of your head by writing them down. That’s especially useful if you can’t sleep because your monkey mind has gone into overdrive.
Keeping a journal will help you work through whatever is worrying you. Often things look a lot less worrisome when they’re on paper. In fact, studies have shown that writing problems down helps the brain to process and find solutions.
4. Leave the past behind
All of these preoccupations take up space and energy in your mind that could be available for much more creative projects. Worst of all, mulling over the past is fruitless.
You can’t change the past, but you can let go of things that are distracting you in your present life.
5. Focus on one thing at a time
You’re much more likely to make mistakes and become overwhelmed. Focus on doing one thing at a time, and you will be calmer and have a completed to-do list of tasks completed properly.
