Wednesday, 28 September 2022
Self Care Activities For a Bad Day
When you have a bad day, you might find that you want to grab a drink or eat something unhealthy. But these are not healthy habits to have. A good option is to indulge in self care activities, which can make you feel better and will be good for you at the same time.
Watch Something Funny
Don’t underestimate the power of laughing! If you are having a terrible day, find a way to watch TV or a movie that makes you laugh. Avoid action, drama, and other genres that might make you feel miserable by the end. Binge watch your favorite comedy on Netflix, or turn on the TV to try something new. Laughing is extremely healing and can quickly change your mood even after the very worst of days.
Get Out of the House
Some people prefer staying inside and watching Netflix for self care, while others already spend a lot of time indoors. If this is you, then getting out to socialize and meet up with friends might be a better option. When you find yourself doing nothing but working and going home, you may simply need another outlet. Try meeting co-workers for drinks after work or calling up a sister or cousin to have a girl’s night out. Get a little bit out of your comfort zone and it can be very good for you.
Spend More Time with Friends and Family
As mentioned briefly in the previous section, spending more time with your loved ones can be great for self care. Many people think being alone is the only way to take care of themselves and relieve stress, but sometimes the best thing for you is being around others. Think about your daily lifestyle and what tends to stress you out. You might find that you feel worse when you are constantly alone, but your mood seems to lift on happy hour night or when visiting your best friend. This is a good sign that what you really need is to get out and spend more time with others.
Take a Bubble Bath
As long as you have the bath supplies, this isn’t going to cost you a dime. Draw yourself a hot bath and pour in some bubbles, essential oils, or baths alts. Soak in the tub with some music playing or just sit in silence. Music is a good distraction if you have kids in the house that you want to tune out for the time being. Lock the door so you have no distractions and let the dogs out so they don’t bother you either. Remember not to bring your cell phone in the bathroom with you!
Try Meditation
Many people also like to give meditation a try when they want to practice self care without spending a lot of money. This is something else that can be free or possibly cost a small amount of money, depending on your method. For example, if you want to purchase a meditation CD to follow along to, naturally you will be spending a small amount of money. However, for the most part, this is minimal and a one-time cost.
Meditation involves breathing exercises and sitting in a quiet space alone while you relax your mind. You want to try to think about as little as possible, using imagery to think of something that brings you peace and happiness, scripture verses instead of using this time to think about what is causing you stress in the first place. It does take a little practice, but once you get the hang of it, you will realize just how beneficial it can be.
Go for a Walk
Walking is probably one of the best exercises you can do for self care. It is easy to do with a lot of flexibility, doesn’t cost anything, and can be done alone or with others. If you have dogs, you can take them for a walk around the neighborhood or go hiking. You can walk alone during your morning break at work to de-stress, or walk in the evenings with your kids for some family time. Walking alone also helps you to really focus your thoughts and provide much needed private time.
Wednesday, 7 September 2022
How To Live A Balanced Healthy Lifestyle
It is often easier to just focus all your time and attention on one area of your life, but even though that one area is often the most efficient, it leaves out so many other pillars of life and happiness in your life, creating an imbalance. But don’t worry – balance is always possible when you set your priorities, know what would bring you the most happiness, and how your mind and body can work together for optimal health and longevity.
All it really takes for a properly balanced healthy lifestyle that makes you feel happy, joyful, healthy, and productive, is to add some simple daily habits to your routine. This is a simple change you can make in your life, and it is one you can go about gradually so you don’t feel intimidated by too many changes all at once.
Here are some very simple habits you can add to your routine that help you live a balanced healthy lifestyle:
Drink Your Water
Drinking enough water is very important. If you struggle drinking enough water, here are some tips to make sure you are staying hydrated:
Flavor your water – You don’t have to drink only plain water to get the effects of being more hydrated. Feel free to flavor your water by infusing it with fruit and herbs, using water flavor enhancers, or even drinking flavored sparkling water.
Read: Benefits Of Infused Water
Use a fun cup – Water bottles have come a long way! There are hundreds of varieties, including different materials, colors, sizes, patterns, and so much more. You can even get a water bottle with motivational sayings for each water milestone you reach during the day.
Add water to your habit tracker – You might enjoy water, but you just don’t think you drink enough. This is where tracking your water comes in handy! If you don’t have a water bottle that shows you how many ounces you have had during the day, the next best thing is to either use a water tracking app on your phone or just track with a printed water tracker.
Eat water-dense foods – You can also eat more foods that contain a high amount of water, such as lettuce, watermelon, cucumber, tomatoes, zucchini, celery, and apples.
Move Your Body
If you want to be happier and healthier, you need to move your body. Remember this doesn’t have to be with a structured workout plan, unless that is within your own personal goals.
But if you just want to exercise to boost your mood and improve your overall wellness, then any form of movement will work great. Here are some ideas:
• Go for a short walk every morning or evening
• Spend some time at the beach or lake
• Have a living room dance party
• Take a fun dance or fitness class
• Try tai chi or martial arts
• Join a friend at your local gym
• Do indoor rock climbing
• Find a local trampoline park
• Start stretching every day
As you can see, there are many ways to get some exercise in without feeling like you’re doing “fitness”. Some people have physique goals or really enjoy fitness, and that’s amazing! But even if you don’t, you can still move your body and get all the same health and happiness benefits.
Read: How To Stay Motivated To Work Out
Take Your Vitamins
While it is best to get your vitamins and minerals from natural food sources, that isn’t always possible. At the very least, you can take a multivitamin every day to get more nutrients into your body. But if you have a diet that restricts certain foods, such as not getting a lot of iron or zinc while on a vegetarian diet, consider adding these supplements.
This is another good reason to visit your doctor for bloodwork to figure out what supplements you might need.
Read: Basic Health Screening Tests For Adults
Get Some Sunshine
Oh, that beautiful vitamin D! It does miracles or at least feels like it. Why do people feel so much happier and more energetic in the summertime? For many people, it is because of all that wonderful, healing sunshine. The sun’s UV rays emit vitamin D, which you can get naturally absorbed into your body simply by being out in the sun. But if you live in a cold climate, you don’t get it for a good amount of the year. This is when taking a vitamin D supplement might be needed.
Write in Your Journal
Journaling is a wonderful activity to add to your daily routine if you want to focus on a balance between health and happiness. It not only helps with your emotional and mental health, but you can often use it to track habits related to your physical health as well.
Read for Fun
While it is great to read for personal development or learn new things with books and courses, don’t forget about reading just for fun. Whether it is a genre or just an author you really enjoy, get into the habit of reading on a regular basis when it is just for you and nothing else.
Do Something Creative
Let’s get one thing clear: you don’t have to be artistic to be creative. Even if you weren’t born naturally artistic (most people aren’t), you can still be creative. Think of any activity or hobby in your life that uses the creative part of your brain, such as making or playing music, writing, drawing, painting, creating things with your hands, assembling things, or really anything you can think of that you enjoy.
Take Care of Plants
Plants are so amazing for your overall wellness, including your mental health and mood. Just having plants or flowers in your home can improve your oxygen and help with so many physical ailments. They also tend to give you more energy, boost your mood naturally, and even reduce anxiety.
Reassess YOUR Needs Regularly
Lastly, consider reassessing your needs as part of your self-care routine. This is a habit many people forget, as they are busy trying to be consistent with their routines and get as much done as possible. But your needs are going to change over time, so it is good to check in with yourself weekly or monthly, and consider what habits are improving your life, and which you are not seeing a positive impact from.
Remember that your wellness and happiness journey is yours, and yours alone. It should be customized to who you are as a person, your own needs, and the goals you have. While it is great to get inspiration from others as you try to live a balanced healthy lifestyle, what works best for them might not be the best for you.
To live well is to find a balance between all the different pillars of health. It is a harmonious balance between health, productivity, mindset, and happiness, all intertwined to make up a joyful and fulfilling life. One of the best decisions you can make is to make your health and wellness a priority.
These are some reasons why your health and wellness matter:
It Makes You Happier
It can often feel like you have to choose either your health and wellness goals or your happiness goals, but in many cases, focusing on one will actually help to transform the other. When you begin to take your own physical and mental health more seriously, you often have an increase in energy, your mood is better, and you feel better about yourself, which can have a snowball effect on the rest of your life. Suddenly, every aspect of your life is better, including your own feelings of joy and fulfillment.
You Have Less Stress
The more you focus on a healthy balance between your wellness, nutrition, exercise, and other pillars of health, the less stress you tend to experience in your life. This in turn can lead you to being happier overall. Think about how often you feel a lot of emotional stress and burden simply because of your health, energy levels, your diet, or activity. The way you feel can have a very large impact on your emotional and mental health, which in turn leads to more stress and makes it a lot harder to find gratitude in your life. By focusing more on health and wellness, you reduce your stress levels, which then encourages you to feel gratitude and really soak in all that positivity that brings you happiness.
It Encourages Healthy Habits
For some people, it is when they change their daily habits that they improve their health, but many people have found the opposite to be true. You might make a specific change to your lifestyle for a health-related issue you are having, which can then give you the motivation to make even more changes and start adapting your lifestyle and habits.
Similar to reducing stress, healthy habits often lead to more happiness and fulfillment in your life. These habits allow you to achieve a healthy balance each day, where you feel like you are getting everything done, without being overwhelmed. They can also help you see where your schedule might need to be tweaked a little. Plus, when you track your habits, you feel that sense of accomplishment every time you cross something off your list.
You Boost Your Mood
Many of the healthy changes you make to your lifestyle will help to boost your mood. This can be something as simple as going outside in the sunshine for 10 minutes every day, which boosts your vitamin D to help you feel happier and more energized. Many habits can help to improve your mood, such as:
• Vitamin D and sunshine
• Eating a balanced diet with more vitamins and minerals
• Drinking water
• Moving your body
• Serotonin boosts from activities you enjoy
• Cutting back on alcohol
It Increases Your Confidence
Your new healthy habits can also make you feel happier by increasing your confidence. This is often related to healthy changes that might make you feel more comfortable in your body, such as eating a healthier diet, starting a workout program, or losing unwanted weight. In other people, they notice they have a boost in confidence when they start a self-care routine or another type of wellness routine, as it helps to boost their energy.
Sunday, 21 August 2022
How To Make The Most of Your Mornings
What’s most important to you? What is the one thing you really want to do on a daily basis that would make a big difference, but you just can’t seem to find the time for? What good habits do you want to cultivate that would make a real impact on your life? Think about this for a moment. It could be in any area of your life from exercise and healthy eating to self-improvement or getting ahead in business or at your job. It could be working on your relationship with your kids, finding time for creative pursuits, or getting in the habit of reading every morning.
Become very clear on what you want that perfect morning to look like. Imagine it in as much detail as you possibly can. Write it down in a journal or on a piece of paper that you can refer back to as needed. In short, define your perfect morning.
Why is this so important? Because you can’t start to make any meaningful changes until you know what your goals are. You need to know your destination before you can begin to pick a route and figure out how you’ll get there.
Finding Time In Your Busy Morning
Mornings are busy and they can be quite chaotic. If you have a young family and plenty of people to get ready and out the door, you know this first hand. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way, no matter how busy you think you are first thing in the day. Do you want that to be rushed, frantic, and feeling like you’re constantly running and trying to catch up? Or do you want it to be calm, collected, productive, and with a feeling that you’re in control? It’s up to you and it’s all about embracing two simple concepts.
Get Up Early Enough
It’s tempting to hit the snooze button and catch a few more minutes of sleep, isn’t it? It’s even hard to set the alarm early enough that you have plenty of time for everything you want and need to get done. If you’re not a morning person, moving up the alarm by 30 minutes to carve out a little extra time can be tough.
Getting up early enough and avoiding the snooze button at all costs is the key to an unrushed morning. Here’s the problem with cutting time too short, or worse hitting the snooze button a few times. It gets you behind from the very start. You have to rush to make it out the door in time and any little problem or speed bump along the way turns into a huge problem. Not being able to find the car keys is suddenly a major crisis because it could cause you to be late for work. Remember, your morning sets the tone for the rest of your day. If you start it chasing down time and things, that’s likely how you’ll spend the rest of your time.
Getting up early enough on the other hand puts you ahead of the game. You’re in control. You can take care of everything that needs doing in a calm manner and still have time for the important things you want to work on. In short, getting up early enough sets you up for an amazing, productive day.
Restructure Your
Routine
Spend a little time thinking about your current morning routine and where you’re spending time. Look for things you can change and tweak to find more time for the things you really want to do. For example, if you want an extra 20 minutes in the morning to journal, look at what you could take care of ahead of time, eliminate, or delegate to make that time. If you spend a lot of time getting breakfast for everyone, get in the habit of setting the breakfast table the night before. Get your spouse to get the coffee ready, so all you have to do in the morning is push a button. Teach the kids to make their own breakfast and take the dirty dishes to the sink and wash them. Make sure clothes are set out the night before (including yours), that book bags, purses, briefcases, and car keys have a designated spot, and that there where they need to be before you turn in for the night. Small changes like this to your morning routine can make a big difference. I challenge you to come up with a few small tweaks that will save you at least 30 minutes in the morning.
Determining What You Should Be Doing Is Crucial
Think about what you should and what you shouldn’t be doing in those first few hours of the day. That’s an important idea to ponder. So often we get stuck in a rut or a routine and do things because that’s what we’ve always done. We do it without thinking about whether or not it’s the best use of our time.
It’s Not About Cramming
More Things Into Less Time
Shift your thinking and don’t try to add to what you do in the morning. If you want 15 minutes for bible study, meditation, or exercise, don’t just think about getting up 15 minutes earlier, or shaving 15 minutes off your morning routine by showering faster, getting dressed in record time, and rushing through breakfast. In other words, don’t add to your lengthy list of things that need to be done. You’ll only feel more rushed and stressed if you do.
It’s About Making Smart
Choices About Using Your Time
Instead, what you should be thinking about is the best use of your time in the morning. Compare your perfect morning with your current morning routine. What aren’t you doing on your ideal morning? If you can start by cutting things out, finding time to do what’s important to you becomes much easier.
There are two great ways to find things you can stop doing. The first is to look for busy work. This is something you do out of habit that doesn’t necessarily need doing every day. Maybe it’s checking your email first thing in the morning or playing around on Facebook for half an hour while you drink your coffee. If that’s how you choose to spend your time, that’s perfectly fine, but if you’re doing it out of habit it may be time to rethink it.
The second way to quickly earn back time is to see if you’re doing things or others that they can do themselves. Kids are the perfect example. We start out fixing their breakfast, making their lunch, cleaning up after them, picking out their clothes, and making sure their backpack is packed and ready to do. When they are very small, we have to do these things, but all too often we continue to do them long after they’re capable of doing things on their own. The same goes for things we do for our spouses. Maybe there was a time when you had less to do in the morning and it made sense to take on the majority of morning chores. Did things change and if so, is it time to lighten your load and get help from your partner? A few small changes may be all it takes to make the time in your busy morning for what’s important to you.
Come Up With A New Morning Plan
Now that you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do in the morning, what you don’t want to or need to do, and where to find the extra time needed, it’s time to put it all together in a new morning game plan.
The best place to start is with the new set of tasks that are most important to you. Figure out a preliminary time during which you want to get them accomplished. If your goal is to go for a run in the morning, you may decide to do that first thing before getting a shower and having breakfast. If your goal is to journal each morning, you may decide it would work best after you’ve had a cup of coffee. If your goal is to find some time for reading or your favorite hobby in the morning, you could carve out some time before everyone else gets up and while you enjoy that first coffee. The same goes for wanting time in the morning to work on your business or learn something new.
Then work the rest of your morning chores around these new plans. It may take some shuffling around and mixing up your current routine, but with a little creative thinking and a bit of flexibility, I’m sure you can come up with a working plan.
Making over your morning and turning it into a new routine isn’t something that comes naturally to most of us. It takes a little while to get into the groove of things. We’ll look at this in a little more detail tomorrow. For right now, my suggestion is that you write your new morning game plan down. It’s easy to forget what you’re planning to do. Writing it down will not only give you a reference to refer back to, but also solidify your new plan in your mind.
Put the note or notebook where you jotted down your new plan on your night table or somewhere else where you’ll see it first thing in the morning. It will serve as a reminder of what you’re intending to do and do differently in the morning now.
Even though you’ve written your plan down, it’s important to realize it’s not written in stone. The well-laid-out plans don’t always work when put into action. Adjust it and make changes as needed until you come up with a new morning game plan that works well for you and the rest of your family. Once you have that it’s time to make it the new routine… something we’ll talk more about tomorrow.
The Importance Of Habits And Routines
With your new morning game plan figured out, it’s time to not only put it into action but make it your new morning routine. Why is this important? Because you want to make sure your new plan happens every morning without fail and turning it into a routine is the best way to make sure that happens.
Before something becomes a habit or a routine, it takes a lot of willpower to things happen. That’s energy that you will need for other things throughout your morning and the rest of the day. Yes, it will take some willpower, mental energy, and drive at first to create the new morning habits, but once they are set, it will become automatic like brushing your teeth before bed.
Once you come up with a good working morning routine, stick to it for a few weeks. That’s the best way to turn it into a strong habit. Before long, it will feel like the new normal and you no longer have to remind yourself to do each thing along the way. It will have become a habit and a routine you’ll follow automatically. It will take a lot less effort and mental pep-talk to get things done… even if your new routine includes a 30-minute run, or getting up at the crack of down to work on your most important business task for an hour.
Watch out for moments when you slip back into your old habits and routines. It’s going to happen. The key is to catch it early and get back on track as quickly as possible. For example, let’s say you’ve been doing well with waking up 30 minutes earlier and going for a run before you start your day. Then one day you oversleep and can’t make it out there. Or the weather turns too bad, you get sick or hurt, or something else pops up that keeps you from going on that run. That’s life. It happens. What’s important is what you decide to do the next morning.
Your most important job whenever life gets in the way of your new morning routine is to get back on track as quickly as possible. Do what you can as soon as you notice the disruption. If the weather is bad, do a quick workout at home, or head to the gym to run on the treadmill. If you overslept, try to squeeze in a few minutes of me time or doing something to grow your business before you get back to the rest of your day. Most importantly get back on track with your regular morning routine as soon as possible. Get back into your new habits the next morning if at all possible. Actively remind yourself to get back on track for a few days until it routine is firmly back in place. You’ll be glad you did when you start to see the results you’ve been hoping for.
Take Time To Review Your Morning Routine Regularly
When we get into a routine, it’s hard to stop and ask ourselves if it’s working as well as it could be. Even more importantly, with a routine and a set of habits firmly established, it’s easy to keep going even when the circumstances change. That’s why it’s important to take some time every now and again to review our routine and habits, including the new morning routine.
Set aside a little time every few weeks, or even months to review your routine. Put it on the calendar and make sure you do it. It won’t take long and it will be a very valuable exercise in the long run. Our lives and circumstances change. Our routines should change with it. Just because something has served us well over the past few weeks and months, doesn’t mean it will continue to do so.
When you sit down to review your morning routine (or any routine or habit you’ve been working on for that matter), ask yourself this:
Is it working? Is it working really well?
If it is, simply carry on. If it isn’t, it may be time to make some changes and tweak it until you find something that works well for you at that particular point in time.
Another way to look at it is to find what you love and what you hate about the new morning routine. Change it accordingly until you get as close as possible to loving everything about it and still getting the results you want.
Remember, this morning routine will change and evolve over time as you, your circumstances, and the people in your life change and evolve. Embrace the changes and look at them as an indication that you’re making progress.
Keep tweaking and improving your morning routine and don’t be afraid to mix up your goals for it. Maybe you started out by making exercise a priority first thing in the day. As time goes by and you become more fit and make time for it later in the day, your focus may shift to journaling, or learning a new language. Keep evolving, keep changing, and keep using those precious first few hours of each day to establish some positive change in yourself and those around you.
How To Start Your Day With Power and Intention
