Helping you realise that you don’t need all the things for a healthy lifestyle, only simple habits to improve your wellness and life
Wellness tips can be overwhelming and feel like you have so many things to do that you don’t get anything done. From the smallest of actions like walking for exercise to total life overhauls and getting up at 5 am, improving your wellness can be complicated. But, keeping it simple and creating habits to improve wellness can help relieve this stress.
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Quick wellness habits to add to your routine:
- Journal in the mornings
- Practice gratitude
- Supplement your diet
- Stick to regular meals
- Exercise regularly
- Have me time
- Drink water often
- Create a skin care routine
- Turn off your devices before bed
Wellness is defined as, “the quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, especially as the result of deliberate effort” (dictionary.com). Proving that wellness involves active participation in improving your mind, body and soul in order to thrive. Wellness is more than just being healthy and requires your active pursuit of more than optimal health in your whole self.
However, trying to improve and optimise every area of your self and your health can be a lot to take on. Especially as our daily lives are bombarded with all the shiny new products and exercises that will transform our wellness. Not only is the information out there conflicting and confusing but trying to do everything at once can be overwhelming.
To help you get started with wellness and simplify your life, I’ve got 9 simple habits to improve your wellness. Helping you to add them to your daily routine and start actively pursuing wellness every day.
Simple habits for overall wellness
Journal in the morning
Journaling for health and wellness has been shown to provide many benefits for both your mental and emotional health. Helping you to deal with your thoughts and emotions, reduce stress and overcome depression and anxiety.
Writing down your thoughts and feelings can help solidify them. A journal gives you the space to dump all your fears, concerns, joy and happiness and feel them properly and make them tangible. Helping you to filter through the noise and realise what is truly going on in your mind and body.
In addition, writing down these concerns can also help you evaluate and question them. How true are they? Are these thoughts and feeling rational? Where did they come from and why? Often, the times when we are feeling most fearful can be from complete overreactions and negative thinking that is unrealistic.
Streams of consciousness journaling is a beneficial way to do this. Where you write continuously for a few minutes, not worrying about if it makes sense or the punctuation but just let the thoughts flow onto paper. Releasing your mind of the pressure and confusion that might be consuming you.
I also love journaling in the morning to help me be more intentional about my day and the person I want to be. Choosing to write 3 small goals for the day, personal and professional, that provide me with a focus for the day. Without this, I can waste the day consuming myself with ‘busy work’ that doesn’t actually contribute to reaching my goals.
Use a blank notebook, a journal with prompts for you to follow, a journal prompt download or an app like Morning! and the 5-minute journal. There are many tools and types of journaling that you can try to find what works best for you.
Practice gratitude
Mindfulness is a beautiful tool and habit to improve mental wellbeing and gratitude can enhance this. Gratitude is the practice of being thankful and grateful for the things you already have in your life.
You can easily add this practice to your morning journaling by thinking of 3 things you are grateful for. Such as the things that we take for granted like the roof over your head or big concepts like the fact that you woke up this morning and have eyes to see and a heart that beats.
What I love about practising gratitude is the sobering feeling it creates. Helping you realise that you live in absolute abundance, surrounded by love and are fortunate for every day. It fills me to the brim with love and encourages me to act with love to others.
In addition, this is an easy mental and emotional wellness activity to do whenever you feel in a place of lack, anger or negativity. Become aware of your surroundings and yourself, think of three things you see at that moment and be thankful.
Practising gratitude has shown that people experience more happiness and greater fulfilment. Enjoying good experiences more, building more positive and supportive relationships, and better dealing with adversity. The benefits of this simple wellness habit are astounding and speak for themselves.
Supplementing your diet
Supplements are a great addition to your diet that can contribute to improving your physical health as well as your mental health.
Probiotics and digestive enzymes can positively impact your gut health. Your gut is important to support your immune system and is also known to be connected to your brain health. In addition, poor gut health can lead to physical pain which also negatively impacts your wellness. Through the mind-body connection, poor physical health will cause poor mental health as well. Therefore, improving your physical health is just as important.
Other supplements like CBD oil and melatonin can assist in improving your sleep. From increasing the duration of your sleep and the quality of your sleep to helping you maintain a regular sleep cycle. Sleep supplements can be a key to improving your overall wellness as it contributes to physical and mental health.
Other supplements like mushroom extracts can easily be added to a morning coffee or shake. Proven to increase energy levels and boost your immune system function. Supplements can be so simple to add to your daily routine and provide an immense amount of benefits for your wellness.
Stick to regular meals
We all know that food and nutrition is important for personal wellness, but do you stick to regular meals? A typical day for you might be rushing off to work in the morning can leave little time for breakfast or even making lunch. Forcing yourself to go out for lunch and buy something unhealthy, processed and most likely not nutritional. Then, once you’re home for the evening you have no energy from lack of food to cook and reach for the processed, sugary calorie-dense food nearby.
Not everyone’s day will be like this but reflect on your current routine and see if you are keeping to regular meals and what you are eating in those meals.
Regular meals are essential for maintaining your energy levels and providing fuel throughout the day. As well as boosting your metabolism, helping you maintain a healthier diet, and can contribute to healthy weight loss. Skipping meals can leave you feeling hungrier and causing you to consume more calories than you would with regular meals and overindulge.
Additionally, regular meals can be beneficial for maintaining a regular routine in your daily life as well. Ensuring that you prioritise your physical health and fuel yourself for the whole day in order to work towards your goals and optimal wellness.
Exercise regularly
Exercise is another important habit to improve wellness because it helps both your physical and mental wellness. Increasing your heart rate and getting a sweat on can boost your mood and help relieve stress that has physically built up in your body. In addition, exercise has amazing physical benefits including reducing the risk of heart disease, strengthening your muscles and bones, and boost your energy levels.
What I love about exercise is that you can do it however you like. getting your body moving is so simple yet so powerful for improving your wellness.
Stretching out in the morning, a short or long yoga session, a gym workout, a walk, a run, or kickboxing. There are many options for exercise for every kind of person and the amount of energy you want to put in. Putting you in the driving seat and choosing how to actively pursue wellness.
Having me-time
Daily life can be hectic, hardly giving you space to think of yourself or acknowledge your feelings and thoughts. However, taking time for yourself every day can combat this chaos and provide you with the opportunity to check in with yourself for your emotional and mental health.
Me time can be different for everyone and also doesn’t exclusively mean typical self-care activities. Something as small as 5 minutes away from everyone for a mindful, calm and restorative moment can be significant for your wellness. Alone time is about restoring your energy, gathering your thoughts and taking time for your own goals as well.
Being at work or around other people can leave you feeling torn in many directions during the day. Requiring you to spread your energy in many ways and giving it to others. Therefore, diminishing the energy you have for yourself. Eventually, this can lead to complete burn out and even continuing to work on your goals can have the same impact.
Taking personal time away from others as well as away from your goals is important. Thankfully, you can easily integrate me-time into your daily routine as a simple habit to improve your wellness.
What feels like quality me time to you?
Is it reading something you love, going for walks, creating something, doing your hair or even a weekly bath? Ensuring that you choose an activity that is important to you and helps replenish your energy.
Drink water often
An extremely simple habit to improve physical wellness is drinking more water. I’m sure you’ve heard this tip a million times because it is a wellness habit that is so simple and easy to do. Drinking water promotes benefits including improving brain function, supporting your immune system, cushioning joints and protecting you from chronic disease.
One simple way of drinking more water every day is to drink a big glass soon as you wake up. This is recommended by wellness experts all over to rehydrate you right after sleep. Also helping to flush out your stomach and lymphatic system which contribute to a healthy immune system. I find drinking more water in the morning sets me up for a successful day and improves my mood after waking up. I’ve also noticed that over time, if I am not drinking enough I become much thirstier, naturally promoting me to drink more water throughout the day.
Although the recommended amount of water to drink can vary from 8 glasses to up to 4 litres, there is no right or wrong amount. It will come down to what feels natural to you and your body. Start by increasing the amount you drink gradually, perhaps linking the habit to every time you walk in the kitchen, you will take a glass of water out with you.
Create a skin care routine
Something that can contribute to you feeling good and well is looking good on the outside too. Feeling confident in your skin is important for emotional wellness and you can do this by taking care of yourself and your skin. Times, when you aren’t feeling good about your skin, can significantly reduce your moods and motivation to put yourself out there.
Taking time to look after your body is important in your daily routine and can add to the sense of me-time that you have. Carefully moisturising and hydrating your skin can feel restorative and healing. Or using a face mask once a week can give you the time to slow down, create peace and calm in your life and your mind.
If you don’t have a skincare routine, create one! They’re an easy and simple habit to improve wellness in less than 10 minutes. My routine includes cleansing my face, toning, using a hydrating serum and moisturising with my favourite all-natural skin products. Since sticking to this routine my skin is hydrated, soft and clean and it makes me feel good too.
Turn off devices an hour before bed
If you’ve read a few articles from Mind Medicine before, you may have noticed a pattern where I emphasis sleep a lot. I think and it has been proven, that sleep is so important for physical and mental health and wellness.
Not getting enough sleep has the potential to reduce your natural killer cells and the immune system by 70%! Lack of sleep puts you at a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancers. As well as reducing your memory and brain function significantly, sleep deprivation is a serious danger to your health.
If you aren’t getting enough sleep, have poor quality sleep and still wake up tired, you need to address immediately.
Thankfully, improving your sleep can be simple by turning off your devices at least half-hour to an hour before bed. This reduces the amount of blue light you are receiving which stimulates your brain. As well as encouraging the production of melatonin which induces sleep when it begins to get dark.
In addition, turning off your device before bed provides you with the time to wind down. Have you ever tried to sleep after being on social media and can’t because you’re thinking so much about what you’ve just seen? This can happen a lot and the background noise in your brain is stopping you from falling asleep and having the restful sleep you need.
Instead of scrolling social media and checking your emails, try a sleep meditation. Helping to empty your brain of the noise, relax your body and drift off to sleep with ease
Start improving your wellness today
Although these 9 tips might seem like a lot to do in one day. Dedicating 5 minutes to each one can enhance your life and your health significantly. Using journaling, gratitude and time to replenish your energy and take care of your mental and emotional wellness. As well as exercise, regular meals, water and improved sleep to protect and enhance your physical wellness.
Hopefully, you’ve realised how simple it is to start looking after your whole self and that it doesn’t take a lot. It also doesn’t require all the fancy products or extreme equipment to be healthy. All you need is your dedication to maintain simple habits and be an active participant in improving your health.
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