Category: Blog

Big or small, healthy or unhealthy, our habits combine to form routines that play out every day for us. Most of this is done without us even having to think. That’s why, even though we understand the importance of having good habits, sometimes it’s tough to stick to a healthy daily routine.

Today, you’ll learn more about why setting a routine can be a challenge. By understanding the root causes of your behaviors, you’ll learn how to make changes and stick with them. You’ll also discover some positive daily routines that can lead you to a healthier and happier life.

Finding and adopting the right daily routine will re-energize you and help you regain wasted time. Your mind and body will thank you for the decreased anxiety and extra care you’ve given it. Here’s to a healthier, calmer, and higher-achieving you.

How a Daily Routine Changes Your Life

Your daily routine consists of all of your habits. These actions structure your day and make the difference between operating at peak efficiency and struggling to make it through a poorly-planned day.

You can have energizing, time-saving routines, or you can adopt draining, inefficient routines. The choice is up to you. Don’t feel bad if you know that some unhealthy habits have crept into your day. The important thing is to recognize them so that you can make a change.

An excellent daily routine sets you up for success. If you make just one change that saves you 10 minutes per day, you can regain 60 hours of your precious time back each year.^[1]

Best Daily Routines for a Healthy Life

It takes time to become the best version of yourself, but I’ll help you to make it easier by getting you a few healthy daily routine examples to follow directly.

Daily Routine for Good Health and More Energy

1. Start the Day With a Glass of Lemon Water

Simply add the juice of half a lemon to your glass and drink it to enjoy a refreshing start to the day.

Lemon juice reduces your body’s acidity levels, which, in turn, protects you against inflammatory diseases, such as fungal infections and osteoporosis.^[2]

2. Exercise in the Morning

Working out early in the morning improves your energy levels and your circulation, and encourages good lymphatic function. Just 20 or 30 minutes every day can make a difference! Mix up cardio and weights throughout the week for all-over toning and general health.

For great exercises, grab this Cardio Home Workout Plan for free and try the recommended exercises!

Getting on the scale each morning is also an effective way to monitor your weight. Don’t go weeks without weighing yourself, because this allows you to remain in denial about any weight gain.

3. Eat a Good Breakfast

When you eat breakfast, fuel yourself with a healthy mix of protein, slow-release carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Sensible options include yogurt with nuts and berries, a vegetable omelet, and low-sugar granola bars with a piece of fruit.

4. Stay Hydrated

Did you know that becoming even slightly dehydrated can lead to lowered mood and decreased concentration? Keep water or other low-sugar drinks on hand to sip throughout the day.^[3]

5. Get a Healthy Lunch

Even the busiest of us can grab a healthy lunch as part of a daily routine. For lunch ideas you can make in advance and take with you to work, check out this post: Healthy Lunch Ideas for Work

Avoid too much fat at lunch time, as it promotes afternoon lethargy, which isn’t going to help you get through a busy day!^[4]

6. Do Some Mid-Afternoon Stretches

Most of us have a mid-afternoon “slump” somewhere between 2 and 4 PM, but you can keep yourself going through the day by choosing a healthy lunch and doing some light stretches or a bit of exercise in the afternoon. Check out this list of 29 exercises you can do at (or near) your desk.

7. Dinner

With a plethora of meal planning apps out there, getting a quick but healthy dinner on the table has never been easier! Be realistic, and choose something that doesn’t require a lot of time or effort to throw together, otherwise you may resort to takeout.

Green vegetables are always a great choice, as they are packed with antioxidants and have an alkanizing effect. Choose plant-based proteins such as tofu or seitan or, if you prefer animal protein, pick fish and lamb rather than beef or chicken to minimize acidity levels in the body.^[5]

Avoid caffeine in the late afternoon and evening, because it will prevent you sleeping soundly at night.

8. Take Time to Relax

It’s normal to feel stressed from time to time, but high stress levels leave you vulnerable to a number of health conditions and problems, including depression and elevated blood pressure.

Find a healthy activity that relaxes you, and then set aside some time every day to do it as part of your daily routine. This could be journaling, reading an inspiring book, spending time with a pet, meditating, or simply taking a few minutes to remind yourself of everything that is going well in your life.

9. Take a Vitamin C Supplement Before Bed

Take half a teaspoon of buffered vitamin C powder in a glass of water before turning in for the night.

This is a quick, effective means of reducing the acidity in your body. It will also ensure that you go to bed well-hydrated, which will help you wake up when that alarm clock beeps.

10. Go to Sleep at a Reasonable Hour

It sounds obvious, but if you want to feel your best, then you must get enough sleep. Most experts recommend that we get 6 to 10 hours of sleep per night.^[6]

Turn off your phone and computer at least an hour before bed, and avoid vigorous exercise in the late evening. These measures will help you wind down when it’s time for sleep.

Daily Routine for an Organized Life

1. Make Your Bed

Prepare for the day by making your bed.

It’s a quick chore that will put you in a productive, organized frame of mind.^[7]

2. Have Your Equipment and Clothes Laid out the Night Before

If you like to work out, the morning is the best time to do it! It will leave you feeling full of energy and will give you a sense of accomplishment before you leave the house. Whether you like to go for a walk, take a gym class, or do yoga in your bedroom, make sure that you have all the equipment and clothing you need laid out and ready the night before.

3. Wipe Down Large Surfaces

After your morning shower, spray down and wipe the largest surfaces in your bathroom. It’s much easier and more fun to do mini-cleans throughout the week than to wait until the weekend!^[8]

4. Put Everything Back Where You Found It

When you’ve made your breakfast, put everything back exactly where you found it, as this makes everything easier the morning after. If you notice that you are running low on a grocery item, add it to a list you can take with you next time you pass the grocery store.

5. Run Through a List of Essential Items

Before you leave the house, run through a list of your essential items, such as your wallet, employee badge, water bottle, and so on. Keep a list of these items near your front door so that you can quickly check your purse or bag before heading out the door as part of your daily routine.

6. Prioritize Your Tasks

Make a list of tasks and decide whether they are important, urgent, both, or neither. Start with urgent and important tasks, move onto the important and non-urgent tasks, then tackle the unimportant but urgent jobs.

Make use of this Full Life Planner to help you better organize your day. Writing a task list can always give you a sense of control.

7. Prioritize Your Emails

Before you start your day, spend 10 minutes prioritizing your e-mails. Get into the habit of deciding which ones need your urgent attention, which are important, which are both, and which are neither.

Check your e-mails every couple of hours rather than every few minutes, because frequent interruptions will impair your concentration and productivity.

8. Keep Your Finances on Track

Take a couple of minutes to keep your finances on track each day as part of your daily routine. Check your bank balance and make sure that you’re sticking to your budget.

9. Plan for Dinner

Do you need to pick anything up from the grocery store on the way home? Do you need to look up a recipe? This only takes a few minutes, but a bit of planning can save a lot of time later.

10. Clear Your Desk at the End of the Ay

Take five minutes to clear your work desk before you leave for your break. It will help you feel more organized when you return.

11. Review Your To-Do List

If you aren’t making as much progress as you hoped, it’s time to rewrite it!

12. Do the Dishes Immediately After Dinner

Otherwise, you might be tempted to sit down in front of the TV and get distracted.

13. Do a “Brain Dump”

Doing a “brain dump” is helpful if you tend to lie awake worrying about what you need to do the next day. Once you have written them down, you can go to sleep knowing that you can refer to the list when you wake up.

Daily Routine for More Productive Work

1. Plan the Night Before

Some of the most effective and productive people get started on their daily routine the night before.

Think of this as the planning stage. At this time you might find it useful to plot out your day in blocks of time, with a specific activity planned for each. This is commonly known as the time blocking method, and using this method ensures that you don’t end up multitasking, which can have a negative impact on your productivity.

2. Wake up at the Same Time Every Day

This may sound counterintuitive, it is often imagined that the most productive people are those that can wake up at dawn and continue into the evening. But the 9-5 workday might not necessarily suit everyone.^[9]

I’m not suggesting that people work less, but someone who works from 10-6 works for just as long as someone who works 9-5, and that extra hour in bed may mean that they’re more fresh and ready to work.

If you have any flexibility at all, consider what works best for you.

3. Eat a Good Breakfast

Once you have woken up, it is very important to eat well as part of your daily routine. You need something that will give you a good boost of energy, all the while keeping you full. A good idea is oatmeal with a smoothie or a healthy fruit juice.

4. Create a Distraction-Free Workspace

A few years ago, a study at Princeton University concluded that if there are many forms of visual stimuli in your field of vision, your brain will spread its focus and attention to each piece.^[10] In other words, if your desk is cluttered, your ability to focus on the task at hand diminishes.

Simply clearing your desk of distractions can have a great impact on your focus and productivity.

5. Don’t Check Emails First

Mornings are a great time to do productive work that requires focus, creativity, and strategy. Clearing out the inbox gives you a false sense of achievement and wastes the opportunity to engage your brain in more proactive tasks. Though you may have read a lot of emails, you haven’t done anything important.

Instead, focus on your goals, and do what really matters.

6. Tackle the Worst Thing First

Start your daily routine at work by tackling the most difficult or most pressing task first, the task that will most likely encourage you to procrastinate. This is the philosophy put forward by Brian Tracy in his book Eat That Frog.

The benefit of this is simple. Even if you accomplish little else that day, you can be happy with the knowledge that you did something important. Also, by doing the most difficult thing first, everything else will be easier.

7. Rest or Meditate

When setting up a routine, it can be easy to forget the most important activity: resting. Humans simply aren’t built for working all day, every day without a break. If you don’t consider this in your routine, there is a danger that you will lose energy and enthusiasm all together and burn out, thereby killing your productivity altogether.

This can be mitigated by making sure to making sure you get some rest.

One way to do this is by picking a reasonable time to stop working. Another is to take a quick nap or try meditation.

8. Say No to Unreasonable Requests

This may be the hardest thing on this list, but it can be one of the most effective. Adding extra tasks and jobs to your day can immediately throw your routine off balance, and it will negatively impact your day’s productivity.

As such, declining and saying no to extra tasks (that are unreasonably urgent or unimportant) can be the key to staying productive. After all, doing one thing really well is more important than doing several things badly.

Daily Routine for a Stronger Relationship

1. Kiss Your Partner Goodbye

How often do you rush out of the door with a quick peck on the cheek and a “see you later!” Maybe you’ve got to the stage where you don’t even do that anymore. It’s important to really take the time to say goodbye.

Create 3 to 5 minutes in your morning routine to just be with your partner and properly say goodbye. Kiss each other meaningfully, and take in the moment. It’s important not to overlook these small gestures.

2. Create Little Daily Rituals

Creating small actions that are meaningful to both of you can build a sense of connection, and these can carry on throughout your day when you’re apart.

Leave little notes under your partner’s coffee cup. Write a message on the fogged-up mirror for your partner to discover. Text a joke of the day on your lunch breaks.

These types of rituals bring a sense of positive expectation and bonding, something only the two of you share together. Without these, relationships can become stale.

4. Schedule a Date Night

This is a particularly important part of your daily routine when you have kids. When your lives are controlled by children and extra responsibilities, your relationship can get overlooked. This is when things can break down, and intimacy gets lost no matter how much you love each other.

Schedule regular date nights where you can be free from responsibilities and really connect with each other. Use this time to check in with how you are both feeling, and most importantly, have fun. Keep reconnecting with the reasons you fell in love in the first place.

5. Create a Bonding Bedtime Routine

When the doors are closed and you’ve finally fallen into bed, it’s easy to want to fall asleep, but bedtime is a wonderful time to get connected with your partner both physically and emotionally.

Try to go to bed at the same time, and use it as your couple time. Pillow talk is a great time to bond. While you’re in a relaxed state, talk about your days at work, any concerns, or even future plans.

Communication and talking things out is the best habit you can have as a couple. Just make sure you take the time to really listen to each other with respect and an open mind, always ending the night on a positive note.

How to Stick to Your Routine

When you do something and no immediate harm comes to you, your subconscious mind assumes that it’s safe to continue doing the activity. Overcoming a poor daily routine that feels comfortable to you requires impressive amounts of willpower.

Reaching for a snack or scrolling through social media can sabotage healthy plans by flooding your brain with dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter. That dopamine release causes you to want to continue the action whether or not it’s good for you.

There may be quite a few things that ought to change in your life. Changing too many habits at once can be difficult and discouraging.^[11]

On top of all that, we only have so much mental bandwidth to devote to making decisions. When decision fatigue sets in, we’re likely to revert to whatever is easiest, even if we know it’s unhealthy.

Biting off more than you can chew is a surefire way to fail. Instead, pick one routine, and work on that. Or better, pick one habit and stick to that first.

Upgrading your daily routine is a commitment. By starting small and being realistic, you can develop healthy rituals and efficient routines that help you get the most out of life.

Source: lifehack.com ~ Image: Canva Pro

 

1. Live in the present moment

Living in the present moment may be more difficult than it appears. Humans spend the majority of their time dwelling on the past or future because of our conditioning. Learning how to live in the moment can improve your general well-being and enjoyment of life. We can practice Mindfulness by looking around or stopping to “smell the flowers,” according to popular belief. By taking a moment to breathe in your current reality, you can fully immerse yourself in it and take notice of things that you might have overlooked before.

Although it may appear to be a simple process, multitasking is really difficult to master. During the day, juggling many things and diverting your attention to numerous distractions simultaneously prevents you from being fully present. You can recall details you might have overlooked by focusing your attention on one thing at a time rather than attempting to do multiple things at the same time. This also allows you to be grateful for what is going on and appreciate the details of that moment. Writing down things you are grateful for is also a great way to focus on the positive elements of your life and what is happening currently. This will allow you to accept the way things are and let go of the things that you cannot control.

Here are some techniques that help with practicing mindfulness before you look at your phone and start your day according to Daily Practices by Mindful…

1. 1. When you wake up in the morning, sit in your chair or bed, close your eyes and concentrate on the sensations of your body and around you.
   2. Start your day with three deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
   3. Set your intention for the day by asking simple questions
   4. How might I show up today to have the best impact?
   5. What quality of mind do I want to strengthen and develop?
   6. What do I need to take better care of myself?
   7. During difficult moments, how might I be more compassionate to others and myself?
   8. How might I feel more connected and fulfilled?

During your day, check-in with yourself! Take a moment, take a breath and revisit your intention questions

2. Do Things You Love

What makes us happier than doing things we enjoy? We all have a finite amount of time to spend on anything, and we’re all aware of how important it is to be efficient with our time. Spend your days wisely by thinking about how you use your time and where you spend it. The things you do, and your surroundings have an impact on how much pleasure you get and how valuable you feel. You want to spend more time engaged in activities that contribute to your enjoyment and provide energy instead of taking it away.

Nature is a great way to heal yourself! According to Dr. Susanne Preston, a Clinical Mental Health Counseling instructor at South University, Virginia Beach “being outside and spending time in nature is good for a person’s mental health, as it allows them to de-stress.”

“Research has shown that spending time in nature has been associated with decreased levels of mental illness, with the strongest links to reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, in addition to increased self-esteem,” Preston says.

Exploring and experimenting in your environment is a great channel for growth. Plus, you might find that you enhance your life with a new love for gardening or rock climbing.

3. Take care of your mental and physical health

Self-care is self-love! Taking care of yourself is the opposite of selfish and can look very different from person to person. It should inspire, enlighten and encourage you to live a life that makes you happy. By caring for yourself, you may live life more confidently, effectively, and enthusiastically.

Taking care of your physical self seems like a basic concept but is often overlooked. Physical self-care involves caring for yourself in terms of what you are consuming, how much exercise you are getting, your sleep habits, and making sure you are not just feeling good, but you are looking good as well. Physical activity is great for reducing stress, lowering health issue risks, managing your weight, and improving your mood. Physical health and mental health go hand in hand.

Your mental health matters! Often, mental health is overlooked. Now more than ever, it’s critical to look after your mental health in the face of the pandemic’s uncertainty. You can take care of your mental health by pinpointing what it is that you struggle with and asking for help. Researchers have discovered “that our brains have what’s known as “neural plasticity.” This means they could create new connections between nerve cells, allowing your brain to reroute, rewire, and grow. It also means your brain can climb out of those negative thought pattern rabbit holes and “rewrite” them to improve well-being.”

4. Build/repair meaningful connections

Meaningful relationships are at the very core of a happy human experience. We all want to be surrounded by people that bring meaning and love into our life. By being open and vulnerable, we can allow these types of relationships to take root in our life. Meaningful relationships do not happen overnight, they take time. We must give energy, time, and add value to these relationships for them to work.

Although they can be challenging, the quality of these relationships directly impacts the quality of our lives. Relationships must be nurtured and given our attention in-order to grow, otherwise they will only fall away.

5. Set healthy boundaries with yourself

Being an adult means setting boundaries for yourself. To keep yourself accountable, safe and healthy you must set boundaries and systems that aim to provide you with the best plan for happiness moving forward. By establishing these boundaries for yourself, even when they are not particularly enjoyable at that moment, you create a system that allows you to create a healthy structure for your life and monitor your behavior.

Boundaries are what keep you from staying out all night, eating fast food every night, and adding structure and discipline to your life which adds to your overall happiness. Setting boundaries is a sign that you love and respect yourself and want to keep yourself healthy at the cost of possible gratification. Boundaries add structure and keep your life in harmony.

Boundaries are different for everyone as our limits and needs differ for everybody. Determining your boundaries is up to you. Some examples of boundaries you can have with yourself include…

• • Limiting indoor screen time
  • No phones before bed
  • Not staying out late
  • Not drinking or eating in excess
  • Not eating out every night

Living your best life means becoming the best version of yourself, mentally and physically. Your mental and physical health go hand in hand and taking time to love and care for both of those elements of you is crucial to living a happy life. If you are struggling with your mental health, seek help! You are not alone and deserve to feel your best.

As human beings, one of our deepest-rooted desires is to have a meaningful and happy existence. You’ve probably heard of the saying, “Live your best life.” It’s good advice.

We all want to feel connected to both ourselves and others. We want to feel that we’re part of something important and that we’re making a difference in the world.

We want to look back at our lives and our achievements and be proud. In short, we want what the saying says: to live our best lives.

But what does it really mean to live your best life?

You are a unique individual, so living your best life is exclusive to you. Your best life will reflect your true values. It will be made up of what makes you happy and will be colored by what making a difference means to you.

What Stops You From Living Your Best Life?

While living your best life is all about you, what other people think can have an impact on your quest to live your best life.

Social media, for example, puts us under a lot of pressure. There are specific expectations of what “happy” looks like, and we’re under pressure to conform to what society expects.

For example, we are pressured to look a certain way, wear the “right” clothes, have exciting adventures with eye-catching friends, eat ethical and healthy food, and do charity work.

These are only a few of society’s expectations. It’s a long list.

Social media claims to connect us, but often it can do the opposite.

We can spend so much time worrying about what other people are doing, trying to live the life that society expects of us, that it can be easy to lose track of what makes us happy and what our best life actually looks like.

3 Questions to Ask About Living Your Best Life

For me, in the moments we faced death during that harrowing experience on the plane, I became intensely aware of these three questions by which I was judging how my life had been up to that point.

How Am I Experiencing Love?

The love I felt in that moment for my husband, our loved ones who were on the ground, and all others in the world was truly profound. I became aware that love—both my ability to receive it and share it—matters more than anything else.

How Authentically Am I Sharing My Unique Gift?

We each have a unique gift—the unique energy and essence that is who we really are. Each person has a unique gift to offer that no one else can or ever will again.

Living our best life means finding creative ways to share our best selves, whether in our work, our creative hobbies, or simply how we live.

What Am I Grateful for?

It’s easy to focus on our worries and anxieties or the distractions of everyday life. However, when we remember our own mortality, we realize that each moment is a gift.

What matters most in the big picture perspective of our lives is very personal. However, figuring it out is how we uncover our formula for living our best lives.

Start the Journey

What does it look like to live your best life? The following are some practical tips and tools to move from living your current life to living your best life.

1. Be the Best Version of Yourself

To live your best life, you must be the best version of yourself. Don’t try to be something or someone else. Don’t try to be what other people want you to be.

Focus on who you want to be. Play to your strengths and be proud of what makes you different. You are brilliant.

Gretchen Rubin, in her book Happiness Project, created her own commandments. The first one was “Be Gretchen.” This gave her permission to follow her gut feeling and make up her own rules.

For example, she stopped forcing herself to enjoy parties, cocktails, and fashion just because that’s what she thought society expected.

So, inspired by Gretchen, create your own commandment: “Be more YOU,” and remind yourself of this every day, unapologetically.

2. Observe Yourself

To work out what the best you looks like, you must get to know yourself better. It’s your best life after all – not anyone else’s.

Start to notice how you respond to various situations. What are your habits? What makes you happy? What frustrates you? How do you behave under pressure? What gives you energy? What drains you?

Spend a week simply noticing. Write your observations down so you remember.

3. Identify Your Bad Habits

As part of your observations, start to notice your bad habits. Consider the things that don’t ultimately make you feel good.

Does scrolling mindlessly through Instagram make you happy? For 5 minutes, perhaps, but for longer?

That last glass of wine was delicious, but do you pay the price later?

That chocolate was enjoyable at the moment, but now that the sugar high is over, are you feeling regretful?

Observe yourself first. Then, start to deliberately do more of the things that make you happy and give you energy.

At the same time, work on reducing then eliminating the habits that squander your time, drain your energy, and ultimately don’t make you happy.

4. Set Intentions

After having thought about what makes you happy and what drains your energy, focus on what living the best life looks like for you.

One of the keys to this is being intentional about it. When you deliberately set intentions, you are more likely to act with purpose and drive.

Setting intentions is different from setting goals. Goals are your list of things you want to achieve. You can set them daily, monthly, yearly, or a combination.

A common practice is to define goals and write them down. This makes them more tangible and makes you more accountable, therefore, making the goals more likely to happen.

The subtle yet important difference between goals and intentions is that when setting intentions, you decide what kind of positive feelings and emotions you are seeking.

For example, “This week, my intention is to approach my admin tasks with gusto in order to complete them more quickly.”

Intentions can be more motivating than goals because if you don’t achieve your goal, it can feel like a failure and can ultimately hold you back.

If you don’t achieve your intention to approach something in a specific way, you can more easily regroup and have another try.

Write down your intentions every month, week, or day, using whichever time frame works best for you.

For example, “I intend to enjoy going swimming three times this week” or “I intend to assertively build my network in my local area this month.”

Setting intentions gives you something to focus on, and it also helps to manage the feeling of being overwhelmed that often happens when we set ourselves goals.

5. Visualize Living Your Best Life

Visualization can help you to cement your intentions. It involves visualizing how it would feel to live your best life once you achieve it.

It can help you to further establish what you want and allow you to settle into a positive mindset.

To visualize, first choose your focus. Choose a specific intention and how you will feel once it is accomplished. Then, take the time to daydream and allow your imagination to wander.

For example, if your intention is going swimming three times a week, imagine what you will look and feel like:

• • What will you wear?
  • How do you get there?
  • What time of day do you go?
  • How do you feel when you’re in the water?
  • How do you feel afterward?

Ask yourself these little questions and allow yourself to feel the same feelings you would feel if you were currently fulfilling your intention.

16 Ways to Live Your Best Life

Now that you’ve decided and visualized what your best life looks like, let’s look at some more practical steps you can take to achieve it.

1. Focus

Whatever you do, focus. If you swim, swim. If you study, study. Multitasking is a myth. It’s not possible to do more than one thing at a time well. Focused work is the least tiresome and the most productive type of work.

Michael LeBouf, the author of The Millionaire in You, said,

“Winners focus, losers spray.”

2. Take Responsibility for Taking Action

Taking action can feel scary. We fear failure, but we can also fear success. It can be easy to feel too busy to achieve your intentions.

However, you have the choice to take action and live your best life or stay the same. It’s up to you, so take responsibility to take action.

3. Live in the Present

Every day is a new opportunity to live your best life. We so often get stuck because we put things off.

We can think, “When I’ve lost 10 lbs I’ll go swimming,” or “When I feel more confident I’ll look for a new job,” or “When I get my new running shoes I’ll start running.”

How about starting from where you are? How about using what you already have?

We often put off taking action until we have the newest phone/camera/game/course/book/shoes as if they are the keys to happiness. In the process, we forget about what we already have.

Grab the camera that you have, and put on your old running shoes. Go and do something interesting today with what you’ve got. Fancier gadgets, better clothes, or a slimmer body won’t make you better. Action will.

4. Practice Mindfulness

Research has revealed that a simple way to be happier and live your best life comes from developing the ability to fully experience each moment. Mindfulness is the ability to observe the present moment without judging it.

Mindfulness has many impressive benefits for physical and mental health. Diabetic patients who were taught mindfulness skills experienced lower blood sugar and increased happiness.^[1]

Mindfulness on the job has been proven to reduce exhaustion and increase job satisfaction.^[2]

Mindfulness is not difficult to learn and is something we can do in a moment. Right now, take a deep breath, and notice how the breath feels as it is going into your lungs.

How does your body feel? Are your muscles stiff or relaxed? Do you feel warm or cold? Use your five senses to describe your immediate experience.

Use your five senses to describe how your body feels and your immediate experience. This is all it takes to be fully present.

5. Declutter

This applies to the environment you live in as well as the people you spend time with. Use Marie Kondo’s decluttering method of asking, “Does it bring you joy?”^[3]

If your answer is yes, you keep the item. If you hesitate or say no, you donate it or throw it out. Simple.

This also applies to people. If there are people in your life that make you feel bad, drain your energy, and don’t bring you joy, let go of them.

Instead, spend time with the people and activities that give you energy and make you feel good.

6. Relish the Simple Things

When we’re busy, we can forget to appreciate what we have. Take time to focus on the simple things. Even when you’re feeling low, there’s always something to be grateful for.

In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness.^[4] Be deliberate in being grateful for what you do have, rather than resentful of what you don’t.

7. Journaling

Journaling is simply writing your thoughts down.

According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, writing your thoughts and feelings down on paper not only helps you get your thoughts in order, but it can also help ease symptoms of depression and manage stress and anxiety.^[5]

In the chaos of life, it is easy to overthink, feel anxious, or not appreciate what you do have. Journaling can help you manage your thoughts and feelings and productively cope with life.

Be curious and keep learning. Ask more questions and keep pushing yourself to step outside of your comfort zone and learn.

What are you interested in or curious about? Perhaps it’s learning more about where you live, or reading up on a particular topic? Maybe it’s traveling to a new town or country?

According to Dan Pink’s research, learning is a key motivator.^[6] Whether you feel like you’ve gotten stuck in a boring routine or you’re stressed by the tasks of daily life, learning something new is a way to step outside yourself and your comfort zone.

Create a bucket list of all the things you’d like to do and learn and the places you’d like to go to, and start ticking them off.

8. Make Someone’s Day

Being kind to others makes them feel good, and it also releases chemicals in your body that make you feel good. Think about a time you gave someone a gift that they loved. How did you feel?

You don’t have to start giving people gifts to make someone’s day. Think about small, thoughtful gestures: a genuine compliment, opening the door, offering to help someone.

All these things can make a big difference in someone’s day.

9. Look After Your Body

Eat what nourishes you, including plenty of vegetables and fruit and food that’s natural and unprocessed. Drink plenty of water.

Exercise because you like it, not because you’re supposed to go to the gym.

Reject the idea that you have to push yourself really hard at exercise, and instead try out a variety of things – for example, walking the dog, gardening, yoga, swimming, or dancing.

Find what you enjoy. When you enjoy something, you’ll be motivated to do it more.

Get good rest! We’re all different in terms of the amount of sleep that we need. However, most adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep.

If you’re not getting that much, then check out healthy sleep tips from the Sleep Foundation.^[7]

10. Manage Your Inner Critic

Most people have an inner critic that tells them they are not good enough, that they’re a fraud, and that they are going to be found out.

This happens especially when we step out of our comfort zone and change things. If you are living your best life, your inner critic likes to jeopardize that.

The next time it appears, acknowledge what’s happening and call it out. Whatever it is telling you, list all the reasons it’s wrong.

11. Be Prepared to Change the Plan

You may have set intentions to live your best life. However, life is not linear, nor does it work in lists. You must expect to be flexible and change the plan as life throws things at you.

The end game remains the same: to live your best life. It’s just the route to get there that will inevitably change.

12. Learn to Flow

One of the most powerful ways to connect with our true selves and experience positive emotions is through flow.

Flow is like mindfulness in action. Flow is when we are so engrossed in what we are doing that we get into a zone and stop thinking about anything else. We can experience this when playing an instrument, playing a sport, creating artwork, writing an essay, reading a book, etc.

Being in flow increases our happiness, helps us reach optimal performance, and boosts our creativity.

According to researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, one of the best things about flow is it puts happiness in our control.^[8] Rather than being happy because of outer events, we are in flow as a result of an inner experience we create for ourselves.

Find things that transfer your mind to a flow state in order to start working toward living your best life.

13. Hit the Reset Button (Often)

Sometimes, life sends us curveballs we aren’t prepared for. It’s important to know how to get back to the center—to who we are and to reconnect with our goals and priorities. If you ever find yourself feeling off-course or negative, imagine hitting a pause button.

It only takes a minute to re-focus. Some great tips for resetting include stretching, taking a deep breath, setting goals or intentions, and then beginning again.

Knowing how to reset our energy is important when it comes to navigating minor distractions and major life changes for personal growth.

14. Commit to Your Connections

The COVID-19 pandemic showed us firsthand how important our social connections are. Community is an important factor in how happy we are with our lives, and our long-term well-being and health.

If you feel disconnected or like you want to strengthen your sense of belonging and improve your life, consider calling a different friend each day; joining a church or spiritual group, support group, or book club; or exploring cultural or community events that might be attended by other people with shared interests

To reconnect with favorite friends, try scheduling a weekly hike, coffee hour, Zoom call, happy hour, or email/text check-in.

We get what we put out there. Show up when people you love ask for help or seek connection. Let go and create healthy boundaries with people who drain your energy.

15. Move Your Body

Exercise is an important key to staying healthy and happy and reaching your full potential.

Research shows exercise can prevent depression, limit long-term illness, improve our moods, and increase our longevity.^[9]

We now know that it’s not only exercise that matters, but also how we hold and move our bodies when we are going through the motion of our lives, including working at our desks. Recent research shows that simply sitting up straight can make us more likely to think positive thoughts about ourselves and what is possible for our lives.^[10]

16. Spend Time in Nature

One of the best ways to live our best lives is to spend time in nature. From the benefits of vitamin D from sunlight, to simply getting outside of our own world and connecting with something greater, the benefits of nature are well-established.^[11]

The more we learn, the more we realize how important it is to protect our natural spaces, parks, and trees, not just for our enjoyment, but also for our physical and mental well-being.

Conclusion

Live each day like it counts, and remember, it’s your choice. Your best life is unique to you. Don’t compare yourself to others – focus on living your best life, and enjoy the learning, exploration, and experiences along the way

Source: lifehack.com ~ Image: Canva Pro