Everywhere you look, you see something about wellness. It has reached a point where some people consider the concept to be nothing more than a buzzword that is utterly devoid of meaning and is nothing more than a marketing ploy aiming to sell overpriced products to unsuspecting citizens. However, when done correctly, wellness can be an incredibly effective way to adopt healthier habits into your daily routine and make sure you stick to them long-term.
The benefits
You have probably already been bombarded with all the reasons routines are bad. They sap all the joy out of life and get you stuck in an endless loop of doing the same things over and over again. They have the potential to make you narrow-minded and set in your ways and can cause you to become less creative and open to new ideas. So, what could possibly be good about having a daily routine? Well, for the most part, it allows you to be healthier.
If you establish several habits, such as eating more balanced meals or working out, you must remain consistent. If you only do them now and then, you’ll soon forget about them, and getting back into them will be much more challenging. You’ll notice that working out after a long break feels much more demanding compared to sticking to a workout routine you follow each week. Naturally, your routine should make room for times when you feel exhausted, become ill or just feel like unwinding. But these days are the exception, not the rule.
Routines protect your mental health, reduce anxiety, minimise procrastination and increase your overall long-term health.
Self-motivation
It’s easy to feel like you’re ready to turn your life around whenever you get a motivation boost. However, it is much easier said than done, and you’ll notice that this initial surge of energy won’t get you very far. What you need to do instead is practice consistency and learn to recognise the difference between feeling tired and feeling unmotivated. In the case of the first, you need rest, but for the second, you must push through and complete the tasks you want to achieve.
To keep track of your progress with eating healthier or developing a workout routine, you can get other people to hold you accountable or help motivate you. It can be a friend, a partner, or even an online community. You can start making videos and reach out to an audience going through the same things as you. To make your content more engaging, choose the best royalty free music from MelodyLoops.com. The tunes are sorted based on genres, styles or moods, so you can go for something softer or more energetic, depending on the mood you want to relay.
Keeping track of your progress and seeing how far you’ve come will put things into perspective and make it more likely for you to stick to your habits. Set realistic short- and long-term goals to have the incentive of working towards something, and don’t be afraid of imperfection. It’s impossible to give 100% all the time, but 75% is better than 0.
Nutrition
Making sure you eat good, wholesome meals is vital, as you need the energy to power you through the day. Your meals should be well-balanced and include a mix of protein, fibre and carbohydrates to deliver energy throughout the day and keep you alert and in perfect shape. You should also ensure that your meals keep you full, as the latest research found that being “hangry” is a real phenomenon. Feeling optimistic and maintaining a sunny outlook is difficult if you’re deprived of the fuel your body needs to sustain itself.
Staying hydrated is also essential, meaning that you should drink more water. It helps eliminate metabolic waste that appears as a normal by-product of your body’s systems, moves nutrients to the cells, protects the joints, prevents overheating, helps sensitive tissue and promotes skin health. Other beverages such as fizzy drinks, coffee and alcohol, on the other hand, can have a mildly diuretic effect, making you dehydrated instead.
Sleep and meditation
When you’re focused on wellness, rest is just as crucial as movement, and you need a balanced approach towards both to ensure good health. Sleep is one of the pillars of well-being, which many people unfortunately overlook. You shouldn’t take it for granted. If you’re chronically sleep deprived and have accumulated a lot of sleep debt over the past years, getting back into a healthy routine is essential. Your aim should be to get the much-needed eight hours to avoid daytime sleepiness, consolidate memory and improve cognitive function.
Practising mindfulness and meditation has also been shown to help with neuroplasticity and reduce the wear-and-tear the brain acquires over the years. When you meditate, your brain switches from a high-intensity mood in which you’re more prone to stress to more relaxed, slower brain waves that promote deeper focus and calm. Meditation reduces anxiety responses and allows you to become more aware and focused.
Gratitude
Getting a fresh perspective on your life can promote wellness by allowing you to let go of any toxic, negative emotions you might be holding on to. Gratitude typically means you’ll focus on happiness, joy and love, and if anything negative has been bothering you, you’ll find it much easier to work through it. It promotes selflessness, allowing you to lower your stress levels. That’s because you take a step back and look at your life from a more objective perspective that lets you see the good things in your life.
You’ll realise how much you have and how precious your relationships and the connections you’ve made are. Focusing on the positive aspects makes it easy to foster your well-being. In fact, it will come naturally to you. It will increase your resilience in the face of stress and make your responses more solid so that adversity has less of a chance of impacting you and deterring you from your path.
Wellness is vital for your daily well-being and health. However, to truly feel its effects, you must remain consistent and committed to making improvements.