Here are nine simple things you can do each day to improve how you feel, your wellbeing, therefore your health:
1. Get Outside Actual research has shown that being outside in nature reduces stress, makes you more creative, and improves your memory.
2. Exercise Everyone who has exercised, knows how good they feel after doing it. Besides the common physical health benefits everyone knows you get from exercising, exercise can also make you smarter, sleep better, increased libido.
3. Spend Time With Friends & Family Research has shown that not feeling socially connected can lead to increased risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, as well as depression and dementia.
4. Express Gratitude Thanking others can seriously increase overall happiness, improve relationship with people in your life, increases social interactions and makes you someone others want to help.
5. Meditate Meditation can increase happiness, meaning in life, social support and attention span while reducing anger, anxiety, depression and fatigue. Along similar lines, prayer can make you feel better — even if you’re not religious.
6. Get Enough Sleep You can’t cheat yourself on sleep and not have it affect you. Being tired actually makes it harder to be happy. Lack of sleep = more likely to get sick. “Sleeping on it” does improve decision making. Lack of sleep can make you more likely to behave unethically. There is such a thing as beauty sleep.
Naps are great too. Naps increase alertness and performance on the job, enhance learning ability and purge negative emotions while enhancing positive ones.
7. Challenge Yourself
Learning another language can keep your mind sharp. Music lessons increase intelligence. Challenging your beliefs strengthens your mind. Increasing willpower just takes a little effort each day and it’s more responsible for your success than IQ.
Not getting an education or taking advantage of opportunities are two of the things people look back on their lives and regret the most.
8. Laugh
People who use humour to cope with stress have better immune systems, reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, experience less pain during dental work and live longer.
Laughter should be like a daily vitamin. Just reminiscing about funny moments can improve your relationship. Humour has many benefits.
9. Be Optimistic
Optimism can make you healthier, happier and extend your life. The Army teaches it in order to increase mental toughness in soldiers. Being overconfident improves performance.
Your Health Coach, Chris