You know that self-care is essential to your overall well-being, and yet is often pushed aside or postponed for other more pressing items on your daily to-do list. Whether you are putting out fires at the office or chasing little ones around the house, chances are that you often find yourself feeling stretched too thin.
No one else is going to prioritize your emotional, mental or physical well-being, it’s entirely up to you to put it first. And while devoting time to self-care can feel overly indulgent when you are at your busiest, that is exactly when you need it the most. By allocating a little bit of time in your day for self-improvement, you may be surprised by how much more energized and balanced you are left feeling afterward.
Here are a few healthy habits to start incorporating into your day to boost your overall well-being:
Find Inspiration Online
Social media and blogs are a great resource for inspiration to make healthier choices when it comes to nutrition, exercise and overall well-being. Featuring succinct, often well-illustrated content, this bite size format of health and wellness information is much more manageable to read regularly than books on the same subjects.
For comprehensive coverage of the latest topics in the more naturally focused health and wellness space, check out mindbodygreen. Additionally, Amway’s Connections blog is an excellent resource for advice on vitamins, supplements, nutrition and beauty routines. If you need some tasty inspiration to switch to a plant-based diet, Naturally Ella is a vegetarian food blog that features gorgeous food photography and weekly meal plans. Find motivation on Instagram as well, by following fitness accounts like LEKfit, Kayla Itsines and Alex Silver-Fagan.
Focus Inward
Help start your day off right with meditation. Commit to building a habit of meditating for 20 minutes every morning to ease anxiety, improve mood and even help you sleep better. The act of quieting your thoughts and sitting with that stillness is challenging and doesn’t come naturally to most people, but you can build this skill with practice. If you need some extra help getting started, meditation apps like Headspace and Calm offer guided meditations, timers, tips and other perks to make it a little easier to build this habit.
Get Moving
Daily exercise, even if it’s just a 30 minute walk, can go a long way to improving your overall health, diet, physical fitness and general mental well-being. Commit to doing at least 30 minutes of light to moderate exercise daily. Instead of thinking of it as a chore that you need to check off of your to-do list, reframe it as precious self-care time that you get to enjoy. By changing the way that you think about exercise, that it is something that you get to do, rather than something you have to do, you will have the opportunity to enjoy even more of its benefits. Make it a little easier to build this habit by treating yourself to new workout gear or even just creating a new playlist or downloading a great podcast to listen to while you exercise.
Living a healthier lifestyle really comes down to being intentional about your daily habits. Instead of binge-watching the latest Netflix shows and having a nightly glass of wine, commit to habits like meditation, exercise and actively seeking out health inspiration daily and watch your overall well-being begin to improve.
