There is no master key to living a healthy life, and no one solution is going to be the answer to making life simple. Finding balance in your daily routine and making adjustments to the lifestyle choices you make can greatly improve your life and alleviate stress from day-to-day stressors.
Starting the morning off with a well-rounded routine is a great way to align your thoughts and set goals for the day ahead. With any adjustments that you make within your life, it's important to start small and adapt along the way. For example, if you find that you often don't have time for breakfast and are running out the door with just enough time to get to work, wake up a half-hour earlier. This will allow you to ease into a new routine instead of saying to yourself, "I'll get up at 5am every day so I can make a good breakfast and get to work early." If you set goals too high, it's likely that you will end up falling short one day and not being able to continue with the new routine you had planned.
Eliminate stress where your day allows it to be removed. There are choices that we make every day that often cause us more stress than required, so cutting out those piddly activities will allow us to conserve that mental energy for bigger projects that may require our attention. If you work at a job that requires you to think on your feet or make big decisions that hold a lot of weight to them, remove stress from other areas of your life such as the outfits that you wear. If you spend a lot of time deciding what you wear, you waste a lot of mental energy over such a small matter. Choosing to pick out your outfits the night before or sticking to a simple look for the week is a great way to conserve your energy.
Be mindful of what you feed yourself; food isn't the only thing that gives your body fuel. The media-and amount of media- that you consume on a daily basis contributes to how your energy is dispersed throughout the day. Incorporate good, colorful foods in your life and while you're on your lunch break, take a few minutes to enjoy your food and keep your cellphone tucked away. Sometimes while we scroll through Facebook or Instagram, we aren't even aware that we're criticizing other people's digital lives and comparing it to our own. Cutting back on your social intake can be paired nicely with cutting out fried foods and empty carbs.
In general, it takes an average of 66 days for a new habit to stick into your life. Setting realistic goals - even goals that sounds incredibly basic and even silly - is a great way to start living a healthy life. Once you're able to establish a solid morning routine, you'll find that there are other healthy habits that come to you without even thinking. You might find that taking the stairs to the third floor gives you an extra few minutes to look out the office window and appreciate the morning hustle and bustle. Or maybe you'll find time to enjoy one more cup of coffee after a quick 10-minute walk with the dog in the morning. The art of balancing the activities in your life is training your brain and body into making healthy habits for yourself that soon become second nature. Balance and adjustments don't have to be grand and outrageous, but just enough to remind you that you're living better than you were the day before.
