There’s nothing worse than feeling miserable each day and not having the energy you need to get you through your busy schedule. What will help you not only survive but thrive in a fast-paced world is to adjust your habits so you’re nurturing your mind, body, and soul.

Now is the time to stop wishing your situation were different and actually take action to change your ways. In addition, become aware of what excuses you’re telling yourself that are keeping you from reaching your wellness goals. Be mindful of your behaviors and what you’re doing each day that’s holding you back from living a healthier lifestyle.

Fitting in Daily Workouts

One habit you should definitely get on board with sooner rather than later is to workout daily. Exercise and movement are great for improving your mind, body, and soul and lifting your mood. Your clothes will start to fit better, you’ll have more zest for life, and you won’t need to depend on caffeine to get you through your day. Mix it up and keep your sweat sessions interesting by going to the gym one day, running outside another and taking a hike on the weekends. What will help you, even more, is if you set exercise and weight loss goals and then monitor and track your progress.

Cooking at Home

Eating out at restaurants is not only causing you to spend more money, but it’s also likely that you’re taking in more calories than you truly need at each sitting. Restaurants tend to serve large portions, and the meals usually contain more fat and unhealthy ingredients. Start cooking for yourself at home as a way to promote a healthy mind, body, and soul. The art of cooking is a mindful activity and will also likely make you feel calm and relaxed. You might find you enjoy it and want to do more of it on a regular basis after cooking up a few healthy and delicious dishes.

Learning how to Properly Manage Your Money

When you’re financially stable you simply feel better, you worry less, and you certainly have more confidence. Learn how to properly manage your money and notice how your life improves overall. This skill includes you knowing what to do when you’re in a bind and need cash fast. You can check out useful resources online that will guide you to a list of solutions that will help you through your difficult times. Stop losing sleep at night about how you’re going to cover your unexpected medical or home expenses and start problem-solving your way to brighter days ahead.

Clearing Your Mind

Another habit that promotes a healthy mind, body, and soul is to clear your head on a regular basis. You can do this by practicing meditation, yoga and simply sitting in silence and reflecting about your current state of affairs and your future. You’re going to feel more in control and less stressed when you take time to clear your mind and keep your negative thoughts to a minimum. A racing mind will quickly make you feel anxious, and you won’t be able to perform to the best of your ability at your job or attend to your loved ones and run a smooth household.

. Mindfulness can be practiced in even moments you may think are too small. For example, take the time to practice this relaxing art while making your cup of coffee in the morning. Open your senses and take five minutes to notice your environment, the process of pouring the hot water into the cup. Notice how your hands warm while holding the cup and the smell of the coffee. Why not treat yourself to luxury coffee to truly treat yourself? Ancient + Brave creates beautiful coffee with advanced nutritional formulas, which can enhance your wellbeing both mentally and physically.

Getting Enough Sleep

Sleep is essential to having a healthy mind, body, and soul, so this is one area you want to pay attention to in your daily life. Use an app to track your shuteye and make sure you’re getting enough of it each night. Stay off your electronics in the evening hours and participate in a relaxing activity instead such as going for a walk, reading a book or spending time with your spouse. Without a proper amount of sleep, you’ll be dragging yourself through your schedule and not be a very pleasant person to be around. Try to go to bed and wake up about the same time each day including on the weekends to help get yourself into a decent sleep schedule.

Practicing Work-Life Balance

Think about how much time you’re spending at the office versus at home and try to cut back where you’re spending the majority of your time to help balance out your days. Practice work-life balance by setting boundaries both at work and in your home and learning how to properly manage your time. You’ll be a happier and healthier person when you’re not spreading yourself too thin or trying to take on too many responsibilities at once. Find a routine that works for you and then try your best to stick with it and not give in to the temptation of working long hours and missing important family obligations.

Keeping Your Emotions in Control

Achieving emotional intelligence is one habit that is sure to promote a healthy mind, body, and soul. Letting your feelings get the best of you is setting you up to fail and likely embarrass yourself at some point. Work hard to keep your emotions in control and not let people or situations provoke you into acting out or saying words you’ll later regret. Train your brain in your downtime so that when you’re faced with a heated situation, you’re able to keep your cool or walk away. Avoid reacting immediately and instead, give yourself a minute to digest whatever is happening in front of you before you respond or act. Learn what your emotional triggers are and what to avoid that’s likely to set you off or put you in a bad mood.

Conclusion

Use these tips as a way for you to gain clarity and promote a healthy mind, body, and soul in your life. You’ll start to feel better and won’t experience as much stress or angst when going about your daily routine. Habits are difficult to change so remain patient with yourself as you begin to adjust and alter your behaviors. You’ll eventually notice how much better you feel as time passes and you likely won’t have any desire to go back to your old ways.

Photo Credit- Copyright:minervastock

Do you seriously need to be convinced that having a spa in your own home is a good thing?

Very well.

There’s nothing better than enjoying a warm spa treatment at the end of a long, stressful day at work. Sure, you could always visit a local spa, but why not use your own backyard and have a custom spa built there by companies such as So Cal Custom Pools and Spas?

A spa is the ideal way to treat ourselves, it’s true. But did you know that a spa has numerous health benefits. Numerous studies have shown that spa can help alleviate different conditions such as cardiovascular issues, insomnia, high blood pressure and chronic stress.

In this article, we’ll list the most compelling health benefits of having a spa in your own home.

It Helps Ease Stress

The stress we have to put up with every day can cause a number of issues including headaches, muscle tension, gastrointestinal issues, soreness and fatigue. Thankfully, a single spa treatment is enough to alleviate most of that stress and the symptoms it causes.

While just sitting in the hot water helps relieve the pressure in your joints and muscles, the therapeutic massage you can enjoy thanks to the hot tub jets releases endorphin, the hormone of joy, which acts as our body’s natural painkiller.

It Can Improve Cardiovascular Health

Getting a deep, long bath soaked in water up to the neck can give a tremendous boost to your cardiovascular system. Since water puts more pressure on the body. The cardiovascular system reciprocates by increasing the volume, meaning your heart works harder. This type of heart workout can help keep it healthy and more efficient.

It Can Cure Insomnia

In most cases, insomnia is caused by stress and as we’ve already covered, spa can help you get rid of it efficiently. Apart from that, it’s well known that hot water promotes relaxation, which is just what you need when you can’t fall asleep. The heat of the water increases your body temperature, and in turn relaxes your muscles. This makes it much easier to fall asleep and have a quality sleep too.

Spa Promotes Weight Loss

Numerous studies have shown that overweight patients lost around 3.5 pounds without modifying their diet or going through strict exercise regimes. Even though it seems impossible, the secret is in the hot water massaging your muscles, mimicking the effects of exercising.

Helps Lower Your Blood Sugar Levels

Similarly, due to the fact that a spa treatment can simulate the effects of an exercise, type 2 diabetes patients can use this to lower their blood sugar levels. If you soak in a hot tub for around half an hour, six days a week, your blood sugar levels can drop up to staggering 13%, according to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine.

It Can Alleviate the Symptoms of Arthritis

Anyone with arthritis knows how unbearable the symptoms of this condition are. According to the Arthritis Research Campaign, using a hot tub is one of the best ways to alleviate the pain in the joints caused by arthritis. Soaking in hot water can relax the muscles, reduce joint stiffness and help with their regular workouts and everyday activities.

Doing the same job day in, day out, can become extremely monotonous, and it can seem as though your mind having to be less active to achieve your daily tasks. If you are struggling to be as stimulated in other areas of your life too, over time, it could lead to reduced cognitive function later in life. Keeping your mind active is also important so that you can have a better quality of life in the present, as well as preventing you from forgetting where you left your keys 20 times a day. Here are a few activities you can do to keep your mind stimulated, without having to take too much time out of your day.

Take a class

It is important to keep learning at all times. Whether you want to read up on a new area of your job, learn a completely new language or study college-level physics, if your brain is regularly required to processes and store new information, it will help to keep your mind sharp. You may feel that you might not have enough time to fit in extra studies on top of work or other commitments, but as this is something you are just doing in your spare time, you can fit in studying where ever possible, as you don’t have a committed deadline.

Play an instrument

By playing an instrument, you have to access several areas of your brain at once. From memory recall to auditory and visual centers of the brain, playing an instrument truly requires you to think. You don’t have to become a perfect musician, but just simply reading and interacting with the music can be a very effective brain stimulator.

Strategy games

Strategy games require problem-solving and forward-thinking, and those are skills which you can never get enough of because they are needed for every aspect of daily life. There are some board games which were made for this exact purpose, such as Scrabble or chess, and these types of games also require you to outsmart an opponent. Alternatively, if you are looking for a task which also requires teamwork, then you could try something like the Boston Escape Room.

Try new things

Staying in a regular routine might make life a little easier, but it doesn’t help your brain to keep active. Trying new things stimulates new areas of the brain, as your mind is forced to process a lot of new information. There is no limit on what you can try, from new foods to taking your daily walk in a new area. Whatever you choose to do, it will still require a lot of mental stimulation, and it won’t even feel like you are actively working.

Read regularly

Reading is a great activity to keep your mind active. It doesn’t matter so much what you read, just that you are fully engaged in the book. It keeps the visual areas of the brain active, as well as the short and long-term memory, and this is an activity which you can easily just spend 20 minutes doing each evening, without having to disrupt your night.

Life is complicated and full of lessons, but that does not mean that it cannot be fun. Living your life to the fullest might seem like a distant dream, considering the great number of challenges and stressors that you have to deal with on a daily basis. When it comes to living a better life, you need to understand that you won’t be able to make significant changes overnight. There are unpredictable situations that get in the way of your happiness, but you can’t let those bad happenings get to you.

No matter what kind of challenge life throws at you, remember that there is a solution to every problem. Sometimes all you need to do is take a step at a time and stop trying to be a perfectionist. Other times, it is about learning how to deal with certain situations.

Sleep Deep

If you are tired, there is a high chance that you won’t be able to function at your full capacity. For that matter, you need to make sure that you get a decent sleep each night. Sleep is critical for people because it prepares them for another day. No matter how busy you are or how important some tasks are, you have to take make sleep a priority. Even if you can’t sleep, make a habit of going to bed and waking up at the same time each day. Over time, you’ll get used to this routine and see a real difference in your life.

Stress Less

Stress is a major factor that causes people to have a miserable life. Financial problems, toxic relationships or a stressful job take a toll on your happiness. Everyone is experiencing stress these days. However, there are simple ways of taking stress down a notch. If you are going through a bad period at work, sometimes it might be a good idea to leave your job and consider settlement agreements. Unfortunately, a lot of people experience discrimination, victimization or harassment at work, and this agreement takes some weight off your shoulders if you are particularly struggling.

Nurture Yourself

Instead of helping other people, it might be a good idea to make a priority of helping yourself. People often forget to take care of themselves, and over time that fact takes a toll on their overall mood and health. There are many great ways of nurturing yourself, yet the best way of doing that is definitely by finding an activity that you enjoy doing. It could be reading a book so that you can nurture your mind, taking a walk in the park for your mind and body or getting a sweet treat.

Slow Down

It is totally fine to say no every now and them. There are people who like to do as much as they can in their day, but that is not great for them. Even though it is good to be productive, by slowing down, you are able to enjoy little pleasures of life. If you take a little more time to complete some tasks, or if you take an extra day to visit something in your holiday, you’ll become a better person with a more enjoyable life.

Life is full of wonders that most people can’t see simply because they may be preoccupied with day to day stresses and strains. The key to remember is to not let stress and negative news get to you. Have this philosophy and your life will change for the better.

Image Credit

The importance of mental health and the challenges that some people have in this area are being recognized more today than, perhaps, any time in human history.  No longer is society viewing mental health conditions as something people should be able to just ‘shake off’ or a condition that afflicts only the weak or vulnerable.

We’re also becoming more aware of brain related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia that tend to have the effect of robbing the person of who they are.  With such awareness, and perhaps first hand experience of such conditions we’re all looking for ways to optimise our mental health and brain function.

It’s important to remember that everyone has the occasional moment of forgetfulness, where they might go upstairs but then can’t quite remember why.  These memory lapses can occur at any age, yet interestingly, we associate this forgetfulness with aging yet aging alone does not make someone forgetful – it’s usually a slippery slope of cognitive decline due to an organic disorder, brain injury or underlying neurological illness.

According to Harvard University, a number of studies have shown that you can reduce the risk of dementia with some basic habits:

• staying physically active
• getting enough sleep
• not smoking
• having good social connections
• limiting alcohol to one drink a day
• eating a balanced diet low in saturated and trans fats.

In addition to these basic health habits, you might want to consider the following prophylactic suggestions that are all scientifically proven to slow down cognitive decline and/or avoid it all together.

SUPPLEMENT

There are a number of supplements such as Ginkgo Biloba and certain oils (e.g. Omega 3, 6 and 9) that are well known for keeping the brain (and in particular one’s memory) functioning healthily.  Equally important is that you keep yourself hydrated, as your brain’s composition is predominantly water – which is why people often feel so hazy in their head after too many drinks the night before.

MANAGE STRESS

This might seem like a no brainer, but managing stress, is absolutely essential to your mental health.  Indeed, many people end up having to visit a cardiologist due to the damaging psychological effects of stress.  

Think of it this way, each time you have a particularly stressful incident that puts your psyche through emotional stress – this creates physiological stress in your body that can take its toll over time.  Indeed, you can see the effects of long term stress on people’s faces and bodies. If you want to have optimal mental health you need to find a way to manage your stress.

TRAIN YOUR BRAIN

There are a lot of ways you can keep your brain active, and the saying “use it or lose it” couldn’t be more true.  There are app based games such as Peak that are developed to stimulate a variety of brain performance attributes such as mental agility and memory.  That said, doing a simple crossword can be just as effective in terms of keeping the mind active.

The other consideration is that anytime you learn something new and expand your mind, the brain is like a muscle in that it gets stronger the more you use it.  Learning a language, for instance, is a great way to holistically train your brain.