There are so many areas of our health that need to be taken care of on a daily basis. These areas include our mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical health.
As you guys know I talk a lot about self-care and the power of wellness! It’s so important that we practice this on a daily basis for a couple of reasons.
For starters, it improves our mood significantly. If you’re ever having a bad day, or you feel a little down in the dumps, seriously engage in some form of self-care. Your mood will improve almost instantly.
Secondly, self-care helps to keep our mental health in check. There are so many things that can have a negative impact on our mental health. Stress and anxiety, arguments, reading about negative news, watching devastating events unfold on the news, and so much more.
Life is unavoidable which means all the things that come packaged with living life is unavoidable. Care for your mental health by actively engaging in self-care daily.
Most importantly self-care helps us keep all areas of our health in balance. When we do the necessary things to be happy, to be well, to keep our stress and anxiety levels low, we are doing our best to keep everything that makes us human balanced. And that’s not always easy!
Since my journey with practicing self-care and wellness consistently began, I’ve learned a few things about the way these practices positively impact my health. It’s really amazing all the benefits that result from practicing self-care, and from actively engaging in wellness practices on a daily basis.
So today I’m going to share with you some of my favorite wellness practices that have improved my health for the better.
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What is wellness?
Wellness is the active process of being aware of everything that you do on a daily basis. Whether or not this contributes to your health and wellness goals, understanding that the choices you make in regards to your health makes all the difference for the overall shape of your health.
I also like to think of wellness as a big part of self-care. Self-care is the act of actively engaging in practices that help you meet your emotional and mental needs. When you extend this practice to meet your spiritual and physical needs, you begin the process of actively practicing wellness.
Now that we’ve defined what I personally would consider to be the difference between self-care and wellness, let’s take a closer look at some of my favorite wellness practices to improve your health.
Exercise, exercise, exercise
I cannot stress this enough! I know it’s not everyone’s favorite thing to do, and there are times when we are just not motivated to get up and move our bodies, but it’s so essential that we do.
There are so many positive health benefits to exercising. Some of my favorite include seeing an improvement in my mental and emotional health, keeping my brain sharp and healthy, and knowing that little by little, and to the best of my ability I’m decreasing my chances of having health problems when I’m older.
There are many different reasons why we exercise and why we choose not to exercise. From personal experience I can honestly tell you that when I don’t exercise it seems so much harder to get through the day. This includes doing simple activities like running errands or even sitting down and reading a book for 10 minutes.
This is because my brain is scattered, my emotions are all over the place, and there are a million different things running through my mind all at once.
When I do exercise, I notice such a huge difference in my mood and the way I engage in activities. I’m motivated and inspired to actually set out and accomplish things. The best part is, I more easily adopt a positive mindset.
All this to say that while exercising is not always the thing we want to do, it’s something that we should be striving to do daily. Even if only for 15 minutes. It really does make all the difference for all aspects of our health.
Meal Prep
Food is such a vital part of survival. Just like water we literally cannot survive without food.
Everyone has their own relationship with food. As much as I would like to say that it’s so easy to eat healthy, the reality is that it’s not. Eating healthy consistently requires a great deal of discipline and planning in advance.
This is where meal prepping can be of great use.
Meal prepping essentially is exactly what it sounds like. Prepping your meals before you actually sit to eat them. What I love most about meal prepping is that it’s a really easy process, and while it can be time consuming it’s always worth it in the end.
Here are my top tips for meal prepping:
- Know what you are meal prepping for (lunch, breakfast, dinner, snacks, or all of the above).
- Make a list of what you will eat. If it’s a meal make a list of what that meal is, what you need to make the meal, and what day the meal will be eaten.
- Shop at least two days in advance before you begin your meal prepping. That way you don’t feel pressured to get it done as soon as you get home from the store.
- The day before you need your meals make a commitment to prep everything in advance. Essentially what this means is that you cook or prepare all your meals and then store them away in the refrigerator until you’re ready to eat.
- As the days come and go, just grab your meal, heat it up, and enjoy it.
As you can see it can be very time consuming but I promise you it will save you so much time in the future. Meal prepping is something that I try to do every week, especially when I’m working really hard to either maintain a certain weight or curb my eating habits.
Once you get into the groove of meal prepping it becomes an easy process, but it takes time. So be patient with yourself if it’s not something you’re consistent with right off the back.
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Participate in Activities
Even as a huge introvert I understand the importance of community. While it’s great and at times necessary to be alone and closed off from the world, it’s just as important to surround ourselves with others.
I’ve found that the best approach to doing so is to actively engage in activities with others. This takes away the pressure of having to be social for the sake of having a community of some sort.
There are tons of fun activities that you can do with others. If you are ever unsure of what activities to do, my advice is to start with activities that you actually like to do. You like long walks? Do it. Have you been dying to get into an hour-long yoga session? Call up your best friend and get it done!
When it comes to our health and wellness there’s no limit to the things that we can do. Something that I have recently found a knack for is going hiking. I’ve found that doing so helps to clear my mind, it gives me a good cardio exercise, and I’m surrounded by like-minded people so the experience is rather enjoyable.
While you don’t have to go hiking if this is not something you are interested in, I do suggest that you participate in some kind of activity that you find to be enjoyable, relaxing, and will help you improve your health in some way.
Give yourself time off
Do not be that person who works non-stop, never takes time for themselves, or who constantly gives their all to others and very little to themselves. You will experience burnout so quick and on so many different occasions that all areas of your health will begin to weep those consequences.
Avoid this by giving yourself time off. I know for most of us it’s so hard to step away from our families, our jobs, and any other responsibilities that we may have and focus only on ourselves. But I’m telling you guys, we have to do it more often.
And most importantly we have to stop feeling so guilty when we do!
Alone time is great but it really means nothing if we aren’t using that time efficiently. If you’re the type of person who very rarely ever gets time alone, you may not even know what to do with yourself when you have this alone time.
I was there once before and when it’s been a long time since I’ve given myself time off of any kind, I always find myself back in at the same place. So, to give you some ideas to use as inspiration and motivation to give yourself that much needed time off, here are a few things you can do:
- Do some yoga
- Spend time writing in your journal
- Do some mediation
- Work on your creative projects
- Write down a list of affirmations to tell yourself every morning
- Catch up on some much-needed sleep
- Have a mental check-in with someone you trust
- Catch up on some reading
This is just a few things that you can do with your free time. The ultimate goal is to take a break from the world and focus on loving and caring for you. Whether that’s 5 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, or a day. Give yourself time to only focus on you.
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Practice Mindfulness
By far one of my favorite things to do, practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the state of being present and aware of everything happening within you and around you. As great as it sounds, and as beneficial as it is, it’s not an easy thing to accomplish.
I’ve been practicing mindfulness on and off for a couple of years now. It’s a hard skill to master. It’s really something that you have to practice consistently. I’m talking all day every day, and if I’m going to be honest with you (which I am) it can take a toll on you mentally.
This is because you’re literally training your brain to notice everything without judgment. Without the necessary filters in place, doing so can be very overwhelming. However, practicing mindfulness is so beneficial for our health.
When you’re mindful of what you are eating, how you are caring for your body, the company you keep, the energy you put you out in the world, the kind of information you take in to process, and so much, you are aware of the ways all of it will directly impact your health.
Too much negativity can deplete you greatly. Too much positivity can blind you to reality. However, a perfect balance between to two will meet you where you are. Take in everything that is happening, notice everything around you, acknowledge all that you are doing, and adjust accordingly.
Doing so will bring significant improvements to your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. This is because you will be more aware of the things in your life that are working in your favor, and what’s working against you.
Naturally you get rid of the bad and replace it with something good. It’s almost the perfect recipe to literally being unstoppable at anything you set out to do.
Manage your time effectively
Lastly, manage your time effectively. In other words, don’t take on too much all at once. Instead, schedule your time to do work and complete specific tasks during a certain time of the day. Be sure to schedule in some down-time as well.
You do not want to burn yourself out doing things that you do not find enjoyment or fulfilment in. This will leave you with no motivation to do anything else, and will have a significantly negative impact on your health.
On a daily basis we need to be doing a number of things for great health.
This includes drinking plenty of water, exercising or at least physically moving our bodies for half the day, eating clean, getting plenty of sleep, and meeting other necessary emotional, mental, and physical needs.
If you don’t give yourself enough time during the day to be able to do all of things, plus more without feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you will make a habit of this.
The results? Poor physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. This can easily be avoided by not piling too much on your plate in one go round.
Conclusion
Wellness and self-care go hand in hand. While it’s easier to practice one of these over the other the reality is that we need to be practicing both in order to become the best version of ourselves.
These are some of my favorite wellness practices that have helped me maintain my ideal weight, journal daily, meditate often, and most important hold myself accountable to exercising daily. And I’ve seen so many positive improvements with my health because of it.
Self-love is self-care, and self-care is just a small (but important) part of wellness. The goal is to become the best version of ourselves. Wellness is where it starts.
-Xo
Kimora