There are so many ways to live a healthier lifestyle. Which means there are so many different ways to be healthy on a day-to-day basis. This can be accomplished through our diet, physical activity level, wellness practices we engage in, and even the people we choose to surround ourselves with.
Being healthy is so much more than just what people see on the outside. It’s what’s happening on the inside and how we are choosing to care for ourselves that accounts for a large part of our health. This of course means that there are various ways you can properly care for yourself and start living a healthier lifestyle now. There are so many small steps you can take today to become the healthiest version of yourself.
I use to be someone who thought health was all about the physical. I use to think that you could take one look at someone and know within the first 10 seconds whether or not they were a “healthy” person. As I’ve gotten older and I’ve learned a lot more about what health really is, I’ve come to discover that you can’t tell whether or not someone is healthy just from the outside.
It’s so much deeper than that, which means that there are so many different ways you can in fact be healthy. It took me years to come to this understanding. Once I opened my mind to what health really looked like my whole life changed and so can yours.
If you’re ready to openly explore a few different ways you can achieve healthier habits and be the healthiest version of yourself every day, then check out my best tips to get started below.
Related Posts: How to Make a Transition to Living a Healthy Lifestyle
Related Posts: The Best Way to Positively Transform Your Life
Step 1: Get physical
The easiest way to start becoming a healthier version of yourself is to get up and get moving. There are so many positive benefits to engaging in regular exercise, but hey I get it. Exercise is not something everyone enjoys doing, and that’s ok. I personally view exercise as so much more than just spending time in the gym, or working out at home to popular workout videos. I believe you can get in a decent amount of exercise in any form of physical movement.
If the traditional way of engaging in exercise is not your thing there are tons of other physical activities you can do. Some of my favorite include walking, yoga, hiking, 1-minute activities every hour, cleaning, taking my dogs for a walk, or playing at the park with the kiddos. Whatever you prefer to do it doesn’t matter. Just as long as you get up and move every day.
Moving around gives us so much energy and it has a direct positive effect on our mental health. When we’re not active we tend to feel sluggish and fatigue all the time. We might be grouchy and impatient, and we lack mental clarity. Since our health is so much more than just the physical, it’s important that we are doing all that we can to care for all areas of our health.
Engaging in physical activities not only helps us care for our bodies, but we also are looking after our mental and emotional health as well. Start being the healthiest version of yourself by simply getting up and moving every day. Find something physical that you can do and actually enjoy doing that requires you to move your body for at least 15 minutes. Remember, it doesn’t have to be a traditional form of exercise. Just anything that will make you move!
Step 2: Become disciplined
The next thing to do to become the healthiest version of yourself is to become disciplined in whatever you are doing. A key part to maintaining healthy habits and a healthy lifestyle is having the discipline needed to keep going forward. I’ve seen so many people pick up a healthy habit and stick with it until they started to see some results. Once those results started to come in, they just stopped doing what they were doing and went back to their old ways.
Naturally all that hard work started to slowly fade away and before they knew it, they were right back at square one. In order to avoid this, you have to stay the course that’s you’re on. This can be challenging because once we start seeing results, the last thing we want to do is continue to do the hard work that helped us get them. We trick ourselves into thinking that if we pull back just a little bit, we’ll be ok.
But that’s not the case. You have to stay the course and keep going at it just as hard as you were in the beginning. My secret to doing so is by taking all the healthy habits that are working positively for me and creating a daily routine with them. I make sure that this routine is something that I can commit to and is filled with activities that I actually enjoy doing.
For example, I like to start my day with a 15-minute meditation session. Then I like to do a quick 15–30-minute workout followed by some intention setting. While doing my morning hygiene routine I like to do positive affirmations, then I’ll start my day. Right before bed I like to do some stretching and journaling. This routine helps me care for my mental, emotional, and physical health daily. These are also activities that I personally enjoy doing and have helped me stay the course with seeing the results that I desire.
This is just as example of how you can become disciplined with engaging in your health habits/activities daily. In the beginning it may seem daunting but it doesn’t have to be. Start with 3 or 4 things that you can do daily and slowly build from there.
Related Posts: 5 Habits of Healthy Women
Related Posts: How to Create Healthy Habits
Step 3: Identify your goals
My next tip is to identify your goals. I find it very easy to engage in my daily routine when I have a clear understanding of what it is that I want. This step is going to look different for everyone because we all have a different idea of what healthy looks and feels like.
Just like engaging in a specific activity for specific results, you need to be aware of what it is you want to achieve. What are your goals? Why do these matter to you? This is the part of the process where you take time to really dive deep and find meaning for why you want the things you want, and what you’re willing to commit to, to make it happen.
Before finding success with my version of a healthy lifestyle I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. I was constantly failing and being pushed 10 steps back because I wasn’t doing it for myself. Once I buckled down and got real with myself about why these things mattered to me, it became a lot easier to do the hard work. Then I started moving forward and every week I get one step closer to achieving one of my goals.
While this may seem like one of the easiest steps to do it can be one of the hardest. This is a step that will require you to be honest with yourself about what it is you’re wanting to change and why. This is not something that has to be related to physical changes either.
My goals were physical, mental, and emotional because those were areas of my life, I wanted to see a significant change in. Get real with yourself about what changes in your life you’d like to see and why those changes are important to you. Be as clear and specific as possible. Everything else will naturally begin to fall in place.
Step 4: Replace the old with the new
Once you have found physical activities that you enjoy, created a daily routine, and identified your goals, the next step is to start eliminating your bad habits. Up until this point you’ve probably been slowly adding more healthy habits than you’ve been getting rid of unhealthy ones. Which is fine.
Becoming a healthier version of yourself is a gradual process and takes time. Which means that in the beginning it can be overwhelming setting old habits free, but it is absolutely necessary if you want to continue moving forward with your goals. There are tons of old habits you can start replacing with your new ones. The best way to approach this is by looking at the healthy habits you have started doing in place of what you were originally doing.
For example, let’s say you’ve started doing yoga every day at 10am instead of finally starting you day. The old habit that you’d be letting go of is sleeping in late, and you’d be replacing that with a new healthy activity, yoga. Replacing the old with the new sets the foundation for how you plan to proceed with your new lifestyle. Growing into a healthier version of yourself requires you to shed old skin that no longer serves your higher purpose. When we evolve everything else in our life is going to follow that same pattern.
Therefore, it’s up to us to make sure we are doing all that we can to help these changes unfold in our lives. Letting go of old habits also sets the tone for how you will continue to commit to being the new version of yourself. When we try to mix old habits with new ones it never goes well.
You’ll find yourself making excuses for why you haven’t removed something from your life. Then that old habit will begin to serve as a crutch for you when it gets hard to follow through with your new habit. Then before you know it, you’ll be slipping back into engaging in the old habit more than you do the new one. Once this happens all your hard work will begin to fade away and you’ll have to work 10 times as hard just to get back on track.
Avoid this cycle by simply replacing old habits with healthier ones as soon as they happen in your life. It’ll make the process easier and more meaningful because you’ll only be tempted to do things that are going to push you forward.
Related Posts: Healthy Life Habits to Replace Your Bad Life Habits
Related Posts: The Best Tips for Dealing with Life Transitions
Step 5: Be consistent
Last but not least, stay consistent. This is where everything begins to come to a head and you start to see the payoff from all your hard work. Yes, we see the payoff in small results we achieve from our goals along the way. However, when we remain consistent that’s where the real changes begin to happen.
You’ll begin to see changes in your mental, emotional, physical, and for some people your spiritual health. Your life will begin to look different to you, your goals will begin to change, and even the energy you put out into the world will begin to shift. All of these changes will start to unfold because you will be growing into a better version of yourself daily.
This is absolutely something that you can achieve and maintain on your own, but it’s not always an easy process. Sometimes the lack of support, a great sense of feeling like you’re on the journey alone, or even simply having to push yourself through hard days can make you want to throw in the towel. But I encourage you not to.
If you feel as though you may need extra guidance and support on your journey to becoming a healthier version of yourself then I have a solution for you.
When I started this journey for myself years ago there was absolutely no one who was willing to provide the type of support, encouragement, empathy, and guidance that I needed. So, I coached myself through my ups and down and took everything that I learned and put it all in a coaching program so that I could help others do the same.
That’s what inspired me to create the Change Your Life for The Better coaching program. In this program we will:
- Work on increasing your confidence
- Create a consistent wellness routine
- Develop skills and discipline needed to maintain daily wellness practices
- Work on better caring for your mental and emotional health
- And much more.
This program is designed to directly target your mindset and shift it so that you can get focus, stay focused, and start living your most authentic and fulfilling life, all while growing into the healthiest version of yourself every day. You can learn more about this program through this link, or by sending me an email at Kimora@KimoraChanel.com.
Cushing your goals and creating a life you love is easier when you have an accountability partner and someone who is going to support and guide you along the way. Whether you go at this journey alone, with a friend, or with me just know you owe it to yourself to give yourself the gift of change.
Health is so much more than just the physical that we all tend to pay more attention to. While you’re making changes on the outside make sure you’re doing the same on the inside, because that’s where the real change happens. Trust me I know!
What changes will you make as you become a healthier version of yourself?
-Xo
Kimora