“To ensure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life” ~William Londen
Everyone wants to live a healthy life. A healthy life means, no physical, emotional, or mental sickness. Many people would give their all just to have that kind of life. However, truth is, you do not need to give your all to live healthily.
Of course, you are going to make sacrifices – no good thing comes easy, you have to show that you are deserving of it – but the sacrifices are not much.
All you need to do, really, take out a few of the elements that constitute your current lifestyle and inculcate some healthy ones. In this article, I will be giving 10 simple healthy tips for everyone to adopt to start living a healthy lifestyle.
First, what is the meaning of a healthy lifestyle? A healthy lifestyle is one that, despite being fun and not-so-stressful, is not harmful to your physical, emotional, or mental stability. So many people walk around with several health challenges that keep limiting them.
Sometimes, you do not get to see these sicknesses physically, but they are there. Mental health is one of the most integral of every human’s existence. Sadly, it is one of the most ignored too, despite being talked about every day in the media and a lot of healthy lifestyle articles on the internet.
A lot of people look healthy from the outside, but deep inside, they are rotting away. They carry along with them, worry, depression, overthinking, and many more kinds of mental illness and do not care how much it’s tearing them apart, as long as they look healthy.
I remember that during my days in college, I was struggling with one of my subjects. My professor was a tough man and so I needed to up my game but things were not just working. And so, I started overthinking. Randomly, a thread of questions about my results would flood my mind and it was messing up with my mental stability.
Shockingly, no one noticed! I was very playful and jovial, and so it was hard for my friends to notice. Someone eventually noticed and I opened up to her. Our session together ended with me crying, but it felt good getting everything off my mind. That single action is one thing many people are afraid to do. They bottle up so much inside them, yet still go around smiling and being the life of the party.
If you are one of those people, then this article is definitely for you. And of course, you are not alone in this because at the end of the article, I will give you an exercise that should serve as a good start.
Ensure that you read through this article and follow the tips carefully. They may be hard to adopt at first, but with time and consistency, you will be able to do them. Grab a bar of chocolate and let’s get on with it!
1. Practice Random Acts Of Kindness
Random acts of kindness warm your heart. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to live healthier. Personally, I feel good when I show kindness to someone. My mood brightens up seeing someone happy because of my actions. When you see someone in need, it’s best that you help them.
Now, when you help people, they are not the only ones enjoying the benefit, you are too. I am a strong believer in the aphorism that says “what goes around, comes around”. If you show random acts of kindness to people, someway, somehow, good things will find their way back to you.
Also, that good feeling that comes with making someone happy is good for the mind. However, I must throw in a word of caution here: do not make yourself inconvenient because you want to be kind to someone. If in the process of being kind to someone, you find yourself being hurt, then you should stop as that is against the essence of being kind in the first place.
2. Practice The Art Of Appreciation
Being grateful for how far you have come is no doubts, one of the best ways to live healthier. How often do you express gratitude for how much you have achieved? Are you honest enough to appreciate how far you have come?
You might think that your life is not going well right now, but you are better than someone else, so, in the process of becoming a better person, ensure that you appreciate yourself while reaffirming positivity.
Get a journal, (you can grab a copy of the Life Compass Guided Journal) there are several life-changing exercises that will enable you tap into your higher self and create a healthy balanced life be it physically, mentally and emotionally.
3. Walk Regularly
Do aerobic exercises. Aerobic exercises help to cleanse the air you take in. They have been proven to have a lot of benefits to the body. They help to reduce the risk of chronic diseases, anti-anxiety and mood-enhancing effects.
To live a healthy life, you are advised to aim for a total of about 30 minutes of brisk walking every day. This has been proven to be one of the best ways to live healthier.
4. Get Enough Sleep
Respect your sleeping time. In one of my most recent posts, I wrote extensively on the need for having a bedtime routine. A bedtime routine helps you plan out your time properly so you’ll be able to get enough sleep.
There is no short cut to this: if you really want to live a healthy life, you must ensure that you get enough sleep. To do this, have a specific time for shutting down all activities. Take away your devices and sleep. You cannot trade the importance of sleep for anything else. At the end of the day, your sleep is important to the healthiness of your life.
Personally, I take my sleep time seriously and it’s been really helpful. Living a healthy life is an intentional decision and making this decision is one of the best ways to live healthier.
5. Avoid Bad Habits
This is more focused on your mental health. Bad habits will always bounce back and in the long run, and have negative consequences on your mental health. Bad habits hinder you from progressing in life. They push away your friends and loved ones and if you do not expunge them, they become an intrinsic part of you.
Bad habits are habits that are toxic to you, your reputation or loved ones. They give people bad impression about you and those impressions become the lenses through which they view you. So, if you must live a healthy life, you must look inwards and rid yourself of every form of bad habits.
6. Invest In Quality Time With Your Family
This is another important way to live a healthy life. Being at peace with your loved ones takes time. And that includes investing in quality time with you them. There’s an indescribably satisfying feeling that comes with being at peace with your loved ones.
No one has your back like your family and the least you can do is to always be there for them when they need you. Apart from the mental and emotional health that this provides, it always has some scientific benefits.
This is because when you spend quality time with your loved ones, you tend to be happier and that feeling of happiness triggers our body to secrete some hormones which helps to improve the general wellbeing of your body and is one of the best ways to live healthier.
7. Enjoy Your Own Space
Your space should be the most valued thing to you. There’s this bliss that comes with knowing you’re safe under your own mental umbrella. This is why you have to be careful not to allow any toxic person into your space.
You are different from everyone else. As much as you can, ensure that you enjoy your own space. Be comfortable with what you have and if anyone or anything makes you feel inadequate or uncomfortable, waste no time in cutting them off.
You should prioritize self-care and the fact that you care for yourself does not mean that you are selfish. Being comfortable in your own skin, apartment and so on, is one of the best ways to live healthier.
8. Always Smile
This is one tip I have come to adopt in my more-than-twenty years of living. Smile as often as you can. Life is too short to be walking around with a frown like you own the biggest problem in the world.
9. Eat Healthy
As much as you can, do well to eat good food. Eating good food means that your diet is balanced and when your diet is balanced, you will definitely live healthy. One healthy lifestyle fact is that the way you eat has a huge impact on how stable your physical health will be.
10. Stay Hydrated
This is one of the greatest natural health tips. Scientists believe that water makes up two-thirds of the human body and performs so many functions. Some of the functions include acting as a solvent, a carrier of nutrients, a temperature regulator, and is also responsible for body detoxification.
When you are constantly hydrated, your vitality and energy levels stay top-notch. Aim to drink enough water to keep your urine a pale-yellow color throughout the day.
So, there you have it: 10 simple health tips you should inculcate into your lifestyle to ensure that you live a healthy lifestyle. These are simple health tips for everyday living and can also serve as healthy lifestyle tips for students.
Again, living healthy is not a huge task, however it requires discipline and the ability to forgo certain things. Most importantly, it requires that you condition your mind to be deliberate about what you eat, see, wear, say or touch. Truth is, living a healthy life covers a lot of areas and so, one must be careful so as not to fall victim to one area while doing well in other areas.
So, dear reader, what are you doing to ensure that you are maintaining a healthy lifestyle? Are you conscious of what you eat? Is there any tip you would like to add or take out of my list? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.
ACTIVITY PLAN:
Go to page 22 of The AfamUche Self-Development Planner (Here: Goal Chaser) and fill the elimination board in order to get an insight on the negative energy and habits that you need to remove to live a healthy life. Ensure to be as honest as possible.
Remember, no one can know more about your reality than you do. And so, you must ensure that you are very thorough with your writing.
You can also fill the blank box on page 21. Again, sit back, reflect and be as honest as possible. Do these two exercises and see how much you are not doing in your pursuit of a healthier life.
FOR YOU:
Hey there! Thank you for reading this article. I am certain that you must have learned a thing or two regarding ways to live healthier.
Remember, living a healthy lifestyle requires that you inculcate discipline into your life too. Try as much as possible to stick the rules guiding your living, no matter how tempting other options might seem. You are on a journey and you must stick to the map. Feel free to give me feedback regarding your decisions and actions.
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