Tag: relationships

How to stay healthy: 10 things to focus on everyday for your healthiest life.

How do you stay healthy?

1. Stay adequately hydrated. This will help you feel more alert and awake, it will help your body feel better (and more your joints lubricated), and it will help your kidneys.

2. Eat a healthy diet (varied color and type of fruits and vegetables each day; different protein sources each day). The cleaner you eat, the better you feel. Aim for a good variety so you aren’t missing any key nutrients. Take a multivitamin as a true supplement (it’s meant to add to your dietary success, not to be your dietary success).

3. Live a healthy lifestyle (minimize sitting; do meaningful exercise at least 30-minutes per day…do something physically and mentally challenging every day). Be outside – get some sunshine (vitamin D).

4. Maximize quality sleep. A high quantity of sleep can be helpful, but why sleep more than you need to? At that point you’re literally sleeping away time in your day, and time is the most important and scarce non-renewable resource we have. Focus on getting just the right amount of good sleep.

5. Interact with someone you care about each day AND treat them well. Be generous. It will help you mentally and make others feel good too.

6. Forgive yourself and don’t sweat the small stuff. In the grand scheme of life, it probably doesn’t really matter.

7. Be interested/learn something new every day. When you stop growing or getting excited to learn, you slowly start dying and becoming less interested.

8. Be involved with a good church (or other positive community). See, talk with, and interact with positive people in a positive environment often.

9. Spend less than you earn. Automatically set aside money to “pay yourself first” and invest. This will help you feel less financial stress and allow for you to spend on things you actually care about.

10. Have long-term goals. You should always be striving to improve yourself.

Impact and self-worth

Don’t get your sense of self worth from what you do for money or how much you have of it. Instead, think of what value you bring to those around you.

How will others remember you when you die? If you were to ask everyone you know what 3 adjectives describe you, what would they say? Would you be happy with how others think of you or do you need to start living differently?

Your impact on others will be remembered far greater than how much money you earned or what you did professionally…

Are you helping or hurting?

There’s a spectrum of helpfulness and hinderance. For example, helping (or not) around the house. If you don’t lift a finger around the house, obviously it is not helpful. But on the other hand, if you try to be Superman (or Superwoman) and do everything yourself, you are actually hurting those around you more than you think. Those who live in the household need to contribute to the household. If they don’t have any duties, 1) they won’t feel useful; 2) they will become unaccustomed to building good work habits; 3) they will not learn necessary life skills like doing laundry, doing dishes, taking out the trash, starting a lawn mower/knowing how to use it, etc. They develop a “learned helplessness” because you didn’t let them do anything.

In short, doing everything can give you a sense of accomplishment because you’re checking things off the “to-do” list, but it is hurting those you love in the long run. Another unintended side effect is you will often build a resentment towards that person (“why aren’t they helping me?”)

Just as with everything else in life, there is a balance between doing, delegating, and eliminating. Don’t do everything. See if your partner likes certain chores more than others. Maybe he/she likes loading the dishwasher and you don’t. Great! That can be their chore. Maybe you like folding laundry, but not putting it away. Ok! You can split that task up. Get your kids involved too. Yes, their life should involve a lot of playing, but if you don’t teach them to have responsibilities then you aren’t doing them any favors when they eventually enter the real world.

Listen

Learn to listen. You can’t listen if you’re talking at the same time as the person who you’re supposedly conversing with. You can’t listen if you’re only thinking about what you’re going to say next. For conversation to be meaningful, you need to talk and listen.

Dr. Gary Chapman (author of The 5 Love Languages) writes that “Listening begins with attitude. If I choose to believe every person I encounter has inherent dignity and value, meaning their thoughts and feelings are important, then I am prepared to listen. If I think the world revolves around me, that my ideas are all that counts, then why should I listen to anyone else? Many people don’t have a communication problem; they have an attitude problem.”

We can all work on improving our attitude! Part of having a good attitude includes being generous (not just with money, but also your time), being optimistic (yet realistic), and loving/caring for others.

Facing difficulties

If you are afraid, that probably means you should do it.

What are you afraid of? A difficult conversation? That’s probably going to happen regardless of whether you try to avoid it or not. And if it doesn’t happen, what are the odds that it actually works out in your favor? Instead, the opposite may be true and you have to live with the regret of not acting or of not saying something just because you didn’t want to feel uncomfortable in that moment.

You will gain more respect for yourself and others will have more respect for you if you face challenging moments head-on. If you are the type of person that always runs away when things get difficult, do you really think that will make you feel better about yourself?

Everyone has fears. But how we respond to those fears is what makes the man/woman. It takes courage to face your fears. Will you answer the call?