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You wake up, you brush your teeth, you change your clothes, you brush your hair, maybe you make your bed and you’re outside. Your nighttime routine probably depicts the same thing, except you’re messing up your bed without doing it. Have you ever considered doing something extra before bed to make your skin healthier the next morning? Like maybe in the morning you start cutting an apple for breakfast instead of going out without breakfast at all. This simple thing can benefit your health in the week you do them. After all, small changes can make a big difference.
This list includes things you can do every day to improve your mental and/or physical health. You can do it any time of the day, seconds after waking up or just before you fall asleep. You can even do a few during the day while you work! These things can possibly have great impacts on your health in both aspects. I hope this list helps you and I wish you the best!
1. Meditation
Believe it or not, meditating for just three minutes a day can have a big impact on your mental health.
Stress can be a serious thing if not managed wisely. Sometimes there are things you can do to minimize the effects, decreasing your chances of it becoming serious. Meditation is one of them. It calms the mind, allowing your mind to wander through a land filled with unicorns and rainbows. The after effects of meditation can last for quite a while, unless someone else does something to crumble your perfectly peaceful mind.
According to one of my references, studies show that meditating for 10 minutes is like giving someone an antidepressant if they have symptoms of depression. Antidepressants balance everything in your brain, relieving your symptoms, so if meditation helps depression, it also does the same.
Meditation in itself is good exercise for your overall mental health. So even if you don’t have an underlying mental illness that it can help, meditation is a great thing you can do every day in less than 10 minutes.
There are a million apps to help you meditate. Simply turning on a meditation song will take you straight into the state of relaxation depending on how easily you can be brought into the meditation process. There is, however, a tool that I recommend using if you are not someone who easily falls into this state of relaxation. I received it as a gift once and am grateful to have it to this day. His name is “Muse”. You can find it on Amazon and it’s amazing!
Click here for the reference!
2. Make your water cold in the morning
You’ve probably heard that cold showers are new to a website somewhere or while you were doing a project and I’m here to say it again. A cold shower in the morning is a wonderful experience. I tried it myself for a few mornings and for the rest of the day I was elated. I was more alert, motivated and ready to face anything that stood in my way. These days I usually take showers in the evening, but when I do in the morning I always turn them on cold at first to relax in them and am more grateful when the water becomes heated.
Cold showers are actually known to have a connection with your immune system. In a way, showers can indeed decrease your chances of catching illnesses like colds and gastrointestinal illnesses.
From my personal experience, I can confirm the following fact which I will say to be true. Cold showers not only have positive effects on your physical health, but also on your mental health. Let’s say that before school one day, instead of boiling your water, you turn it to a snow-like level. It is proven to increase your willpower. I have to be honest, I haven’t fully experienced all of the impacts I list. It’s only because it takes a lot of willpower to endure a whole cold shower, washing your hair, and cold everything.
Doing something so small can change your life forever.
Click here for reference!
3. An apple a day keeps doctors away!
I may be following this rule a little too literally. One of the only two fruits I like is the apple, so I usually eat an apple a day. So far, the saying is true (to me at least)!
No research is needed for this number as fruits and vegetables are needed daily in our body. I knew it had to be a number because no fruits or vegetables all day is not a good habit to follow. The consequences of that are horrible, so I’ll just move on.
You can’t eat a packet of strawberry gummies and consider your serving of fruits and vegetables for the day full. Cut up a real banana and an apple and make a fruit salad! Or buy a big pack of blueberries at your local grocery store and snack on them all day! Any fruit or vegetable will do! Vegetables are a bit better than fruits, so if you have them, snack on them too!
Not much to say, next issue!
4. Start a journal!
Journaling is a wonderful way to connect with yourself. It’s like meditating but much more expressive. You can write about anything. From the color of your shoes to the latest news from your news channel. Writing in a journal or journal every day is great for many reasons and I will list a few.
Writing handwritten stuff is always good. Every day, more and more people are giving up their pens and swapping them for a laptop. Learning to type is what we’re going to learn in kindergarten in 20 years. Hell, I haven’t handwritten in a while with this whole coronavirus ordeal. I tried in April, but couldn’t keep up the motivation to do it. If you are a motivated and respected person, you should start a journal.
Expressing yourself is something everyone does every day. When you talk, play an instrument, sing a song, even when you eat, but you can’t express everything you feel to everyone you know. Some things you keep to yourself or in this case between you and your journal/diary. It helps your mental health in countless ways, including some meditation column impacts.
5. Go for a walk/run in place
I had to include at least one physical health item in this list, so here goes.
Going for a walk is a great way to get the amount of daily exercise you need. To take some fresh air! Get out of your stuffy room typing on your laptop and jump outside! While getting some fresh air, stroll around the block. If you have a dog, this is the perfect excuse to walk it every morning. You can tell yourself every day that it’s for them! It’s the perfect amount of motivation you need.
If you can’t go out or your parents won’t let you go out, at least do the exercise part. Run on the spot, do push-ups, squats, learn to do the splits! There are dozens of tutorials online to learn!