Finding balance in your life can sometimes feel so overwhelming. We dream of a healthy body, a beautiful family, eight hours of sleep, bubble baths, yoga classes, golfing five days a week, extended vacations and endless financial and material wealth, then abruptly awake to our real lives of too much work, not enough play and potato chips for dinner. Where does one start to connect the dream with the reality? How does one move from their current state of being to a more desirable state of being?
When it comes to finding more balance in your life, the start line is your own health. Why? Because by learning and living some very basic rules about how to take care of your body and mind, you give yourself the strength, energy, clarity and confidence to tackle the harder stuff. Your health is your foundation. A foundation is a support structure making whatever is then built on top of it stronger and more likely to last for a long period of time. A healthy foundation is the only foundation that can support a life of balance.
Here are five easy ways to strengthen your foundation thus giving you the strength, energy, clarity and confidence to start making other changes in your life.
1. Drink water. Water hydrates and cleans your body. Water boosts your brainpower by injecting it with some much-needed oxygen. Water wakes you up and keeps you energized. Stressful mind clutter can be easily cleared out with a tall glass of water, allowing for a moment of mindful connectedness to peace.
2. Eat whole foods. Whole foods provide your body with the most nutrients, vitamins and healthy proteins/carbs/fats. The more you feed your body good food, the more resilient and confident you become. The more resilient and confident you are, the more you are able to draw boundaries, declare your worth in terms of output (not measured input), and prioritize commitments over obligations.
3. Breathe. Not the short constant breaths that your body does automatically, but deep breathing, from your belly, through your body to your brain, and with an exhale like you mean it. Breathing not only brings clarity to your mind (anytime oxygen hits your brain en masse, good things happen), but it also brings relaxation to your body. Our bodies, in a state of relaxation, begin to remember what it feels like to feel good, and feeling good is what life in balance is all about.
4. Move your body. Exercise, walk, dance, swim, golf -- just get off your ass and move! Besides increasing your creativity and clarity (yes, oxygen to the brain again!), movement creates a sense of euphoria. The happier you feel, the more desire you have to move forward in the direction of your dreams. Sitting = stagnation. Moving = attaining.
5. Relax. Find time and activities in your day that make you feel relaxed and happy. Sleep, reading, TV with your partner, bedtime reading to your kids. Stress can kill you, so you need to find ways to relax. Yes, you do have time, and the more you take that time, the more balance enters your life.
How you do one thing is how you do everything. Making healthy choices for your own body and mind will lead to making healthy choices for your life.
If you do nothing else: Reread this until you fully get the point, and then start doing something about it.