Healthy living is different for everyone, as it should be! You wouldn’t force a dog lover to play with a cat, or a homebody to spend a month in Mumbai. You’ll have to find out for yourself everyday moments that trigger a content feeling. This could be a smile, an action, a poem, a handshake, anything you find fulfilling. I’m here to help you with healthy things to do today.
5 Healthy Things to Do Today
We all like to boost our mood and increase our energy levels, so I want to offer 5 easy and relatively quick healthy habits for today. You can let these habits grow or simply recognize them for what they do for you in a single day. All in all, I want you to have a great day!
Here are 5 healthy things to do today (and continue into the next day if you like).
1. Be a Kid
If it’s winter, throw a snowball at your neighbor’s fence.
If it’s spring, take a skip through the path in your garden with the sun on your cheeks, front or back.
If it’s summer, do a cartwheel (stretch first).
And if it’s fall, I think you already know to jump in a pile of leaves.
We work our adult lives to the bone, so sometimes we forget how we arrived at who we are today. I’ll catch myself feeling overwhelmed with small tasks on the grind train, reaching my goals but not taking a second to look out at the view.
Later that day, I’ll remind myself to jump off the train into a giant puddle because why not! Being silly and working hard can go hand in hand because life requires balance. So don’t forget to dream big.
Find what brings your inner kid out, whether that’s playing with your old pokemon set, reading a book you read when you were 10, or grabbing hold of a friend to run through a field. It’s in there, you know it too.
2. Drink Water
You may even skip right over this one, and I get it. But water helps harmonize your body. If you want to omit something you ate, rid of a headache, cool your body temperature down, or balance your body’s fluids, you drink that H2O.
One way to make it easier is to make it interesting!
- Add blueberries and mint to your glass so you can be fancy and get antioxidants. Go to Whole Lotta Yum to find cool recipes.
- Buy a unique water bottle (hydro flask/stainless steel) that will keep you sipping. It could be easy to carry, have a beautiful design, or have a quick pop-top for easy access.
- Drink a full glass of water right after you wake up, and before each meal (also helps if you’re trying to take in fewer calories).
Doctors recommend eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day, so starting this healthy habit will set you on the right track to something valuable today. Your body thanks you.
3. Clean Your Area
Clutter affects the brain, believe it or not. According to a study from the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, “having multiple visual stimuli present within the range of one’s view will result in those stimuli competing for neural representation”. So seeing multiple objects in sight creates a distraction for the brain. In even simpler terms, the more stuff around, the less focus you have.
I gathered this for the most part, but recently, I saw the clutter of someone else’s items in my workspace, and although I tried really hard to focus on my tasks I could feel my stress level rising. These distractions caused me to look around and wonder how to instantly fix it.
So clean your space! Even a quick tidying up will help the organization of your life (and others) and it’s an easy healthy thing to do today. While you may think you can have a messy room and still focus, the least you can do is tidy up for surprise visits.
4. Move
A movement is an act of changing your physical location. This is more than hitting the gym and gettin’ the gains because you don’t have to be an athlete to move your body in a healthy way. Here are some ways to move as part of 5 healthy things to do today:
- Walk to the end of the street and back.
- Take your animal to the park.
- Go for an easy jog.
- Ride the exercise bike you haven’t touched since you bought it.
- Twirl your arms in the air for 2 minutes and then shake your legs out.
- Do 10 of something: squats, crunches, push-ups.
- Dance to your favorite song!
Moving your body encourages healthier living because it can boost your mood, create stronger bones, and promote productivity!
5. Learn a New Skill
Learning new skills is one of the most energizing healthy things to do today. You can challenge your brain, for example! There could be something you’ve yearned to learn or a habit to hire.
A few quick but effective options include sewing, watching surf videos, starting a new book genre, a new language, or planting a tree in the backyard with your family. You can also read something out of the ordinary to spark your brain activity such as what are greenhouse gases?
During quarantine, I learned quite a bit about myself through new skills. I started knitting a washcloth (it’s the best I could do), learned the basics of French, and beat my previous running times, all the while becoming a stronger version of myself.
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According to Gen Kelsang Nyema, a Buddhist nun, being happy is a mindset; “we all want to have a good day, every day” but it’s a choice that comes from within.
After all, positivity is powerful. Reflect on one experience in the past week that curated contentment, adhere to that, and insert it into your healthy habit for today. You and the people around you will feel its positive effects.
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