- 30 Days of Healthy Living, Lifestyle Medicine, Living Lifestyle Medicine, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Stress Reduction
25th January – Do something you enjoy
Do something you enjoy. Just because. De-stressing, relaxing, chilling out… it sounds like it should be so easy, doesn’t it? Just do… well, nothing, right? But ‘just relaxing’ is not as easy as it sounds for some people. I am definitely not very good at doing nothing. And, ironically, the more stressed you are (and therefore more in need of relaxing) the harder it is to settle and turn off. This is because when we are stressed our brains are busy churning out lots of stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline for example. These stress hormones put our bodies into “fight or flight” mode so we are revved up, jittery,…
- 30 Days of Healthy Living, Living Lifestyle Medicine, Mindfulness, Relationships & Connectedness, Stress Reduction
18th January – gratitude
Be thankful A daily gratitude practice at the end of the day really helps me to reflect on the day and be mindful of the positive things that happened during my day. Our brains are hard-wired for survival, we are pre-programmed to be alert and on the look-out for threats – this was how we as a species have survived and evolved through the last 100,000 years. However, it does mean that we automatically tend to focus more on the negatives, and conversely we discount the positives as less important, so we are less likely to remember good things. In fact, we tend to remember 6 negative things for every…
17th January – start your day with mindfulness
Start your day with a mindfulness practice This is another one of my favourite daily healthy habits – making myself a little mental oasis of tranquility each morning helps me to be ready face whatever the rest of the day might throw at me. A morning mindfulness practice can fit into any routine. On the few days when I do have the luxury of time I might do a longer practice, but usually its a short 5 or 10minutes – and 10minutes can be just as good as a longer practice. There’s so many options, depending on what I feel might serve me best that day. I might choose to…
