“The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.” - Euripides
These days, life has become so hectic that it’s very easy for us to get caught up in just trying to “survive” each day. In survival mode you are basically able to accomplish what others expect of you — “others” being your boss, your spouse, children, parents, friends, and so on. While there’s nothing wrong with meeting others’ expectations, the danger in getting too pre-occupied with doing so, you begin to lose track of the most important person in the world: YOU!
Remember that you’re trying to meet other people’s expectations either because these people are instrumental in the goals you want to accomplish or because they are people you care about. In both cases, you need to make sure that you’re fully armed and equipped, so that you have a lot of yourself to share with others.
Here are 8 simple simple life hacks that you can do each day to get out of survival mode and fulfill these 4 key areas of your life:
MENTALLY
- Complete a challenging puzzle.
Apart from recent findings linking it to staving off aging-related dementia, doing a mental puzzle
early in the day benefits the mind like exercise benefits the body; it’s a strengthening workout, which, in the case of a mental puzzle completed early in the day, keeps the mind sharp and warms it up to prepare it to face the cognitive rigors everyone deals with daily.
- Get moving on something you’ve always wanted to learn.
Whether it be computer programming, knitting, or baking there’s always something you’ve wanted to learn but have never found the time for because of your daily preoccupations. You don’t need to wait for your next vacation just to get started on learning a new skill. You can learn it a little each day by slowly reading a book on it or enrolling in an online course that allows you to work at your own pace.
PHYSICALLY
- Do a little resistance exercise.
Resistance exercise is any physical activity that involves a significant amount of exertion by your muscles. While cardiovascular exercises like walking are certainly beneficial to the health, resistance exercises, even simple ones such as climbing up the stairs or doing push ups against a wall, have the added benefit of firming up your muscles and boosting your metabolism throughout the rest of the day — certainly benefiting your health and even your appearance.
- Replace unhealthy foods with your favorite fruits and vegetables.
Sometimes, leaving out unhealthy foods from your diet seems painful because the healthy alternatives just don’t seem to compare in flavor. But surely, you have your own favorite fruits and vegetables, so why not make an effort to use them to replace the unhealthy foods in your diet?
EMOTIONALLY
- Let someone know that they’re doing good.
There’s hardly anything that compares with sharing positivity and reaping your own rewards from doing so. This is what letting someone know about the good that they’re doing does for others and perhaps, more importantly, for you.
- Smile when negative feelings are trying to take control of you.
Negative thoughts will try to creep into your mind daily — they’re normal. However, they don’t have to consume you and take over your mood for the whole day. Often, the simple act of smiling, even forcing yourself to smile, brings positive thoughts to the surface and allows you to get back to your pleasant and most productive you.
SPIRITUALLY
- Start your day by thinking about one good thing you can do for the day.
People often forget just how easy and important it is to do good. For example, it doesn’t take a lot of effort at all to segregate trash so that whatever can be recycled can be reused and not add to the world’s growing waste management problem. But why is it that so few people get around to starting the habit? Usually, it’s just a matter of deciding to do good, and that’s what developing the habit of identifying a good deed to do each day fosters.
- End your day by writing down one thing you were thankful for.
The line “It’s not about having what you want, but wanting what you have” says it all. Very often, the feeling of being unsatisfied with what you have is brought about by not realizing how valuable the things in your life already are. If you make it a habit to write down one thing you’re thankful for each day, at that particular moment when you’re feeling unhappy or disappointed, glancing through your “grateful list” will uplift you and keep you solidly on the road to positivity and further self-improvement.
Check our 7 Chakra Reiki Healing Heart Bracelet to remind you that everything in life has to have balance. We are all tasked to balance and optimize ourselves.
