What is Healthy Living?
Over the last two years, I have been asking myself questions such as “what is healthy living?” “how can I live a healthier lifestyle?” “what do I need out of my life to feel well?”
There are many aspects to healthy living and these two words ‘healthy living’ mean something different to each of us. As human beings, we create our own meanings and have our own perceptions of topics, situations, events, outcomes, others’ and ourselves.
In doing research, asking family and friends the question and reflecting on my own life. I think and feel it comes down to practicing healthy living daily, having support, maintaining, reflecting and improving – taking small action steps in our daily lives to become more mindful in how we live and being kind to ourselves. We all have a choice in each and everything that we do. We can choose to wake up each day to set an intention to practice healthier behaviours and actions on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level. These levels have different meanings to each of us, here are a few of my own meanings:
Physical Health:
Nutrition, hydration, sleep, exercise, hygiene, hair, skin, and nail care, mindfulness and awareness of behaviour/actions, self-care, and awareness of physical bodily sensations.
Emotional Health:
Self-care and love, understanding and managing positive/comfortable and negative/uncomfortable emotions/feelings, developing self-awareness, sleep, empathy, attitude, gratitude, living joy, connections, contribution and resilience.
Mental Health:
Self-care, Awareness and reflection of thought processes, open-mindedness, learning, biological factors, sleep, mindfulness, imagination, self-talk, attitude, connections, memories, growth, and contribution.
Spiritual Health:
Soul-care and love, inner truth/essence, faith, beliefs (religious and personal), values, ethics, principles, forgiveness, states of compassion and consciousness, connection to a higher source and all beings (minerals, plants, animals, humans and all sentient beings), sense of belonging, life purpose, experiences (deeper sense/reflection) and contribution.
Healthy living is also practicing self-care. It is checking in with yourself to see where you are at. Making the effort each day to consciously continue consistency in your daily practices as well as treating yourself to things you enjoy in moderation. If the daily practices and consistency is broken, it is okay… we are human after all. We are so often hard on ourselves and beat ourselves up if we don’t stick to something, but at the end of the day ask yourself this, “Am I helping myself by putting myself down and being unkind?” “Do you talk to others the way you are talking to yourself?” “By thinking negative thoughts about yourself, is that going to turn into a positive cycle or negative cycle?”
We need to consciously start becoming kinder, calmer but also firm with ourselves - Self-assertiveness. I invite you to have at think about how your lifestyle is and how you would like it to be. What small action step can you put in place today to make the effort to practice over the next month?
