7 Habits To Adopt For A Better Quality Of Life

If you’ve recently been feeling a little out of sorts, then now is the time to make steps towards improving your quality of life. Your quality of life is about more than just your living standards and your income alone. Actually, having a good quality of life extends far beyond these factors and includes mindfulness and the attitude you choose to adopt in relation to what’s happening in your life. You have to want to improve your quality of life to get the ball rolling to start with. In order to live a better quality of life, the initial drive to want to better yourself has to come from within and your interest and willingness to continue undertaking these habits has to be maintained.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness means being acutely aware of yourself and your position in life. Practicing mindfulness helps to ground you as you’re conscious of your experience in the present moment and accepting your feelings, your thoughts and your sensations. Essentially, it involves being quiet and focusing on how you’re functioning in the present moment. Mindfulness can be harnessed as a therapeutic technique to calm you down. You can adopt this habit by remaining aware of your own processes in stressful situations and remembering that the stress or strain you’re feeling is only temporary. Spirituality can be used as a way of soothing difficult experiences also. For a better quality of life, you should try out different ways of thinking and approaching adversity and evaluating what works for you. Spirituality can help bring attention to your position in the universe and your relationship with God, learn more about spirituality and discover whether it could help you towards improving your quality of life.

Accept Your Fallibility

Improving your mood isn’t always possible, especially if you have had a very long and draining day. Having said this, however, you can improve your mood by altering how you think about what’s happened and accepting it. For example, if your day involved being reprimanded at work and subsequently you’re feeling deflated, then remember that it’s happened now and you can’t go back in time to fix your mistakes. Accept that you’re not infallible and tell yourself that your slip up was nothing more than a one-off. Improve your mood by thinking positively and regretting to focus on past mistakes you’ve made. Learn to forgive yourself and understand that everyone makes mistakes and misses the target sometimes.

Make A Conscious Effort To Improve Your Diet

What and how you eat affects how you feel, so you need to be making every effort to make the right choices. A sensible choice is choosing to eat a piece of fruit instead of a chocolate bar, and not eating pizza for dinner each night. Improving your diet takes some reading around the subject and educating yourself about health and nutrients. To improve your diet, you must first get to grips with any intolerance you might have, so that you can avoid unnecessarily upsetting your digestive system. Once you know these, you can begin shaping your diet plans. A healthy diet is one that is rich in fruits and vegetables, complex carbohydrates and good clean sources of protein such as free range eggs, tofu, and peanut butter. Healthy fats play a significant role in keeping your body healthy and energized. The best forms of fats can be found in nuts, avocados, and coconut oil.

Meal Planning

If healthy eating is relatively new to you, then sticking to a plan is going to help you stay on track instead of snacking in-between meals, losing your way and regressing back to your old bad eating habits. Make sure you don’t come off course by drawing up a weekly meal prep plan and freezing away the meals you make in preparation. Plan what you’re going to eat for the week, and you’ll save yourself time and effort in the long run. You can prepare a large batch of vegetable stew, for example, and have servings of it for your lunch over the course of the week.

Early To Bed And Early To Rise

You’re most productive when you’re energized, so it makes sense to wake early and begin getting on with your day. For a better quality of life, you should limit how much time you waste. Of course, you need the time to relax in the evening, but if you’re just sat around watching television, waiting for a reasonable time to get to sleep, then you’re not using your time efficiently. Get into bed earlier than you usually would, and you stand an excellent chance of getting to sleep more quickly. Remember to limit the use of your mobile and other stimulating electric items in the run-up to bed, as your brain will have a harder time trying to switch off. Having some time to complete tasks in the morning is good for your wellbeing as you’ll simply have more time to get your home in order before work.

End Toxic Relationships

If you’re in the habit of entertaining a toxic and harmful relationship with someone, then have a serious think about whether you want or need it to continue. If the relationship is with a close family member, then instead of halting all contact and completely severing ties, consider limiting your exposure to them. For the sake of your own mental health, you shouldn’t have regular contact with individuals who don’t make you happy and confident.

Set Aside Time To Wind Down Every Night

Begin by setting one hour aside every night to wind down and get ready for bed. This hour should be free from distractions such as your mobile phone and the television. Instead, use this hour to look after yourself in one way or another. Think about taking a book into the bath with you so that you’re learning and reading while relaxing and washing. Winding down before getting into bed is conducive for sleep as you’re removing the stress from your body before laying down. Try waking up earlier and finishing tasks during the time before work as opposed to after and use this time to relax.

Thanks to Ana Apostolska