4 Science-Backed Healthy Habits For Self Care That Will Change Your Life

Self care is not just candles and bubble baths and something you have to earn. Self care is something that you should incorporate into your daily routine to make a habit.  When you care for yourself, you feel good.  Feeling good translates into having more energy.  When you have more energy, you get more accomplished resulting in productive days.  These productive days, boost your mood because you are executing the small daily habits that boost your confidence and make you feel good.  When you’re confidence grows, you gain momentum and continue to make time for self care.  These cyclical actions result in feeling good.  Here are seven science-backed healthy habits proven to benefit health.

DETOX

What we consume is so important. I am talking consumption on all levels: what we eat, watch, conversations we participate in, the people that you surround yourself with most. All of these impact your overall health and wellbeing. Healthy habits include consciously recognizing how you feel after each encounter and eliminating the things that do not make you feel incredible. Social media – Mute, unfollow, or block people. Eliminate any profile that does not make you feel great or empowered. Community – Recognizing your energy when you are around specific people is incredibly important in forming healthy habits. If you hang out with people who gossip all the time or complain, or negative, you are more likely to have that behavior too. If you hang out with people who empower, teach, and are positive, you will carry that energy as well. Figure out how you feel when you consume content, food, and conversations and make appropriate adjustments.

Meditate

Meditation is another healthy habits that is accessible to all. It is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state. Meditation does not mean you are in a room with a shrine and candles lit. It can also be an activity where you are focused on your breath and awareness – running, swimming, painting are all great examples of meditative practices. Meditation reduces stress, relieves anxiety, lengthens attention span, help fight addictions, and may reduce age-related memory loss. Find at least 10 minutes a day.

Take Deep Breaths

Breath work has a lot of healthy benefits. It allows you to process emotions, develop or increase self awareness, enrich creativity, increase confidence, gives clarity, and can boost immunity. If you are brand new to breathwork, start by breathing in through your nose for three seconds and then out of your mouth for five. If you are interested in this type of healthy habits, check out Wim Hoff Method. He is a leading expert in the benefits of cold water therapy. (I have taken a daily cold shower for the past year and a half. Read about the benefits I have seen here.)

Gratitude

I’ll end with one of my favorite healthy habits, keeping a daily gratitude practice. Practicing gratitude literally changes your neurotransmitters. Make a list of five things you are grateful for each morning and every night. They can be as simple as “I’m grateful my coffee was hot this morning” or “I’m grateful I have two matching socks that fit”. Your brain does not distinguish between a very big or small gratitude, it just fires blood into those neurotransmitters to change your predisposition. Where your focus goes, your energy flows. So focus on the things you are grateful for in your life.