The Top Five Things You Can Do To Improve Your Health This Year

It’s the new year, a time when people try to change their bad habits and improve their lives.  Personally, I think any day of the year would be a good day to start improving yourself, but hey, I’m not judging! 

We spent the last couple of weeks talking about ways in which you can improve your diet and add more exercise to your life, now we finish up these lists of tips with five other ways in which you can improve your overall fitness and health.  These are just as important as eating better and working out and they’ll help you lead a healthy life in 2009.

Get More Sleep - You know how you sound cool and tough when you tell your friends how you survived this week on just two hours of sleep a night and then pulled 24 hours straight of partying on the weekend?  Guess what, you don’t sound that cool.  Actually, you sound kind of dumb.  Your body needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night.  When you don’t get enough sleep you do stupid things.  You eat too much, you drink too much, you get stressed out and you make poor decisions.

Studies show that a lack of sleep has the same effect on your driving as being drunk.  Thankfully, we’re past the days when driving drunk was considered acceptable and even cool.  Now I wish we were past the days when sleep deprivation was considered tough.  Trust me on this one, there is nothing better you can for your body than getting a good amount of sleep per night.

Worry Less - Having a bad day?  Bad week?  Bad month?  You’re not the only one.  Trust me, I had a REALLY bad couple of months.  That’s unfortunate because stress can take a horrible toll on your body.  When you’re stressed, your body is constantly in panic mode.  Hormone levels are high, blood pressure is high, stomach acids begin churning.  When you’re stressed, your body starts preparing for a fight or flight moment.  It knows something bad is happening and it wants to be prepared.  That’s great if you’re about to be attacked by a saber toothed tiger and need to sprint your way to safety.  It’s not so good if you’re going to spend months and months like this because you just lost your wife or you’re afraid of losing your job.

Take some time to relax.  No, I don’t mean a trip to a beach resort in Aruba, although if that makes you happy and you can afford it, by all means, enjoy.  I mean spend a few minutes alone contemplating all the good things that you still have in your life, go sit somewhere outdoors and enjoy nature, take some time to meditate or just practice your breathing.  I can’t tell you exactly what you’ll find relaxing, it’s different from person to person, but I can tell you that taking some time away from it all to relax and lower your stress level is a must for both your physical and mental health.

If you want some tips about feeling better, try the following blogs:

Steve Pavlina
Zen Habits
Questing Soul
The Happiness Project

Talk To Your Friends and Family - And if we’re talking about stress levels, why not address one of the most common sources of stress by turning it into a strength?  Your immediate circle of friends and family has a tremendous amount of influence on your life.  They determine how you feel, what you eat, where you go out, when you go to sleep and a whole lot of other details in your life.  Don’t believe me?  Just keep a journal for one week and write down all the decisions you made that week that were influenced by friends and family.  I think you’ll be amazed.

Unfortunately, a lot of the pressure that friends and family exert on you can be very negative.  They can take you to unhealthy restaurants, not give you time to work out, harass you into making bad decisions and so on.  Why not reverse all this by having an honest conversation with your friends about what you’re trying to achieve?  Don’t hide things from them, tell them the truth and ask for help.  Trust me, it’s not as hard as it sounds.

Dump The TV - Repeat after me, “there is NOTHING good on”.  Yes, it’s true, there is absolutely nothing worth watching on TV.  You can get better news on the internet and most of the rest is crappy dramas, comedies that aren’t funny and reality shows that make me mourn the death of western civilization.  I stopped watching TV five years ago and I’ve never regretted it.  It’s a time sink that makes you stupid and why anyone would want that is beyond me.

Quit Smoking - Actually, the applies to all drugs, not just cigarettes.  I have no moral objections to drugs and honestly, I’m not even sure why they’re illegal.  If you want to destroy your life with them, be my guest.  However, be aware that this is exactly what you’re doing, you’re destroying your life.  You are paying other people for the privilege of killing yourself.  Does that sound smart?  And for what?  The momentary joy of that first puff of smoke?  That’s worth the shorter life, the inability to play ball with your kids and the fact that you smell like a chimney most of the time?

Guess what, no one thinks you’re cool because you smoke.  No one looks at you and says “oooh, look at that guy light up, he’s awesome and I want to just like him!”  We just wish you wouldn’t stand so close because you’re making it hard for us to breath.

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I think many people miss the fact that being healthy isn’t just about eating better and going to the gym.  It’s also about sleep, stress and a whole bunch of other factors.  You can’t just lead a happy life at the dinner table and at the gym, it’s something you need to do every hour of every day, even when you’re asleep.

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