Most of us like things in tight little packages. We like organized lives. We don’t always have the time or impetus to organize everything, so we look for ready made ways of keeping things neat and tidy. Following is a list of ten ways to save your health. Nothing really new, just sensible things to organize your day when you don’t have time to do it yourself. Posting these things on the refrigerator may help. To get, or stay healthy you need to:
1.) Eat breakfast. Your body hasn’t had fuel for the previous eight to ten hours. It needs something when you first get up in the morning. Eat sensible things, like oatmeal, whole wheat bread, and whole fruit. Do not drink fruit juices, you will get too much sugar and not enough fiber.
2.) Do some stretching movements. Your body hasn’t moved much in the previous eight hours and it is bound to be tight. This is the time when you could injure yourself by over reaching or stooping to pick up something from the floor. Carefully and slowly stretch all the muscles of the body. Your stretches should be static, not dynamic. Static means that you slowly stretch to a position and then hold that position for about twenty seconds before returning to the start position. Never "bounce" because that will tighten muscles and cause you injury. Dynamic stretching means moving in and out of the stretch position. This will do nothing healthful for you.
3.) Organize your day. If you have a steady routine that works for you, okay. But if you just get up in the morning and run, helter-skelter, trying to play it as you go, then you are creating more stress on your body than is healthy. If you need to organize your day, try doing it the night before. Don’t get too detailed, just jot down the main things that you have to do and maybe the times that you have to have these things accomplished. The details will take care of themselves. Organization helps with stress reduction.
4.) Pace yourself. Not everything has to be done immediately. Some things take more time than others. Give each activity on your list the amount of effort and time that it needs – and not any more. You will find that you will have more time throughout the day and you will have more energy left at the end of the day.
5.) Never eat "on the run". The excuses are endless, no time, inconvenient, appointments, etcetera, but all excuses are nonsense. Always take time to eat slowly and enjoy healthy food. Restaurants are the last choice for healthy fare, by the way, so think about preparing meals at home. Eating under pressure only leads to stress, poor digestion, and fat. Make eating your meals a high priority. It takes only about twelve minutes to eat a complete meal from preparation to dessert. Certainly we can afford a little more – say fifteen minutes – to slow down and enjoy good food. A little planning goes a long way and your health will improve.
6.) Give your body about an hour a day of moderate exercise. This can be running, walking, weight lifting, sports, or other muscle building activity. Just think, out of twenty-four hours we can certainly find one uninterrupted hour to maintain our body. You don’t need a gym or fancy building, or club. If you can do the activity outside, so much the better, you will gain some fresh air and sunshine along with the exercise.
7.) Don’t multi-task. Tests have shown that people who try to do too many things at once do poorly on all those tasks. Do one thing at a time, and do it well. If you find that you have too many things to do in a day, you are probably taking on too much. Slow down, work easily and deliberately on the task at hand. At the end of the day you will find that everything got done that should have been done and you won’t be frazzled from trying to balance too many things at once.
8.) Enjoy life. Brighten up your attitude about everything in your day. Even the details can become fun if you look at them as interesting challenges. Notice the scenery, say hello to a person new to you, take time to breath. When we get too busy, or too wrapped up in our lives, we miss most of what makes life worth living. Remember that enjoyment of life has more to do with Nature and natural things than it does with the artificial life that most people lead.
9.) Set some goals. What do you want to accomplish today? What’s for dinner? These are short term goals. Include some medium range goals like: what to do this coming weekend, where to go on summer vacation. Some long term goals should be part of the package too. What do you want be when you grow up? How about going to school to learn a new profession? How will you change the world for the better? You certainly cannot get to a destination if you don’t know where you are going. Step one is to make a plan.
10.) Plan your work and work your plan. Some people are great at writing things down, making plans, and advising others of what they should do. There is no problem if these plans are put into action and accomplished. But sometimes these well thought out plans are just kept in the drawer and they are never completed – or started. This is called procrastination, and it is bad for you. If you can make one small goal and then complete it, you will feel great and you will gain confidence in your abilities. On the other hand, if you make a hundred great plans, but never put them into production, you will find that you will feel like a failure, your confidence will wane, and you will feel as if you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Come up with a positive goal and – just do it.