Written by: Adele Chee, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We all know that having a healthy well-being is important to allow us to perform our tasks optimally and achieve our goals quickly.
However, are you taking the right measures to ensure that you remain in great shape? How are you monitoring the health status of your well-being?
Here are the 10 things that I practice to care for my body, mind and soul. They have enabled me to have the energy levels I need to be empowered and feel motivated to achieve my goals.
Physical health
Maintaining your physical health is not all about working out and torturing your body. It also isn’t about having a rigid or regimented lifestyle. On the contrary, it should be fun, exciting and energetic. Most importantly, it should make you feel good! Here are the 4 steps I take to stay physically fit and active.
1. Nutrition - Eat and drink everything and anything that your body needs to sustain itself optimally. Be mindful of substances that could harm your body. Never underestimate the value of adequate hydration, especially H20.
2. Exercise - Move your body in the way that every muscle in your body is kept to function as it should. Be careful not to stretch yourself beyond what your body can handle.
NB: Exercise can take shape in many forms ‒ from the conventional playing sports, going to the gym, joining choreographed classes to the offbeat doing household chores, including gardening and DIY projects. Even 15 mins a day is worth the effort.
3. Rest - Getting sufficient sleep is essential for healing and recovery. It is important to repair, recalibrate and keep every fiber in your body fine-tuned. So that, you feel refreshed to take on the next day.
4. Assessment - Getting routine health assessments done is one way to stay on top of your physical well-being. Besides ensuring that you’re in the pink of health, it could prompt preventive measures to be taken with early detection of certain illnesses and avoid you performing symptomatic self-medication erroneously.
Mental health
Having a healthy mind is not just about thinking positive and happy thoughts. It also isn’t all about battling stress and anxiety. A robust mental condition fuels the continuous stimulation of clarity and composure even in adrenaline-pumping moments. Here are 3 practices that could keep the wheels in your head well-oiled so that they can carry on turning smoothly even when going uphill.
5. Set boundaries - There are 2 frontiers to be mindful of: external and internal.
External: Have clarity of your ‘core’ ‒ values, strengths (capabilities and capacities), purpose, beliefs and vision. This will enable you to say ‘no’ to things and people when they don’t align.
Internal: When you have clarity of your ‘core’, recognising whether your inner voice is telling you the truth or not, will help you make well-intended decisions that serve you.
6. Adapt - Acknowledging that life is not carved in stone will help you appreciate that you are constantly evolving, either elicited from within or inspired from without.
Growth can only be found in change. Therefore, changing your mind is completely acceptable. This will allow you to flex and adjust to your environment more dynamically, especially as and when you get equipped with new information and experiences.
7. Have a reserve - Make time in your day or week to refresh your headspace. Your brain needs to have the capacity and processing power to function optimally. Essentially, commit to giving your grey matter a break. This can be by emptying your thoughts into your journal, doing some form of physical activity that re-centres you, watching a comedy, listening or playing music, singing… the list goes on.
Having said that, building mental resilience is not a one-man show. Fundamentally, you need to have the willingness to accept help. Then, establish a support network of people whom you can trust to ask for help from. Surround yourself with people who can create a space for you when you need one and hold up your vision for you when you’re too exhausted to carry the torch yourself.
Emotional health
How we think and feel interlinks so closely sometimes that the lines are blurred. Hence, we need to be more conscious of our thoughts and feelings as they are able to feed each other and on each other. This is important because the result of what we think and feel motivates the decisions we take to action on. Here are 3 practices you can do to maintain the balance of your emotional health.
8. Address your feelings - When you understand your feelings, you’re able to better manage them accordingly. This is why it’s important to first recognise your emotions and its triggers.
Sweeping your feelings under the carpet and pretending that the dust has settled will lead to a future “clean up” that could be too big to handle. So, it is best to tackle them as they come. “Never go to bed angry” is one sage advice I live by.
9. Process your feelings - Figure out how your feelings can best serve you. So that you can strategically channel your emotions to where it’s intended.
If you find yourself in an overwhelming situation, I recommend using the Circle of Control, Influence and Acceptance model to help you with this.
10. Deal with your feelings - Don’t dwell, move on. Knowledge without action is futile. Once you’ve identified how your feelings can be expressed in a way that best serves you, express it.
Whatever the consequence may be, own it and learn from it. That’s how you persevere and continue moving forward.
In summary, it is one thing to take the right steps to be in great shape, it is another to monitor and ensure that you remain in great shape.
“Prevention is better than cure.” ‒ Desiderius Erasmus.
Adele Chee, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Adele is a transition coach and mentor. Committed to seeing a world filled with thriving individuals living their lives authentically, she created the S.P.A.R.K.© self-alignment model and programme, to help professionals and entrepreneurs around the world leverage their strengths and overcome their fears to transition into having a purpose-driven life.
She believes that having clarity and alignment of one’s values, strengths, vision and purpose ‒ “core elements” of oneself ‒ are essential in enabling a person to take ownership and be the agent of their own life. This is because when you are certain of who you are and what you want, and they are in alignment, you will live your life authentically as you achieve ambitions that fulfill you.
Her idea of a fulfilling life is to live a life of choice where you can achieve your dreams without succumbing to the pressures of society. Her determination and resilience to experience this life aspiration see her realising her 3 life goals ‒ travel the globe, help others lead a better life, and write; alongside her successful 15-year international corporate career prior to starting her own coaching practice during a global pandemic.
