#1 Make your bed
In general I am never in the mood to even leave my bed, it feels soft, safe and warm. At some point the time comes when you have to leave it for the day though, when you do make sure you make it nice, why?
- You know that after a hard busy day you will already have your perfect bed waiting for you, and how nice it is when it is not messy, but ready to ‘go’.
- It’s an easy first task which is quickly accomplished! Isn’t it nice to start your day by achieving something? It is, it will raise your motivation and give you a feeling of satisfaction.
- It takes so little time and effort but the room looks so much better! It leads you into becoming better in general about tidying up, folding clothes and cleaning.
- Less chaos in the bed equals less chaos in your life. Somehow if feels like making your bed clean helps keep your mind clean too. 😀
I was not always a bed making person, because of my other beliefs (let’s not get into it, John thinks I am mad) but now I have been doing it for a month and I love how our bedroom looks, it is clean, tidy and just feels great in the evening to come back to my favourite space in the house!
#2 Learn something new
You could say that we are all learning constantly, that we should be learning from every moment and each situation, but the reality is that we don’t.
Of course we could and we should choose to consciously learn at least one thing new each day. It doesn’t need to be a big thing like learning to play the guitar in a day (which really is not possible, believe me I tried). But why? Because we really benefit a lot from it, it improves our personal development, increases our creativity and even our problem solving, and at the same time it can also be fun and satisfying.
We gain all of this:
- Achieving a goal and gaining the power of new knowledge or skills.
- We feel better and more self confident, it is good for our mental health, achievements are the past of doing-well.
- Learning something new can be your personal time, something just for yourself, that might be far away from crazy family life when all your worries can be forgotten.
- It helps you to be more open minded and a better thinker. You might even discover your hidden talent as in daily life we don’t always have a chance to try something new each day. So by actively choosing to do so we can even surprise ourselves.
- With time you become a faster learner, you have more social interactions, relate with more people, build your self esteem and have more fun!
I don’t have very much patience so quite often I choose things I can learn quickly and that have a fast result like watching a TED Talk, maybe learning some new words or reading research articles.
Right now I am trying to set myself a routine and am learning some Spanish each day (improving my vocabulary and speaking skills), playing the ukulele (learning new chords, how to move fingers and so on) and leaning to write articles. As you can see during the last month I wrote quite a lot, actually writing teaches me more than I even realised – creativity, research skills, improving my English language, and expressing myself.
#3 Eat healthy food
A healthy diet is one of the keys to your physical and mental well-being.
Let’s look at it from a holistic point of view because what you eat has an impact on every area of your life. A healthy diet helps you to stay healthy, prevents diseases, helps you to be physically, mentally, socially and emotionally fit as well as full of energy. It also helps you to feel happy, enjoy your life and time with other people. Believe me, having a healthy diet doesn’t mean eating untasty food! Creating a healthy diet can be a fun and social activity as you learn new things about different ingredients, prepare new dishes and create your own recipes, invite your friends for dinners or go to different restaurants and discover unusual cuisines. Many healthy dishes actually take less time and effort to prepare, taste amazing and bring more exciting colours to your plate. It is not a hard task!
Right now we don’t have a big kitchen, many dishes or kitchenware so we need to be super creative to make exciting healthy foods with just the basic tools we do have. Sometimes we miss having an oven so much! Even when it is a challenge we want to eat healthily, not to waste food, to be as close as possible to zero waste (to avoid plastic). We are enjoying our food and the process of making it.
#4 Do 30 minutes of physical activity
Fitting regular physical activity into your days doesn’t mean that you have to become some amazing sports person.
It does mean that you should spend some extra time doing activities to increase your heart rate, get your cheeks nicely pink, and breathe a bit faster for at least 30 mins non-stop 5 days a week, or I would recommend each day! One of the most important things is to find an activity you like! You don’t need to run if you hate it, you could walk fast, cycle, swim, rollerblade, play tennis or basketball, maybe football or dancing, really whatever suits you. Maybe you want to try each day something new like boxing, badminton or climbing.
Exercise gives us so many benefits:
- Physical activity boosts our energy levels, so we can achieve more goals each day.
- It is a preventative tool for many diseases especially cardiovascular ones and improves our immune system.
- It is a great tool to cheer us up and lift our mood, which makes us better at social interactions as well as on our own (it is all about hormones).
- As our brains get more oxygen and blood circulation is improved our brain functions are better as well. Our metabolism is better so we can stay younger longer and it could be a good tool to control body mass.
If I am running I like to do it alone so I can have my own time and don’t need to worry that I am running too slow or too fast, swimming makes me feel very good and helps to relax. But I also like to play team sports like basketball or frisbee because I like to compete, and especially to win. 😀
#5 Set daily goals
Setting up some daily goals helps you to understand what you want to achieve during the day. That means you can prioritise activities and make sure that you have the time to get the most important things done. At the same time if things are written in a list then it increases your motivation to achieve them, helps to stay focused, and improves your time management. You could find tens of reasons why it is a good idea!
In my opinion it is important to make a to-do list that is actually possible to achieve, that gives you the chance to feel happy when your day goals have been accomplished. You will feel proud, energised and encouraged do do more. My suggestion would be to set your day goals the evening before so that you are ready for the next day, it is important to know what to expect and what the challenges will be. Of course you need to be ready for the unexpected or to do more if you can! Personally I like to write a list by hand so it makes it feel more real somehow.
So five small things in your day is not a lot, but I think it is enough for a great start and to help make your day better!
I wish for you to have a better day 🙂 ENJOY!
