Key to true health: A healthy mind and a healthy body always go hand in hand
When you struggle with physical symptoms, it is bound to impact your mental health as well. The key to true health is to focus on both.
When it comes to feeling great health, it should include energy, mental equilibrium, great sleep, greater resilience to stress, and amazing creativity. Whenever you struggle with challenges involving your mind and stress, it will impact your physiology.
When you struggle with physical symptoms and conditions, it will impact your mental health. This is why the key to true health is to bring some focus into supporting a healthy body and working towards a healthy mind.
What is a healthy mind?
One thing that cannot be changed is stressors all around. Stress can be electromagnetic, which is something that is a part of the information age. Stress can be physiological from nutritional deficiencies or chronic inflammation. Stress can be caused by poor sleep.
The stressors might vary for each one of us, but we do not live in a bubble, and therefore we can only work on our resilience. Resilience is something that can be changed dramatically in spite of the level of stress. It might not seem possible, but it is true.
Those who sleep poorly, have nutritional deficiencies, and poor blood sugar balance struggle with resilience. Time is a big factor when it comes to a healthy mind. Some tweaks or hacks can support a healthy mind, one that is balanced and calm. What are some of the hacks that can help you keep a stable and healthy mind?
Handwritten lists
Even amid the number of apps and planners out there, there is something unique about a handwritten to-do list. I will admit that I also use a planner, but it does not come anywhere close to my quickly scribbled lists.
Image source: Shutterstock
There is a wonderful practice of scribbling your list in five minutes and putting down whatever comes in your mind the moment you wake up. This allows you to maintain clarity and great awareness through the day since this activity helps you dump everything on your mind at the get-go.
It is time-saving, releases clutter within your mind very early in the morning, and taps into your subconscious mind when you are just moving from sleep to wake.
Do a 30-minute dance before you start your day
You might wonder how taking 30 minutes to dance in your room is time-saving. This goes back to ancient wisdom. One of the reasons that your mind feels unhealthy and cluttered is restless energy.
In ancient scriptures, there is an analogy of energy. When you look outside you cannot see the wind. But you can see the restlessness of the wind by how vigorously the leaves flutter on the trees.
The energy within your body is exactly like the wind. You cannot see your energy. But you can see the impact of that energy as to how cluttered, restless or unhealthy your mind feels.
In fact, taking 30 minutes in the morning to dance in your room without anyone around, where you can express your moves freely, burns away the restless energy within yourself.
What happens through the day is much better productivity and focus that saves time in everything else that you do. It is important to do this without anyone else in the room so that you can really let go!
Image source: Shutterstock
Create separate lists on your notepad
I found that the one year when I did not make separate lists, my entire year, including every month and every day, was filled with uncertainty, chaos, and lack of vision for greater goals. Separate lists should be written out for main things to do the whole year, what to do for each month as well as breakdown for each category, which will be unique to you.
You cannot imagine how much time this saves through the year in terms of direction and planning. Someone asked me how did I manage so much through the day? It had to do with this very simple time-saving practice.
I also encourage you to get a colourful book to do all of this, which will support your creativity and inspiration.
Spend five minutes with a loved one sometime during your day
Not only is it highly possible to fall into the trap of not spending time with a loved one as you get overwhelmed by the list of things to do, but it is also very easy to not realise the value of this very simple five-minute practice. One of the biggest reasons for an unhealthy mind and poor resilience to stress is cortisol.
Cortisol is your stress hormone, which is the physiological reason that you feel more stressed. Oxytocin is a peptide hormone and neuropeptide, which is produced in your hypothalamus and then released by your pituitary. It plays a key role in breastfeeding, sexual reproduction, the birth of a child, a postnatal period, and in overall social bonding.
The fascinating thing about oxytocin is that is shares an antagonistic relationship with cortisol. When you spend five minutes hugging someone you love, your body releases oxytocin and reduces cortisol! This means that you instantly increase your resilience and have a calmer mind.
Setting time boundaries
One of the main reasons for an unhealthy mind is the inability to set boundaries. Imagine a child who looks forward to the surprise at the end of a tiring school day. If I tell my little boy that I have something wonderful planned for his dinner, there is a world of difference in how inspired he is all day. He does not go around wasting his time, he is productive, and he is much more stable in his mood.
We truly are not all that different from the children in our lives. Just this morning, I had a conversation with a client who was unable to feel calm, productive or healthy because he was always waiting for the phone to ring even if it was at midnight.
Image source: Shutterstock
The simple truth is that setting a sharp boundary for the end of your day and knowing that you will be unavailable after that instantly increases your focus through the day and improves your resilience overall.
This one little hack was magic to my productivity, and even with much more on my plate now, I have never been as productive or as relaxed.
Saving time is not something that should be viewed with a reductionist approach of just saving time on one specific day. Time-saving has to be viewed from a greater perspective, where little hacks introduced and made a big part of your life. It should shift you towards a space where you have a calmer mind that supports your body.
Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta