6 Habits That Have The Power To Transform The Way You Look And Feel

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, you become what you think about all day long. As sci-fi as it sounds, our thoughts do have some power to influence reality, though sadly it’s not in a cool way where we get to move objects with our mind and perform tricks. In reality, it works a lot more like a self-fulfilling prophecy. A person is so convinced that bad things will keep happening, so they subconsciously start avoiding good things and dismissing good experiences. If we have five great moments in a day and only one poor experience, our brain will focus only on that bad experience and put it on a sort of pedestal, making it more important than anything nice that might have happened. Not only is this bad for your self-image, it can end up being very bad for your career, your health, and your personal relationships.

Luckily, even if you’ve fallen into these bad thought patterns, there’s a solution. You can break the cycle and feel a lot better in your own skin, and to do it all you need are some tips and strategies.

1. Start a journal

Even if it’s no more than a few sentences each day, keeping a journal offers you a great chance for self-reflection. You’ll be able to make more sense of the thoughts that are buzzing around in your head, and writing about your problems has a powerful impact of making you face them in a safe, non-threatening manner. You’ll be able to take a look at them and realize that maybe they’re really not as bad as you thought they were. You will also be able to make a note of any positive things that happened during a day and help your mind memorize those good things.

2. Engage in regular physical activity

There’s really no better way to feel good in your own skin than to exercise regularly and eat a good diet. A healthy lifestyle will simply make you happier and more relaxed. It starts feeling really, really good once you realize you’re growing strong and becoming more fit, but the biggest trick here is to find something you really love doing. Don’t push yourself to run every day if you think running is boring. Why not sign up for a dance class instead? Exercise in a way that’s fun and easy to fit into your schedule. You want a routine that will make it hard to find excuses to skip workouts.

3. Self-care vs. stress

Being stressed all the time is no way to live. Anxiety and tension tend to pile up, and this leads to degradation of our body and psyche in several ways – from insomnia and headaches to sheer exhaustion, stress is the number one cause of poor health. While a lot of experts agree that adrenal fatigue isn’t a real condition, it’s still undeniable that stress damages us and makes us depressed, slow, and unmotivated.

So, how do we counter it? With self-care! It’s really, really important to stop feeling like taking some personal time off makes you a bad person. It doesn’t, it makes you practical and reasonable. Who could you possibly help if you’re always tired, and grumpy, and raw from all the anxiety? Meditation, breathing exercises, long baths and skincare, reading books, playing board games, engaging in your favourite hobby, listening to music – all of these are perfectly valid forms of relaxation, and you need them. What’s more, you deserve them.

4. Cut negativity down at the root

Don’t be a masochist! Telling yourself you’re unworthy or stupid is an awful thing to do, and absolutely no one deserves that kind of a treatment, especially not yourself. There’s a huge difference between acknowledging your flaws so you could work on them, and focusing only on a flaw or a perceived flaw and telling yourself it makes you a bad person. You’re not a bad person, and thinking this way never got you anywhere, did it? It doesn’t represent reality, either. You’re good, and you must learn to be kind to yourself. Each time a negative thought tries to resurface, train yourself to cut it down, to replace it with something sweet and positive.

5. Get in touch with nature

It would seem that with each generation we’re drawing further apart from nature. Not that our phones and computers aren’t great (they’re allowing you to read this, after all), but human beings do need nature and we’ve forgotten just how much we depend on it. Social media can be especially harmful if you don’t get a rest from it because it tends to make the world look so much more dramatic and it blows every single problem way out of proportion. No one is really completely themselves on their Facebook and Instagram profile, they’re just a carefully-crafted image. In nature, such things simply aren’t a problem, and it’s really good to take a break and let your mind reset. Go for a long walk in the woods (or at least in the park), go hiking, do yoga outside, or go on a camping trip a couple of times a month.

6. Count your blessings

As we’ve said, sometimes we have the tendency to focus only on the bad things and make that one mistake we’ve made feel a lot more important than all of the things we’ve done right. We start feeling proud of how “realistic” we are, but at the same, time we feel miserable because everything we do and everything that happens feels wrong. This isn’t realistic, it’s actually just as foolish as blind optimism, and it’s definitely not true in any way. You’ve done well, and you’re doing good things every day. But you really need to recognize when that happens, memorize it, and keep it in your heart.

You must build yourself up each and every single day. Let go of people who are toxic and bring you down, and focus on learning new things, on expanding your horizons. Read books, try new food, and play with new ideas. Get creative, and dare to do things you haven’t before. Take a look at this Scale of the Universe – you’ll learn a lot and it will really put your things in perspective. In such a grand, vast Universe where there’s so much to explore, are problems and worries really that important?

Please don’t forget to share this article with your friends and family. You never know who might benefit from these habits that have the power to transform the way you look and feel.

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