How To Practice Self-Care To Lead A Healthy And Happy Life

Morning is the crucial time for self-care. Your whole day’s routine depends on how you have spent your morning. A healthy morning helps you to spend an energetic and joyous day. Everyone has a stressful life in this competitive era, and many live with anxiety and depression. It has been reported that around 77 per cent of people with stress suffer from problems related to physical health.

To relieve stress, you can practice some self-care activities in the morning that can help you reduce stress and have good mental health. But you will have to know how to practice self-care. In this article, we will discuss some personal care tips.

How to Practice Self-Care in the Morning?

Morning is the essential part of the whole day. When you practice some good habits in the morning, you will be able to spend your entire day healthily. The top 10 self-care tips have been discussed below:

1. Practice Meditation

Meditation is the best way to avoid stress and anxiety in your life. Morning time is considered the most suitable time for practising self-care. Mediation is a process when you pay attention to one single point to avoid all other thoughts. Many people focus on their breath to remove their attention from all other ideas. We often talk about being silent. Silence does not mean avoiding talking physically; it also means maintaining silence inside our minds by preventing some unnecessary thoughts from coming to our minds. Meditation is also one of the processes to practice silence in our minds. It will help you greatly to reduce stress by tranquillizing your mind. You should include meditation as one of the most critical activities in your morning routine.

2. Do Exercise

Exercise does not only help you to maintain good physical health; it also allows you to improve your mental health. It is found in a study that exercise works as an anti-depressant that can treat mild to moderate depression. According to a study conducted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 15 minutes of running or walking for an hour helps to reduce depression by 26%.

Exercise releases endorphins in the brain, which helps to reduce stress and make you feel good. Some practices also work as meditation as you need to focus on the particular movement of your body and forget all other tension. Therefore, exercise can also be said to be meditation in motion. Therefore, exercise can be considered one of the effective ways to reduce stress, and it can be one of the critical self-care tips for mental health.

3. Avoid Checking Social Media

Excessive social media usage can fuel FOMO, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Social media platforms are flooded with many negative things and reading or seeing something negative right after waking up from your bed will harm your mind. Moreover, people always show a better version of themselves on social media, leading you to compare. Instead of being grateful for what you have at present, the happy moments of people posted on social media will compel you to think that your life is not good enough. This will make you more stressed and feel that you are not doing anything good in your life. Negative thoughts in the morning will make you feel low the whole day.

4. Read a Good Book

After the advent of the mobile phone and the internet, most of us have started to take reading books for granted. By reading books, you can gather knowledge and get stress relief. Studies have shown that reading a good book of your interest can help you to reduce stress to a great extent.

According to a study conducted by the University of Sussex in 2009, the habit of reading books can reduce stress by 68%. The study has also proved that it works better than other stress-reducing habits like listening to songs or drinking a cup of tea. Pick up the book which is enjoyable to you. It does not need to be a best-selling book. The important thing is that the book’s subject matter should be of interest to you. Many people believe that when you read the text of your interest, you enjoy it more than watching movies. So, what are you thinking about? Include the habit of reading books in your self-care routineas well.

5. Spend Time in Nature

The study has proved that those who spend at least two hours a week in nature experience healthy being than those who do not spend time in nature. When you spend time in nature, a physiological response helps to reduce the level of stress. When you spend time in nature, your mind becomes calm and tranquil, which allows you tremendously to reduce stress and anxiety. The fresh air and serenity soothe your mind when you come closer to nature.

6. Write about Your Gratitude

You can reduce stress when you start writing your gratitude for what you have and this way you can improve your emotional well-being. By practising this habit, you can instil positive thoughts in your mind, which will improve your mental health to a great extent. Build the habit of writing for each thing you have in your life. If you are unsure of how to practice self-care for stress and anxiety, include this habit in your daily routine to reduce stress and boost your self-confidence for the day.

7. Try to Accept What You Cannot Change

We have only two ways to do things in our lives. One is to change what we do not want, and another is to accept what we cannot change. When you do not want something in life or want something but cannot get that thing due to many problems, you develop stress in your mind. But, when you learn to accept things, your mind will be peaceful, and the priority for it will also reduce. Accepting things also make your life easier. You get the courage to face any problem in life when you can accept things easily.

8. Do Some Relaxing Activities

Many other relaxing activities help you to reduce stress. These activities include gardening, watering the flowers, playing with your pet, walking in the park, and many more. By doing your favourite task, you can get relief from stress and anxiety.

9. Play with Your Pet

Pets turn us into merrier individuals. Self-care is about finding practices to release serotonin and oxytocin, like the bliss of playing with your pet. Studies support this idea and even express that pets can also make us healthier physically and mentally, No wonder there was such a pet adoption boom during the Covid-19 pandemic.

10. Listen to a Podcast

There are lots of feel-good podcasts out there. From spirituality to health and wellness, find the one that uplifts your mood. Podcasts are more effective if you can listen to them while taking your morning walks.

Conclusion

Personal care is essential for a healthy and happy life. If you practice any one or more than one activity mentioned above, you will be able to reduce your stress level to a great extent. When you indulge in any personal care activities in the morning, you will feel productive for the whole day. Practising daily self-aid activities also increases our life span. Try to practice the activities in the morning to get refreshed for the day. If you do not care for yourself, there is no one to think about you. Find some time for yourself so that you won’t have to regret it later. You have got only one life and keep adding value to it.