5 Ways to Improve Your Health and Well-Being
How to easily and quickly improve your health and well-being
The topic for this week’s newsletter was inspired by an article from Valentina Petrova’s newsletter called Life Intelligence where she talked about 4 easy ways to improve our health.
As I was reading the article, it made me think and wonder about what are some of the things that help me improve my well-being and are also shown to improve health in the long run.
So in this article I’m gonna talk about 5 tools that are shown to improve both our well-being in the now and our long-term health and how to implement them in our lives.
How to improve your health and well-being?
Our health and well-being - both physical, mental, emotional and spiritual - play a huge role in how we live, function and operate in this world: so basically how we do everything and anything depends on the level of our health and well-being.
But in today’s world, achieving either or both seems to be “mission impossible”.
Why is that so?
We’re being bombarded with information and opposing beliefs - and the problem is that for every argument there seem to be studies and science to support them and back them up.
So how can one overcome the ballast of information, discover the essence and truths and implement them in their life?
I would argue that that is by taking a step back and engaging in simple things and activities that we know - both by common sense and by science - improve our health and well-being.
So here are 5 ways to easily improve our health and wellbeing.
5 ways to improve our well-being and health
Burnout can be challenging at times. We can get caught in our physical, emotional or mental condition and it’s hard to get out of. That’s why it’s handy to have a few tools up our sleeves that we can use to radically change our well-being, the state we’re in and positively impact our long-term health.
Here are 5 things that I’ve found work well for me in improving my well-being in the now, general health and my burnout symptoms and have also been shown by science to have benefits.
1. Play
Play was one of the four things that Valentina mentioned in her article Four easy ways to improve health you usually don't consider.
Play is one of those small but huge things that can radically transform both our overall well-being and generač health, even though it seems to be just too easy and too simple…
Play doesn't just make us happier in the now: it also makes us happier and more resilient in the future. Play turns off our defense systems and shifts our minds to the present moment and thus helps increase Heart Rate Variability (the higher the HRV, the higher our ability to handle stress) and releases “feel-good” neurotransmitters and hormones (oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine and serotonin).
On the other hand, lack of play in children has been associated with decrease in happiness and higher levels of depression. Charlie Hoehn, wrote in his book Play It Away: The Workaholics Cure for Anxiety that “the opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is depression.”
But even though we know that play makes us feel good, we don’t engage in it enough - or not at all… Especially us men, especially the older and busier we get… Maybe it’s the “always grind culture” that celebrates hard work and not having fun. Or maybe it’s that we want to feel more “masculine” and tough and play seems to be the opposite of that. Or maybe we’re just making the excuse that we’re too busy to play and we take pride in that fact and celebrate it.
I think the key in engaging and getting more play in is to schedule it. It’s like with rest days and holidays: if we don’t make time for them and schedule them in our calendars, they might never happen.
Prescription
Think about what are some of the activities that you enjoy doing and playing or you enjoyed when you were younger. Maybe it’s the ball sports. Or playing with your pets. Or outdoor sports, individual play, or group activities. It doesn’t matter as much which activity you choose, as it does to choose something that consumes all of your attention, brings your mind to the present moment and brings you joy and improves your well-being. Then schedule it and engage in it regularly - ideally a few times every week, or at least once per week.
2. Laughter
Although play and laughter can be part of each other and one can lead to another, I decided to explore them separately one by one.
Laughter is one of the most overlooked well-being boosters. We all know the known saying “Laughter is the best medicine.” Together with play, laughter is one of the things that turns off our defense mechanism and fight or flight mode, which has lots of benefits for our overall health and well-being.
James Gordon, MD, in this book The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing after Trauma writes that good laughter has a “stress-reducing, health-promoting, pain-relieving effect” and that laugher has shown to decrease stress levels and improve mood in cancer patient, lowers heart rate and blood pressure and enhances mood and performance in generally healthy IT professionals.
Most of the time we’re just too damn serious and we consequently make things feel more difficult than they are in reality. Zen Buddhism reminds us that “Seriousness is a disease” and that laughter at our lives, circumstances and even at ourselves can have healing powers.
Prescription
Make a list of things that make you laugh. Go see a stand-up show. Watch a comedy, watch some funny cartoons (nothing beats Tom & Jerry, right?) or read some jokes - maybe dad jokes which sometimes make you laugh just because they’re so lame and stupid (or is it just me? lol.)
If laughter doesn’t happen naturally for you, if your mind is very tough or you’re deep into an emotional state and it’s hard for you to break out of it, you have to push a bit: you have to force yourself a bit to break the resistance, but once you do break through, your well-being will improve dramatically.
3. Breathing
Breath is something that we have at our disposal all the time - yet most don’t pay enough attention to it or even don’t use it to their advantage. Breath is free, we have it at hand all the time and once we learn to use it, it’s one of the most powerful tools that we have not only to regulate our well-being, but to also improve our general health.
Breath is directly connected to our nervous system. How we breathe signals our nervous system and tells him in which state to be in. It goes the other way around too: we can consciously change our breathing to purposefully shift our state. That’s the power of conscious breathing.
By focusing on our breath, we can change the state of our nervous system. If you need to activate your nervous system, do some rapid, shallow and fast breathing exercises (eg. Wim Hof Breathing, DMT Alkaline Breathing or The Breath of Fire) and after a few minutes of this breathing you will feel the energy that comes with the release of neurochemicals - you’ll get a similar effect that you would get after drinking coffee.
On the other hand, If you want to downregulate your nervous system, take a few long, deep and relaxing breaths: you will feel how your nervous system goes into that rest and digest mode, you’ll feel more calm, relaxed and less stressed.
A Japanese study has shown that it takes just 6 deep breaths to relax and calm down - not only psychologically but physiologically as well. In this study, just by taking six deep diaphragmatic breaths participants were able to lower their blood pressure, “improve cognitive performance and reduce negative subjective and physiological consequences of stress”.
So the next time you feel stressed out or anxious and someone tells you to “take a breath”, it’s not a breath, it’s six breaths. Ideally, those breaths should be long, taken in through the nose into the belly, and then slowly out through the mouth.
On the exhale, you can also let out a relaxed and warm "Aaa..." - like in: “Aaa, Life is good!.” This will relax you even more because you will make your body and your nervous system believe that everything is okay, that you’re safe and that life’s good.
Prescription
If you don’t have any experience in breathwork, you can start by simply noticing how you’re breathing during the day: bring your attention to your breath multiple times a day and slow it down.
Then if and when you feel stressed during the day, you can take a few minutes, slow down and take six, big, conscious belly breaths, in through the nose and out though the mouth, maybe go “Ahhh…”. This will help you relax, release some of the “feel-good” neurotransmitters and improve your overall well-being.
You can also start a breathwork practice (Wim Hof Breathing is a good one to start with) to elevate your well-being and health to the next level.
4. Nature
In our modern world where technology has a more important role each day, we’ve lost the connections with our nature.
Some studies show that people living among farms, fields and meadows are less stressed and depressed and live longer that those in less green areas (eg. big cities).
It could be the fact that people in the cities have a more stressful life, but it’s also the fact that green spaces have a calming effect on our nervous systems.
Some studies found that just by looking or resting your eyes on pictures of nature has a positive effect on our current mood and well-being.
That’s why many natural healers and naturopaths believe in the healing power of nature.
Prescription
Take time whenever and however you can to be in nature: an hour, an afternoon, a day or a weekend - as much as your schedule allows it. Go to a local park, to the countryside or go on a hike to the mountain. Take the opportunity to disconnect and bring your mind and attention completely to the present.
You can also take it to the next level by exercising mindfulness: slow down, be aware of every step you take, look around and pay attention to small details and do an open-gaze exercise where you’re focusing on nothing and everything at the same time.
Just one quality hour spent in nature can have tremendous benefits on our mood and well-being.
5. Gratitude
I left gratitude for the last because of its powerful effects on both our current well-being and our general health.
Gratitude is correlated with better well-being, more energy, better mental and emotional resilience, high quality of life and better overall health.
Ryan Munsey in his book F*ck Your Feelings: Master Your Mind, End Self-Doubt, and Become a More Significant Human (one of my favorite books of all time) writes that gratitude is one of the easiest, most profound and research-backed ways to shift ourselves and our minds into that beautiful and feel-good state, to turn off our defense mechanism, feel safe, improve our mental health, reduce instances of envy and depression, increase happiness, empathy and improve sleep, which results in “higher levels of energy and greater physical expressions of ‘health’.”
But there’s a catch: our brain is evolutionarily wired to look for dangers, troubles and what’s wrong - that’s why gratitude doesn’t come easily and naturally. We have to train our minds to look for what is right: that’s where the gratitude practice comes in. As Dave Asprey, the world’s most famous biohacker, says:
“Gratitude is a muscle: Exercise it!”
Prescription
Most common way to practice gratitude is to incorporate it in your morning and evening routine. At the beginning and end of the day, make a list of 3-5 things that you feel grateful for and give thanks for. Keep it simple, try not to list the same things over and over again and look for small things - in my experience, those small things make the biggest difference.
To level up the practice, once you write down your 3-5 things that you’re grateful for, feel the emotions that the things you listed wake inside of you.
When you’ve become better in gratitude practice, try to practice gratitude for “bad”, “negative”, difficult and tough things that happened in your life. It’s not easy, but once we work through it and we become grateful for those things that happened to us, we’ve moved from the victim mentality and healed the trauma that’s associated with them.
Here you go, my top 5 things that we can use daily to elevate our health and well-being easily and instantly.
Now it’s your turn. What are some of the things that help you elevate your mood, well-being and help you improve your general health?
Let me know in the comments below!