20 Aug 3 Simple Habits To Adopt Today To Beat Stress, Anxiety and Depression
Whether you have intermittent bouts of stress, anxiety, and depression or it’s a chronic problem, you can change. When you adopt positive habits, they can have a powerful effect on many areas of your life. Let’s take a look at three habits you can adopt today to ease stress, anxiety, and depression.
Move your body
Our bodies were not meant to be stationary, sitting on the couch or at a desk all day long. Your body was designed to move. When you move your body you release hormones and activate systems that keep you both physically and mentally/emotionally healthy. Movement helps not only alleviate stress and anxiety, it helps your body manage it better. It can be compared to vitamin C or zinc for avoiding or reducing the symptoms of the common cold. Movement helps you reduce the symptoms or avoid, stress, depression, and anxiety.
What do we mean by movement? Just that, walk, dance, swim, run, do yoga or stretch. It doesn’t matter so much what you do. What matters is that you move your body. A common rule of thumb is to take 10,000 steps a day and/or exercise for 30 minutes. Moderate exercise is often the easiest to adapt into your current lifestyle. You can walk for 30 minutes, do yoga, jog, swim, dance, and box – whatever you desire. Find something you enjoy and get your amazing body moving like it was designed to.
Quiet your mind
Meditation is the simplest way to quiet your mind. And the wonderful thing about meditation is that there is no right or wrong way to do it. You can walk and meditate. You can sit and meditate. You can focus on your breathing. You can visualize a scene that makes you feel relaxed. The goal is to simply quiet your mind. To learn to clear away unconscious thoughts. Once you can learn how to control your thoughts and quiet your mind, you can instantly have a better reaction to stress and anxiety. It changes your mindset.
How long should you quiet your mind? When creating a new habit, it’s best to start small. Create a habit you absolutely know you can stick to. Start with 5 minutes of meditation. Add it to the beginning or end of your day, whichever is easiest.
Fuel your body
Your body needs a variety of nutrients and vitamins to help it run optimally. When you fuel your body well, you’re better able to manage stress and you’re simply going to feel better. Depression and anxiety don’t stand a chance. When you put harmful things into your body like too much alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and nicotine then your body becomes stressed and it cannot manage the things life throws at you. Take a multi-vitamin. Cut back on alcohol, caffeine, and sugar. And add a serving of fruits or veggies to each meal and snack. This is an easy way to make sure you’re giving your body the nutrients it needs to function well.
Experts say that it takes three weeks to adopt a new habit. These three stress, anxiety, and depression reducing habits are simple to adopt. The tough part is committing to them for those first three weeks. You can do it! Your body and your future are depending on you.
