I take a well-rounded approach to staying healthy. For me, good health includes not only focusing on the physical and mental aspects of life but also the spiritual and emotional. I attempt to follow a routine for good health regularly, but there are challenging times when my routine gets interrupted by life.
One important thing that I learned about living a healthy life is to not let interruptions derail me from my routine. If I miss a workout or a meditation session or I don’t eat as healthy as I wanted to, I get right back to the practice by starting fresh in the next moment. For example, if I skipped a morning meditation session, I try to get in an evening one or find two minutes to just be present, or I wait for the next morning and meditate. I don’t let one missed session start a trend.
I learned this method a while ago and found it most helpful with healthy eating. If I choose poorly at one meal, it doesn’t mean that the whole day is blown and that now I can eat poorly for the rest of the day, weekend, or week. At the next meal, I reset and choose healthy foods. In fact, in the minutes after my poor food choices, I can choose to get back on track right then. I hit the reset button, and from that moment on, I’m going to choose wisely.
Another thing I’ve learned about maintaining a healthy lifestyle is that when I slip up, make a poor choice or have a setback, I need to forgive myself. As we all know, life doesn’t always go as planned (even for project managers). As Winston Churchill said, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.”
The goal of healthy living is to make progress not to be perfect. I try to do my best and to do it well.
Even if an activity is important to me, I’ve found that I may need to take extra steps, in the beginning, to make it a habit or a routine. To ensure that I can keep to my routine, I have to make a physical schedule. I use my personal Google calendar and a Bullet Journal to set reminders and events for myself.
As the year comes to an end, I set up my calendar for the coming year by scheduling the recurring events such as meditation, yoga, reading, knitting, working out, etc. on my calendar. I set reminders to get notified in the days or hours before I plan to do the activity. I use a meditation app that sends me reminders daily to set aside time to meditate. In the past, I’ve used other tricks to help me stay on track. I’ve used stickies on the mirror, sent text messages and emails to myself, and in the old days, I would send myself a voicemail. Of course, you need to find what works best for you.
It doesn’t matter if your healthy living goals are big or small, one or many, the most important thing to do is to take the first step and start.
