Living a healthy and balanced lifestyle can have a direct correlation with your long-term health and your lifespan as a whole. In fact, a study by the Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine found that just adding intermediate improvements to cardiovascular health over five-years caused a 33% decreased likelihood of developing hypertension. Additionally, participants had a 25% less chance of developing diabetes and were 14% less likely to die overall.
Building a balanced lifestyle can keep you healthy for years to come, all while reducing stress and making your day-to-day life far more enjoyable. Learn how to create the life you want to live by starting with small changes to your daily habits.
What is a Lifestyle?
Starting at the beginning, for those who have never heard the term, a lifestyle is simply the way in which a person or group of people live. It is the daily habits and actions that make up who those people are and the particular way they go about their day. The lifestyle a person has can hold great power over their outlook on life and their stress levels. By creating a lifestyle of healthier habits, anybody can reduce their likelihood of developing diseases.
How Do You Start to Create a Lifestyle?
Creating a lifestyle can be challenging when you don’t know where to start, especially if you are trying to develop new habits. Use some of the following tips to start developing a healthy lifestyle that works for you:
- Start with setting a series of small goals that culminate in a larger goal
- Focus on changing one behavior at a time
- Ask for support from friends and family
- Create daily structured activities that relate to your small goal
- Readjust your diet or workout routine
The above tips are a great starting point for getting a healthier lifestyle created. As you begin to set goals and habits that move you towards that lifestyle, keep the following steps in mind.
Steps to Living a Happier Life
1. Choose a job you love
A job is where the majority of people will spend their time on a day-to-day basis. Due to this, it’s important to not wake up dreading the day, as this can be a leading source of stress. Even if a job does not pay as much as you are hoping, doing what you love should always be the priority. Keep in mind that some jobs will require a background check, which means you might need to have a verifiable history to achieve your dream job.
2. Practice healthy nutrition
Healthy nutrition is another primary key to building a healthier life. This doesn’t mean you need to cut out the amount of food you’re eating, rather consider reworking what you put into your body. By simply cutting out unhealthier foods, such as fast food, or saturated fats, you can take small steps towards improving your diet.
3. Use stress-reduction strategies
Stress is one of the leading physical and mental stressors to sudden cardiac death, which is why learning how to reduce the amount of stress in your life is so important. Consider taking up therapy, yoga, or even simply practicing healthy breathing exercises to control your blood flow to reduce anxiety.
4. Exercise regularly
Most experts will recommend getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-intense exercise during the course of a week to maximize health benefits. This adds up to about 20-minutes of exercise daily. While this can be challenging to fit into a tight schedule, considering purchasing devices such as under-desk treadmills or a cheap set of dumbbells for at home.
5. Get enough sleep every night
Adults need to get at least seven hours of sleep, ideally more, every single night to ensure their brains can continue to function properly. Staying awake for just nineteen hours straight can have similar effects on brain function to drinking alcohol, which can impair your day-to-day tasks. Part of building a healthy lifestyle is ensuring you remain awake to build that life.
Build your dream life
There is no one right answer to what a dream life looks like. It’s entire up to the individual and one person’s ideal life may not look like another’s. Some people thoroughly enjoy going into an office every day and mingling with others, whereas others may shudder at the thought. Building your dream life means figuring out what makes you happy and implementing habits on a daily basis that help you achieve that goal.
