When it comes to adopting a lifestyle that promotes optimum health, many individuals will be challenged with finding the time and motivation to do so. Despite any doubts you may have, it can be accomplished! Making it a reality requires consistently making healthy choices. In a world of so many options, we make an abundance of decisions on a daily basis. Where to live, what to study, where to work, and where to travel during our holiday breaks. We also decide what personal and professional relationships to nurture, what media content to absorb, what to eat, and what to do with our free time. Each decision potentially affects our health for better or for worse. Given these myriad factors, if we move forward without a commitment to making healthy choices, bounding through one hectic week after another, our chances of realizing a healthy lifestyle dwindle considerably. Once we strive to structure our daily lives to incorporate practices of healthy living, we can then achieve it on a long-term basis. Our daily schedules can work in our favor if the choices we make inside that schedule weave together a plan to create a healthier lifestyle.
When considering a healthy lifestyle, generic notions about eating right and getting exercise come to mind—but there is so much more to this formula. For the majority of music students, educators, and other artists, each semester is packed with more obligations than one realistically has time for. The demands of so many tasks, auditions, rehearsals, meetings, and deadlines compete with our priority for a healthy lifestyle, tempting us to put our health on hold. We must consider, however, the long-term ramifications of delaying a healthier life, not only for ourselves, but for those we care about. Sadly, more often than not, a stressful schedule leads to poor food choices, sleep deprivation, and weekend escapism—heaps of time spent with social media, video games, and other forms of procrastination. By Sunday evening, homework has not been completed, papers haven’t been graded, and any number of other tasks have piled up. This type of weekend fatigue can leave a person feeling unmotivated to do something healthy and beneficial, so the escapism wins.
If we’re truly honest with ourselves, we can find pockets of time during the week where we can take some smaller actions that add up to a larger benefit. Adopting a healthier lifestyle plan for yourself doesn't have to be daunting or time consuming. Here are a few examples of simple choices you can make to move toward a healthier lifestyle:
Make social time with friends a physical activity such as playing a sport, going for a brisk walk, dancing, or going to the gym. Plus, with video calls at our fingertips, today's technology makes it even easier to have workout partners. (For any new form of physical exercise you choose, just be sure to consult your doctor to ensure it’s right for your body.)
Want to watch that live sporting event at home with family or friends? For each commercial break, challenge one other with active exercise such as jumping jacks, push-ups, running in place, etc.
Make your grocery shopping more fun by inviting a friend! Together you can choose to read the labels, buy healthier foods, and purchase a new food you’ve never tried.
Get together with friends for a meal-prep party. Each person can make one or two healthy dishes in bulk allowing you to mix and match meals. Your refrigerator is then stocked for the week with healthy, homemade lunches and dinners.
Play with your kids! The entire family will get their exercise with fun yard games, or active indoor challenges. If you’re an empty nester, now is as good a time as any to find a neighborhood workout partner, an online workout partner, or commit to home workouts.
Invest in a treadmill desk. Find yourself sitting at your computer too much? This will keep you on your toes! This also allows you to multitask through webinars, etc.
If you have a regular practice of mindfulness, reaffirm your commitment to it and schedule it in as a top priority. If you don’t have a regular meditation practice in place, challenge yourself to do short meditations on a regular basis, like when you wake up or before you go to sleep. Free meditation apps and YouTube videos make these short breaks very doable even in the middle of your day when you likely need a moment of quiet time the most.
Rather than cookies, donuts, and other empty calorie items, encourage friends to bring healthy offerings such as tasty vegetable dishes, protein-rich casseroles, and whole-grain baked items to snack on at parties.
Rather than spend time on social media, get moving outside, put on a short workout video, or take a power nap.
Subscribe to a fitness, mindfulness, or other healthy living magazine and keep it by your beside or next to a place where you often sit down for a few minutes. Digital versions are also readily available so you can take these wherever you go.
Again, we must consider the long-term consequences of delaying or postponing making choices conducive to optimal health. We can make plans and resolve to change our unhealthy behaviors, but if we don’t maintain a commitment to follow through, our best intentions simply fade into the background like so many New Year’s resolutions. Time to reflect on our well-being and refresh our priorities should not be left to chance. Scheduling time weekly, if not daily, to ask ourselves questions such as where we got off track and how we could have chosen differently will help ensure that we remain faithful to our priorities and to ourselves. Make this check-in fun by getting an accountability partner! Having someone to report to will give you that extra jolt of motivation.
We all need to live a healthy lifestyle both for quality of life now and for the many years to come. We deserve time on our schedule for proper exercise, nourishment, and sleep, which are every bit as important as taking classes, practicing our music, being dedicated in rehearsals, and attending meetings. You can be creative and build a habit of looking for opportunities and space in your schedule for that quick walk, short meditation, or time to prepare a healthy meal and make it fun. You can make yourself a top priority and get through life with more energy, ease, and enjoyment. The key is to consistently take action. Before you know it, these small changes will just become the norm in your life and when you look back a few months and years from now, you will see that the healthy lifestyle you longed to achieve actually became a reality.
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