Everyday wellness

We would all love to have much more time to spend taking better care of ourselves. Perhaps it would be doing hours of yoga every day, delving into meditation practices, or only eating organic vegetables from dawn until dusk?

For most of us, however, this is an unrealistic way to live alongside all the other demands in life such as jobs, homes, rents, children, parents, and the endless daily life admin! The more we see in print or online of people supposedly living this type of lifestyle or trying to sell us this type of wellness package the more of a failure it can make us feel.

Our days are often busy and the amount that we need to give out to others is often so big that by the end of the day there is no time or energy to fully give to ourselves.

I love the idea of realistic wellbeing. Of making simple, small and achievable shifts within our day-to-day life so that wellbeing and happiness seeps in without us really noticing and without us paying a fortune for the privilege. Making subtle shifts of perspective and tiny changes to our habits can start to allow a little more joy and vitality into each day and as we only have one shot at this life who would say no to a little extra joy?

So often when we try to make new wellbeing habits we make them too big. We say we will run every day for an hour or go to a gym four times a week or have a fresh juice every single morning. But these changes are big and difficult to keep up with and so after a few days, or a few weeks, they fizzle out again and we are back where we started. This can make us feel like a failure and then the cycle often continues and we set more challenges that we won't achieve.

By making tiny manageable changes and adding little doses of kindness and joy into our lives rather than restricting ourselves we have a much bigger chance of succeeding in keeping them going and then, if we want to, we can build up from there.

Ideas of little changes we can all realistically make:

• Get up just five minutes earlier each morning to stretch, wriggle and breathe into your body before getting changed.
• Hold your own eye contact in the mirror for two minutes each morning seeing yourself with genuine kindness and compassion.
• Dance around the kitchen to your favourite song (this is my personal favourite and gives our whole family a much happier start to the day).
• Keep phones out of the bedroom.
• Eat one more piece of veg or fruit every day.
• Close your eyes and savour your first cup of coffee.
• Walk or run outside every day even if its just a few minutes.
• Have a phone-free hour each day.
• Do something creative in the evening, doodle, experiment with clay or colouring in.
• Give yourself a two minute shoulder or foot massage with some oil after your bath.
• Allow a few minutes of slow, conscious breathing before bed.
• Write down all the things you were grateful for at the end of each day.

Pick one or two of these little changes and try and add them in most days until they become an ingrained habit just like brushing your teeth. Once we start implementing a few small changes like this we begin to take control our our day rather than rushing past every moment and letting the day and the stresses it can contain get the better of us. We allow little pauses where we slow down or check in and remind ourselves of what is important. When we stick to these tiny new habits we start to trust in ourselves a little more. If we trust ourselves more, we tend to like ourselves more and if we like ourselves more we may do more kind things for ourselves, it can be a snowball effect.

Learning to implement little moments of kindness into our day is not only hugely important for our own wellbeing but it will also teach the next generation through our actions that self-care is an achievable and non-negotiable part of day to day life.

Tiny changes really can make big improvements to our wellbeing, self-worth, and mental health.

Which two will you choose to start with?