Healthy Habits: Mindfulness and Health
I would like to start practicing mindfulness regularly and live my life more consciously. I experience a lot of stress in my daily life and sometimes fail to cope with it. I think that the problem is in my inability to avoid and manage stress and relax when my body needs some rest. I am affected by negative overthinking, personal judgments, exhaustion, anxiety, and depression. I think that this problem can be addressed with the use of mindfulness, which I regard as a technique that helps people to cope with stress and their lives more healthily and happily.
Mindfulness behavior is characterized by conscious choices, engagement, and full awareness of experienced phenomena. Together with yoga and medications, mindfulness is a part of the so-called mind-body interventions that, according to Beedvelt et al. (193), are used to reduce stress and improve productivity and general mental health. Practicing mindfulness involves focusing on what a person senses and feels in the moment without interpretation and judgment, breathing techniques, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind. I believe that by practicing mindfulness exercises every day, I can change my habits and learn to better cope with stress, relax, live in the present, and enjoy my life.
Unhealthy Habits: Social Media
Reflecting on the habits that are bad for me, I think that I need to spend less time on social media. Currently, I constantly check my social network pages without any particular reason, wasting a lot of time on it that I would like to spend on something more useful. It is a common problem in modern society in general, with a lot of people becoming increasingly addicted to social media. According to Shonin et al. (2), the increasing ease at which modern technologies allow access to social media makes it difficult for some people to regulate their internet usage. It results in a variety of mental health and behavior problems, exhaustion, stress, addiction, antisocial behavior, and psychopathologies (Shonin et al. 2). Social media is the most common way to disconnect oneself from reality, and I often notice how, whenever I experience stress or negative thoughts, I instinctively grab my phone to go online. I think that I need to develop an ability to regulate my compulsive responses, which will help me spend time more productively and increase the quality of my life.
Healthy Habits: Nutrition
As for healthy habits, I would like to continue the healthy eating practice that I have been trying to adopt for several weeks. In my opinion, a good diet does not have to be complicated but has to include food that is rich in nutrients and low in fat, sugar, and calories. I do not count calories but try to eat low-fat, whole-grain, and sugar-free products, vegetables, and dairy foods. I try to have meals at regular hours and not overeat. I have learned that eating sweets and junk food only increases the craving for sugar and snacks. Sweet food causes the sugar level in the blood to rise sharply, and then it drops, and the sugar craving soon starts again. Eating a balanced diet helps to maintain blood sugar, avoid overeating and irresistible urges to eat. I feel that maintaining a healthy diet helps me stay fit, avoid gaining weight, and generally enjoy food more, and feel better.
Works Cited
Breedvelt, Josefien, et al. “The Effects of Meditation, Yoga, and Mindfulness on Depression, Anxiety, and Stress in Tertiary Education Students: A Meta-Analysis.” Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 10, 2019, p. 193–205.
Shonin, Edo, et al. “Mindfulness and the Social Media.” Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism, vol. 4, no. 5, 2014, pp. 1–4.