My easy tips for YOU for living a better, healthier, and happier life.

Reading.

Read more, I work a lot but I realized during my commutes on a bus or in a car pool, I spend too much time looking at my phone on something unimportant when I can be reading something worthwhile. Even if it’s just 3-8 pages, reading high quality material is truly good for your brain and for the people around you. Reading comments from Facebook, Youtube, Reddit…every time you’re on the go, will not help you as much as a high quality book will.

Try drinking less soda

I used to drink soda almost exclusively as a teenager, to the point now when I look back I’m surprised I didn’t develop an early onset to diabetes. After a bit of time I started realizing just how terrible it was for my teeth. Images like the one below accelerated my belief that I needed to change my actions for the better. After taking a long break from soda, I now enjoy drinking water so much more than soda. I only have soda in extremely small doses, typically if I’m mixing it with an alcoholic drink. A better alternative to soda is milk and coffee, tea, and even flavored water.
 

Brushing your teeth in the morning and at night

Over time I started taking notice of others who had bad breath and undesirable looking teeth, as illustrated above. I decided I would not follow suit, I wanted to stand out and follow in the footsteps of the successful people I saw in the world. I used to be ashamed of smiling due to the way my teeth looked. After a lot of work and patience I’ve come along way. I know my smile isn’t perfect, perfect smiles are hard to come by. And I’m still a bit self conscious about my gum line but I feel so much better now. The other fact about this is that this will save you thousands of dollars (depending on where you live) and provide you with endless amounts of gratitude from not having to deal with oral surgeries at the dentist.

Step outside of your comfort zone once and a while

You’ll be surprised at how much there is in the world that can delight you. Try new foods, try starting new conversations with those around you. You’ll learn more, build more confidence, and best of all, you’ll come away from it all eventually wanting to do it more. The keyword there is eventually, you like myself will start off afraid, alone, maybe terrified; but let me tell you, in the grand scheme of everything that is the universe. It won’t matter in the end. You need to live life while you have it right now. Every opportunity you consider will pass on by if you don’t act. Nine out of ten times wager you may never have the chance to see that opportunity again either. Everyone has some amount of anxiety, I know friends who actively avoid having to talk to the cashier at a grocery store, they enjoy emotional safety a self checkout system can provide. While I respect their ideals, I don’t think this is a healthy way to live. 

Learn to push back or say no.

Every day most people are having to deal with thousands of decisions starting from when they wake up to when they go to sleep for the night. Having a plan in place where you have your tasks laid out is a critical component to being able to unload stress and anxiety. If your boss is asking you to work on another project, think to yourself for a moment. Take time to look at what you have on your plate. There comes a point during work when your boss needs to know when you have too much going on. Part of their job is to help delegate and prioritize work that is not as valuable as other work. Planning is something that causes me to have a lot of anxiety and stress, other people have no problem with it and actually enjoy it. I envy those people and I hope to be one of them at some point. If you can utilize your work calendar or even a small scratch pad to keep track of tasks and projects that are on-going. Set up due dates for yourself to understand how well things are going. If you’re missing a lot of the due dates then you may need to break down your tasks into smaller tasks.

Small but valuable tips:

• Treat public bathrooms like a crime scene. Touch as little as possible. When you’re exiting the bathroom, open the doors with the paper towel you’re using to dry your hands. You’ll avoid picking up the germs someone left on the door when they didn’t wash their hands.
• Wash your hands after touching raw meat and EVERY time you use the restroom. 
• Avoid touching your eyes and picking your nose. Picking your nose is one of the leading causes of colds and flus because your fingers are covered in bacteria from what you touch all day long.
• Avoid using headphones for long periods of usageThese are a silent killer of your hearing. Once you lose your hearing, it’s impossible to naturally fix your ear drums. Your ears are not meant to intake music and audio at such close proximity for such long periods of use. There are studies linked to hearing loss from such usage. 

Have a great tip or suggestion you’d like to share? Post it in a comment or email me, I’d love to read it!