7 Habits to Instill To Make Your Life Healthier and Happier

#1- Spend at least a couple of hours outside every day

A study done by the app Mappiness in 2010 found, via 20,000 participants, that people are least happy either at work or while sick in bed.

They are most happy when they’re with friends or lovers.

And their moods tend to reflect the weather at hand.

But, one of the biggest variables is not who you’re with or what you’re doing. It’s where you are.

On average, study participants were significantly happier outdoors, in an all green or natural habitat type, rather than in an urban environment.

We are growing increasingly burdened and inundated by chronic ailments made worse by time spent indoors, from myopia and vitamin D deficiency to obesity, depression, diminishment of eyesight, loneliness, and anxiety, among others.

Since the dawn of the internet, researchers say we have grown more irritable, less sociable, more narcissistic, more distracted, and less cognitively nimble.

This might be due to both, to the internet’s effect on our ability to focus, as well as the barriers created between connecting as deeply emotionally as we once did (now, our screens tend to distract us much of the time).

This can also be due to things like advertising and media, posting selfies (look at me, look at me!), the sense of competition and comparison that social media ushered in, the seeking of status and popularity, the branding of ourselves via crafting our online images for viewers, the diminishment of wisdom, and reading articles and bits of information in short bursts, as opposed to focusing at length on, say, a book for an hour or two.

The fact that we have grown more irritable, less sociable, more narcissistic, more distracted, and less cognitively nimble, though, is also because we are spending way more time indoors.

Other Aspects of the Pandemic Are Hurting Our Health Beyond COVID

Beyond the fear of getting COVID, or actually contracting it, there is much else happening right now in the atmosphere of the pandemic that is harming our health. This is important to be aware and take notice of so that we might do things that counteract and prevent these other potential things as best as we can.

I will discuss those issues below, and then offer some ideas for some possible solutions following.

Depression and Anxiety Have Increased, Which Hurts Your Mind and Your Body

Everyone’s mental health is suffering right now, in one way or another. Some are suffering more than others, but still, we are all feeling it.

Ways to Strengthen Your Immune System and Defense Against COVID.

Do these things to boost your chance of remaining healthy…

The Food You Eat is Either Feeding Disease or Fighting It.

The things we put into our body, food and drink, as well as other factors in how we treat our bodies, like getting enough sleep and controlling our levels of stress, all of this is either contributing or encouraging toward disease, or, helping to fend off disease from building.

Here is how.

The Age of Addiction. Why?

Cell phones, the internet, opioids, workaholism, all with steadily rising rates of anxiety and depression. What’s going on here?

America seems to be moving steadily down a rapidly darkening path, one of addiction, social isolation, anger, and general unhappiness. Why might this be?

Sleep is Critical to Our Well-being, and Most of Us Aren’t Getting Nearly Enough.

Turns out that more than two thirds of us are not getting the recommended eight hours of necessary sleep each night.  That probably doesn’t shock anyone. However, what may surprise you is the vast havoc and damage this wrecks upon all areas of your physical and mental health.

There is not one major organ in the body, or process in the brain, that isn’t optimally enhanced by sleep (or, detrimentally impaired when we don’t get enough).

Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset and heal our brain and body health every day, even more so than diet and exercise.

Shocked?  Read on for more.

Our increase in noise pollution, and why this is a problem.

Take a listen on your commute home via bus, train, subway, etc.  Or, the next time of stepping out into the city street, pause to listen close.  Sometimes, the noises we hear are natural and relatively benign, such as a car whooshing past, or the sound of a person walking alongside of you, the gentle rustling of leaves, birds chirruping, or a train click clacking over tracks in arrival.

More frequently, the noise(s) are growing more substantial and grating.  This can include sounds such as (though not limited to): horns blaring, the melody (or more often, jarring vibrations) of entitled people who, nowadays and often, have decided that because they want to hear a particular song or type of music, we all do.  Thus, blasting it from their phones or even portable speakers as they walk down the road past or even worse, sit/stand next to us on the train.  More nagging noises can include cell phones dinging, producing all manner of loud sounds while people play games or text, all of which is audible and even disturbing.  As well as those colleagues who sit near to you and play their personal radios aloud, all day long.

Noise, to a real degree, is an inescapable aspect of life, especially within city living.  However, sometimes these are normal, relatively ignorable sounds.  Just as frequently though, they are the actions of others imposing their noise and ultimately, their narrative, on us.  All whether we like it or not.

One is Company

We live in a culture of FOMO. Frequently cramming schedules to overflowing, whether said appointments truly nourish and fulfill us or not, because busyness feels important.  Being busy can lend one a sense of feeling worthy.

On a slightly separate though similar thought, rarely is one ever truly alone.  Our lives are those in which everywhere and anywhere we go, we are continually surrounded by others.  At home, with our family, roommates, friends, or romantic partner. On the bus or train, crowded by people.  At work, a continued clustering of others, ever around us.  Potentially spending a significant portion of our day on the phone, or communicating and navigating interactions with others in all manner of other modes (whether email, social media, texting, etc).  The majority of our time is spent in communication with and around other people.

Anywhere we might go, even if deciding to enjoy such on our own (without bringing along a companion), is still overflowing with others. Whether the library, a restaurant or café, out on a walk, to the park or gym, there will be a plethora of other people abound.

For a significant number of people throughout our culture, aloneness is associated with being a “loser.” As though if one chooses their own company, it must be because there is simply no alternative. That this could never possibly be a preferable choice if one had a truly fulfilled and awesome life.  As if ever being surrounded by others is the only ideal, normal, and best way of being.  Many people feel depressed at such a thought (as spending time with oneself), distressed, or even afraid to be alone with themselves. As though this indicates a deficit or lacking in us somehow.