The New Year is traditionally the time to stop and take inventory and set New Year’s Resolutions, positive habits and goals if you will for living a happier, healthier life. More often than not, we fall back on tried and true resolutions: lose weight; quit smoking; save more money; the list goes on. While these are all great resolutions to make (and all to often, so easy to break!), this year, why not just make some positive resolutions for self-care and showing yourself some love?
Taking care of ourselves should always be one of the most prioritized practices in our lives, because without it we tend to burn out. Self-care isn’t a practice that naturally comes first, however, especially in the fast-paced world we live in. This is why at the start of every New Year you should check in with yourself to see if you’re truly taking care of yourself the way you should be.
While self-care practices can be unique to us all, there are some basic acts of self-care that you should practice in your life, so that you can lead not only a healthy life, but also a life filled with rejuvenation, peace, and renewal. The following resolutions can help you build that foundation for a healthy, happy, and more joyful life.
Ring in the New Year with these 7 Self-Care Habits
Get Your Vitamin Zzz's. One of the simplest yet most important self-care practices is simply to get a good night's sleep. You need to allow your body to have a regular sleep cycle, so that you can rest easy and well. You’ll feel more rejuvenated when it’s time to wake up, instead of wishing you could pull the covers over your head and stay in bed all day.
Get Moving. Whether you like to take walks, dance while you’re vacuuming, kick box at the gym, or run marathons, staying active can help you live longer and better. In fact, just walking as little as 30 minutes a day has been shown to increase life span. Staying active also boosts endorphins, your body’s feel good hormone, leading to a better mood and positive outlook on life.
Stay Hydrated. Proper hydration simply makes every function of the human body more efficient. Drinking water throughout the day helps rid your body of waste products and prevents dehydration. You’ll also have more energy and your skin will thank you for it!
Healthy Relaxation. Taking time to relax is vitally important to your well-being. When it comes to de-stressing and relaxing tense muscles, percussive massagers such as the BuffEnuff® Power Massager can be a great help! Using them helps relax muscle tension, ease aches and pain, break up scar tissue and knots, increase blood flow, and reduce inflammation. If fact, treating yourself daily to healing, therapeutic percussive massage could be one of the best self-care practices and resolutions you’ll ever make. So show those sore muscles some love!
Positive Self-Talk. Speak words of positivity to yourself and into your life on a daily basis. It’s okay if you’re not perfect. None of us are. Life is a journey. Learn from your mistakes, brush yourself off after failures (opportunities to learn!), be kind to yourself, and build yourself up! You are your greatest resource, so stop beating yourself up.
Choose Grace. Live a life full of grace and let go of grudges and anger and any kind of negativity, really. Learning to let go of these things and choosing grace is not always easy, but when you do, you’ll experience less stress and more contentment and peace. Choose grace for yourself when you’ve failed. Choose grace for others when they’ve failed you. Choose grace all the time, no matter the circumstance.
Grace doesn’t always make sense, that’s where the beauty in grace lies, but it does bring compassion, connection, and deeper understanding.
Practice Gratitude. Research has shown that gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness and peace. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, appreciate good experiences, improve their health, deal with life’s challenges, and build stronger relationships with others. Simply keeping a gratitude journal and writing down 3 things you’re grateful for each day can help you live a happier, healthier life. In addition, practicing gratitude by giving back can also help boost your happiness and well-being.
At Percussion Fitness, we're deeply dedicated to equipping people to heal and to living their best life and to accomplish this, we donate a portion of profits from all of our sales to help bring healing tools to those in need. For all of our customers who've purchased a BuffEnuff® massager this past year, our heartfelt thanks for helping us fulfill our mission to bring healing tools to under served populations around the world.
If you'd like to help support our mission to share the healing, you can join the effort by purchasing a BuffEnuff® massager and treating yourself to daily percussive massage, one of the best practices and self-care resolutions you'll ever make and one that has ripple effects of healing for others.
Are you ready to practice self-care in 2018 and make yourself a priority? We'd love to hear your favorite self-care tips! Leave us a comment and share your best self-care practice.