31 Oct Healthy Habits

During these past months, I decided I wanted to go back to Mexico with something more than just my exchange experience. Therefore, I decided to create new healthy habits that I would be able to apply everywhere.

I first started off by setting a wake-up time for every day of the week. I also added a sleeping time. This would force me to organize myself to do everything I need to do in the day before the set time to go to bed. I’ve been waking up at 6:30 a.m. and going to sleep at 10:30-11 every day!

Many people think it’s lame, but it has helped me personally to start my day easier, do all the activities I want to do and fall asleep easier at night. I feel a lot more active, concentrated and overall, I feel I can make more of my day.

Another thing I started is healthy eating. I’ve never had bad habits for eating, but I surely knew I could make them better. I’ve never liked vegetables that much and most of the time a skip dinner. For most people, this is ok, but I am really skinny (not by choice, believe me) and I have had hard times in the past to gain weight, so skipping a meal is not the definition of healthy eating for me. These small changes in my eating habits have made me a lot more confident about myself and a lot happier on what I am consuming. For some reason, healthy eating has made me feel cleaner (lol), and more effective throughout the day.

Meditating is something I added to my routine as well. I believe this is the habit I’ve been liking the most. I learned that meditation is not about not doing anything. Being still, awake and focused is something. It has improved my concentration skills and every time I do it, I learn something new about myself. It has definitely been the most complicated habit to make because it’s easy to give up on the first weeks, or even months. Yet, I’m really happy I am practicing it. I can see the difference in my mood and the way my day goes with a day of meditation and a day without it.

Last, I’ve started to do yoga. I had made yoga before, but never daily. The reason why I started to do yoga was basically because of a surgery that I had in January and my doctor only allowed me to do Yoga in the first year post-surgery. Nevertheless, I have made the best out of it. I had gained a lot of strength in my right leg and increased my flexibility in my hip (which I lost completely). It has also helped me to clear my mind at stressful times.

Making habits is something that takes time and is often not easy, but I recommend it a lot. Especially in your semester abroad because you don’t have to tell anybody about it, and no one will know if you fail (lol). Also, starting it by yourself without no one watching will make you feel more comfortable. For example; I share rooms with my sister back home, and if I tried to create my meditation habit there, she would have made fun of me. Creating healthy habits is something that I would recommend a lot.