Leading a Balanced Life: It’s All in Your Head
Author: Shannon Miller
Shannon Miller Lifestyle is all about leading a balanced life.
Our focus remains on women’s health and fitness.
But do health and fitness refer only to your body or physical aspects of your life? Certainly not.
The mind and body are not mutually exclusive. If you’ve ever had a stomach ache but get sidetracked by your kids or worrying about that last minute e-mail you need to send, you know what I’m talking about.
That being said, having healthy thoughts is indeed an important aspect of leading a balanced life. Just as you need to engage in exercise in order to have an optimally healthy body, you have to engage in mental fitness in order to have a healthy mind.
Consider some tips from trained Life Coach and certified Fitness Instructor, Kelsea Brennan:1
- Write your thoughts down. Take time to put your thoughts onto paper. Don’t think – just write. When you’re done writing, look at what you’ve got. Are your thoughts congruent with your behavior? That is, are you thinking differently than you’re acting or vise-versa? Make an attempt to balance out your thoughts and your behavior.
- Environment. Bring balance into your life by making your environment one that you wish to live in. Clean your desk out; make your bed; tidy up your closet. Maintaining an aesthetically-pleasing ambiance is a way to make us feel more collected on the inside.
- Meditation. You are what you think. Engaging in meditation can help you to slow down your thoughts so that you can recognize and acknowledge the affect they’re having on your life. For example, using meditation can help you to pinpoint negative thoughts. Bring balance into your life by taking control of your thoughts, replacing negative thoughts with hopeful, positive thoughts.
TIP: Remember that mental fitness is just as essential as physical fitness when it comes to leading a balanced life; both are important and both are attainable!
1 Brennan, Kelsea. “10 Steps to a More Balanced Life.” TheBeautyBean. 5 Nov 2010.