Smart Tips For a Healthy Lifestyle & Mind
Learn top neuroscience tips, foods, activities, and daily habits for a healthy lifestyle and mind!
These healthy lifestyle and mind tips help you hack your mind to support positive life changes. As Dr. Daniel Amen says, “Get your brain right and your mind will follow.” These healthy lifestyle and mind tips are common sense but are not common practice.
Healthy Mind Tips
Get started improving your mind with these easy and enjoyable tips! Boosting cognitive function can benefit every area of your life and complements energy psychology, such as PSYCH-K subconscious reprogramming.
Hack Your Hydration
One of the easiest healthy mind tips is to hydrate with these hydration options. How does hydration support cognition? Your brain is about 75% water, which is why hydrating is essential for mental function and overall health. Hydrating delivers nutrients and cleanses toxins to improve cognition, concentration, mood, and circulation. It also helps decrease brain fog, memory loss, and neurological issues.
Celery juice is one of the best beverages for your mind. Medical Medium Anthony William writes, “The mineral salts specifically in celery juice are instrumental in the electricity that governs the body—they’re building blocks for neurotransmitter chemicals, they ignite electrical impulse activity, and they support neuron function. A brain with weak electrical impulses and weak neurotransmitters shuts down and goes into ‘low battery’ mode—which makes celery juice, a battery charger for the brain, an answer to stop this from happening.”
Healthier Mind Diet
What are the best foods to eat for a healthy mind? Start with a healthy nutrition foundation. The best diet is full of whole, colorful, nutrient-dense foods. No matter what diet you choose, follow these Nutrition Tips.
Next, hack your mind with specific foods. Many health experts recommend eating a high-fat diet. But, the best diet for your mind focuses on fruits (glucose) and vegetables (mineral salts). Why? Glucose and mineral salts fuel your mind and nervous system.
Specific Foods to Include…
Mineral salt sources: celery, olives, spinach, romaine, green/red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, mâche, and seaweed (dulse, nori)
Glucose sources: apples, apricots, bananas, blackberries, dates, mangoes, papayas, peaches, pears, raspberries, butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, or yams
Healthy fats: avocado, avocado oil, coconut oil, olives, olive oil, salmon, sardines, and walnuts
Avoid junk food, gluten, soy, and canola.
Fasting Benefits
Fasting stimulates the production of BDNF, a brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This growth hormone plays an essential role in learning and memory. It also creates new nerve cells and makes neurons more resilient against stress. When done right, fasting can do wonders for mental and overall health. Make sure you’re eating clean before you begin a fast. Avoid fasting if you’re under high stress. Juice fasting can be a gentle way to ease into it. Cate can create a wellness plan that’s best for you.
Healthy Lifestyle & Mind
Include more healthy lifestyle activities to benefit your mind. Identify the areas you could improve and start making small changes, such as moving your body daily, getting plenty of restful sleep, reducing stress, keeping your mindset positive, expressing gratitude, and more.
Movement
Healthy mind guru Jim Kwik says, “As your body moves, your brain grooves.” Hack your mind with exercise and play. Movement increases blood flow and oxygen to the brain. So get moving with walking, hiking, running, biking, strength training, yoga, dancing, rebounding, and jump roping. Playing golf and tennis are also good. Avoid being sedentary for too long. Set a timer every hour to move and stretch.
Sleep
Sleep is one of the best and most enjoyable things you can do for your health. During sleep, your brain releases growth hormones that the body uses to repair damaged tissue and grow new cells. Lack of sleep or poor quality sleep can impair cognitive function, hinder learning, and slow your reaction time.
Stress
Need another reason to reduce stress? Chronic stress, anxiety, and worry all damage your mental health. Research shows that stress kills brain cells, decreases memory, and inhibits learning. Chronic stress increases your risk of stroke, Alzheimer’s, and dementia. Want to be stress-proof instead of stress-prone? Prioritize stress-reducing activities by taking time to reduce stress with meditation, HeartMath, yoga, exercise, sleep, and a positive mindset.
Mindset
No one likes a Debbie Downer, especially not your mind! A positive mindset is one of the best things you can do to benefit your mind and life. But it’s not always easy. If you’re like many people, it can be hard to implement the changes that you know are important. Many people get stuck in a brain loop in which neural pathways become so ingrained that it’s hard to establish a new neural network to make those changes.
The solution? PSYCH-K is a form of energy psychology that allows you to change limiting beliefs and perceptions to get unstuck. Simply put, new beliefs and perceptions create NEW outcomes in your life. PSYCH K also puts you in a Whole-Brain State ideal for healing, AND it’s proven to ELEVATE your mind.
More healthy mind tips to support a positive mindset…
Gratitude
To create a positive mindset, focus on gratitude. Your brain is wired for survival, so you’re often more focused on potential threats than warm and fuzzy feelings. That’s why it’s easy to complain rather than compliment, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Swap your complaints for gratitude. Research shows that gratitude rewires your mind. Keep a gratitude journal and write down five things you’re thankful for daily.
Squash ANTs
ANTs are Automatic Negative Thoughts, such as “I’m not good enough.” It sounds simple, but when an ANT arises, repeat the word “stop” or “delete!” It’s an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) technique to redirect your thoughts and retrain your mind. When a negative thought arises, redirect your thoughts to something more positive. Before you know it, you’ll have fewer ANTs to squash.
Meditate & Visualize
Meditate daily, even if it’s only for 10 minutes. Meditation puts you in a present, calming, and healing state of mind. Visualizations can also be beneficial in shifting your perspective from what you don’t want to what you do want. Visualize what you want to see, feel, and hear in your life. Use HeartMath techniques to increase heart-brain coherence, reduce stress, calm the nervous system, and more.
Create Good Habits
The way you do anything is the way you do everything. So create better habits to create a better you! Ready to get out of your own way? It’s time to do things differently. If you want new results, then try new things. Take action on creating the life you want, one habit at a time. Make a list of what you want in your life. Then, create action steps to move towards making those things part of your reality today.
For example, do you want to be more organized? Start buying the tools you need, such as a label maker, organization bins, and storage boxes. Then, plan time each day for smaller tasks and each week for bigger tasks. Make it fun, and reward yourself for a job well done!
“Change requires daily, positive habits and routines designed to keep you in alignment with your goals.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza
Get Focused
Want to have incredible focus? Support your mind by eliminating distractions. First, get rid of clutter. Your external world is a reflection of your inner world. So set up your home and office for a healthy brain. Clean, simplify, and organize your space.
Next, be mindful of how you use your phone. Checking your tech first thing in the morning sets you up for distractions. Wait 1 hour after you wake up to check your phone. Put your phone on airplane mode at least 2 hours before bed.
Lastly, got a noisy work or living environment? Invest in noise-canceling headphones. Wear them with the cord plugged into your device when possible to eliminate the need for Bluetooth, which is linked to brain cancer.
Rewire Your Mind
How can you stimulate and even rewire your mind? Do new things to create new connections. In neuroscience, this is called neuroplasticity. It means your brain is adaptable but needs the proper stimulation via learning and new habits.
Play Ping Pong
What’s the world’s best game for a healthy mind? Ping pong! Yep, table tennis is the ultimate brain-boosting workout. It’s highly aerobic and challenges you to be flexible in body and mind. Playing ping pong improves hand-eye coordination, reflexes, balance, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. It helps mental acuity, increases blood flow to your head, and reduces your risk of dementia. Playing ping pong also increases neurotransmitters that improve your mood and decrease depression. Lastly, it’s a great way to have fun with friends and family. And, unlike many sports, it’s doubtful you’ll get injured. If ping pong isn’t your preference, try sudoku, board games, and crossword puzzles.
Learn
To start, be an active learner every day. And mix up your learning style by including audio (hear), visual (see), and kinesthetic (feel) learning styles. Stimulate your mind by listening to music, reading, being social, exploring, and doing things differently.
Mix It Up
It sounds simple, but using your non-dominant hand can rewire your brain. Think of all the ways you can use your opposite hand! Try it while brushing your teeth, eating, or writing.
Cold Therapy
Brrr… this healthy brain tip is exhilarating! Cold therapy via cold showers, cold water plunges, or cryotherapy is excellent for stimulating your mind and immunity. It also increases norepinephrine, the neurotransmitter responsible for attention, focus, vigilance, and a positive mood. So boost your cognition each day with an ice-cold shower. You can also find a cold river or lake to plunge into or try cryotherapy for the most convenient option.
Hack Your Mind Activities
Enjoy healthy lifestyle and mind activities in your daily life!
Pick some of these activities to include regularly…
- Brush your teeth with the opposite hand
- Hydrate with lemon water and celery juice upon waking
- Take a cold shower while singing to your favorite music
- Meditate for at least 10 minutes a day
- Use heart-brain techniques to build stress resilience
- Enjoy a rainbow of colorful fruits and vegetables daily
- Eat celery, greens, lettuce, and seaweed daily
- Wait one hour after waking to check your phone
- Mix up how you do things and your learning style
- Take breaks for movement, such as walking or rebounding
- Engage in at least 30 minutes of daily exercise that’s enjoyable
- Fast after dinner until breakfast the next day
- Take a walk in nature with a friend or loved one
- Turn off your tech a couple of hours before bed
- Sleep — go to bed by 10:30 pm
Learn the MOST important thing you can do for your health and well-being…