If you were asked the question whether you wanted to live an empowered and energised day-to-day life, or a disempowered and exhausted one, which option would you pick?
Of course, everyone would opt for a more energised and empowered experience of life — one that contained a lot of meaning, adventure, optimism and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, though, it’s all too common for many of us to find ourselves having virtually the opposite experience of life for one reason or another.
Your daily routines inevitably have a lot of power to shape your life for better or for worse. So here are a few good daily routines to adopt that can serve to energise and empower your life.
Conscious eating and drinking
For many people who are chronically busy and are caught up in the “hustle mindset,” meals can end up seeming like a necessary distraction at best.
But by skipping meals and inhaling sandwiches on the go, you are not only missing out one of the core pleasures of life, and one of the core opportunities to savour the moment, but you are also likely sabotaging your digestion and your energy levels.
Eating more slowly, chewing more, and being more present during your meals, are all thought to improve digestive efficiency and to facilitate heightened energy levels and better overall health.
Taking up a conscious eating and drinking practice — where you intentionally feel and express gratitude for your meals while eating, and take the time to visualise the path the food took before arriving at your plate — takes things a step further and can help to foster a sense of heightened optimism and enthusiasm.
With so many great foods and drinks to try, including things like bubble tea recipes, it can also be very pleasurable to just take the time to savour your food and drink.
A flow movement practice such as yoga or Tai Chi
As everyone has doubtless heard many times, regular physical exercise is highly beneficial, whereas sedentary living comes with a host of negative consequences for health, mood and energy levels.
At the same time, however, certain traditional “flow movement” practices including yoga and Tai Chi have very particular benefits that you aren’t likely to get from a weightlifting routine.
These activities help to condition you to more readily enter into flow states of deep immersion. They also help to strengthen the body and improve flexibility in a low impact manner. And they tend to have a spiritual component that can be very nurturing and centring.
Taking up these practices can help to boost your physical energy levels as well as your sense of enthusiasm and zest for life.
A daily reflection and visualisation exercise
Spending some time at the beginning and end of each day to reflect on how you acted the previous day can help to promote healthier habits and approaches to life going forward.
By the same token, taking the time to visualise what you’re grateful for, and what you are aspiring to achieve, can be great in terms of helping you to remain focused and motivated, and to help you to maintain a sense of direction in life.
Bundling these activities together and making a daily practice out of them can be very rewarding.
Contributed blog post.