The BareVitality  Studio is so excited to share with you our top 4 holistic tips to incorporate into your everyday routine to achieve health, wellness, success, and happiness!

At the beginning of 2017, we set out the goals and aspirations that we wanted to achieve. Come 2018, those goals remain unmet and we are doing it all over again. We find ourselves in the same cyclical process: being extremely determined, setting goals, starting to work towards them, feeling overwhelmed, and giving up until we create the next lot of New Year’s resolutions that are basically the same as the previous year. Today, we encourage you to set a new goal for 2018: to take a holistic approach to your life and wellbeing. This lifestyle choice will create a snowball effect and you will gradually start to see your goals being achieved across all areas of your life.

But what does holistic mean? And what does living a holistic lifestyle entail?

Holistic is a concept that states that the parts of anything are interconnected and intimately linked to the whole. A holistic lifestyle then is based on the belief that every aspect of their life affects a person’s well-being. Therefore to achieve a balanced and enriched life, every element of an individual’s life, including emotional and mental well-being, health and fitness, spirituality, relationships, career, connection with the community, must be equally nourished.

With that said, here are our holistic tips to achieve success in all aspects of your life in 2018:

1. Find a balanced approach to exercise.

2017 saw the rapid rise of quick fix workout guides, whereby the use of strategic and enticing marketing lead people to believe that you could achieve the body of your dreams and regain your health in an incredibly tight timeframe, without revealing the health and wellbeing repercussions. So, with that said, the first of our holistic tips is to not buy into these highly marketed quick fix programs but rather, to slow down when it comes to exercise and focus on the journey.

Here’s why…

Quick fix programs are not only ineffective, but their strict and narrowly focused regiments can take a toll both physically and mentally. They ignore a balanced approach and instead focus strictly on one aspect such as cardio, HIIT, or even weightlifting.  This narrow focus causes the body to burn out, creating extreme fatigue, adrenal damage, and subsequent excessive eating as we subconsciously seek to obtain energy in compensation for the exhaustion. This is not what exercise is supposed to do!

Exercise is imperative for your energy levels in your daily life, be it at work, home or play. However, exercise will elevate your energy levels, only if done the right way. I encourage you to try the holistic alternative, namely to find balance in your fitness routine. If you find something you enjoy, you will stick with it. At the Balmain BareVitality Studio, clients balance their workouts by completing a range of classes such as circuit training, mat toning, boxing, and yoga.By slowing things down you achieve results faster by avoiding burnout and excessive eating, which in turn leads to perceived failure and a constant repetition of the tortuous cyclical process.

2. Eat more, but better.

The second of the holistic tips is to focus on what you should put in your body rather than what you shouldn’t be eating. Forget about excessive dieting and an almost obsessive focus on not eating certain food types. Instead, concentrate on putting more good food in your body so that you have sufficient energy for the day. An effective way of ensuring a high level of nutrition is through conscious meal planning and preparation. Make time to plan and cook meals for the week ahead and store them in your freezer!

This prevents us from grabbing unwholesome foods when we are too tired or too busy to cook.

3. Journaling

Including journaling as a keystone habit in your daily routine is one of the best things you can do to enable success, happiness, and mental and emotional health for yourself. Journaling is a mix of meditation and self-evaluation, and it is of paramount importance to your health as a whole. For starters, it is extremely beneficial in enabling the growth of your emotional intelligence. There is nothing worse than having a fight with a loved one and then having to go to work, leaving the argument unresolved and the lines of communication shut down. This has a negative impact on your state of mind and performance at work that day.

Instead, take several minutes out of your day to journal. Jot down your feelings and thoughts, and what the other person may be feeling. After time alone reflecting, you will find that even if you are not at fault your perspective may shift and you will be better able to display empathy and understanding, increasing your chances of finding a resolution rather than holding on to anger or resentment.

This practice can be used in the workplace as well, enabling you to shift perspective, understand colleagues and work through solutions to problems. Apropos of this, journaling is a useful tool for improving your career. Writing down career goals, both short and long-term, or setting goals for the day and reflecting on them afterward along with gains and setbacks, increase your professional awareness, enables you to work through challenges, and provides the motivation to achieve your desired outcomes.

In addition, this practice improves concentration and focus, teaches self-discipline, and provides mental clarity. You should aim to implement this each day, even for just 10 minutes each morning.

4. Find a better balance between life and technology

My last of the holistic tips is to find a better balance between your everyday life and technology. Unfortunately, this has become increasingly challenging. Social media has enabled us to instantly connect with each other. In some ways, social media has made it easier for us to form connections, through meeting new people online, being able to communicate with friends within seconds, and even by relying on Instagram to create awareness of our business.

It is not until we meet with our friend for coffee-and find that their responses to our attempts to interact with them are excruciatingly delayed by 5 seconds as they read and respond to someone else’s message- that we realise how detrimental social media can be to our health.

Our social skills have declined and the ability to effectively communicate in person has been reduced.

Overused, social media becomes a legitimate addiction. When we receive a like on our Instagram photo or a message on Facebook etc, our neurons release a chemical called dopamine, a chemical that makes us feel good when we engage in other addictive feel-good activities such as drinking, taking drugs, and smoking.

Because of this, we’re lacking the knowledge to form deep meaningful relationships. There’s nothing wrong with social media and cell phones when used wisely and with restraint but it’s the imbalance that harms us. Like all addictions, it will destroy relationships in time, waste time, and distract you from your goals.

A simple lifestyle choice is to put your phone in your bag or leave it at home when you’re catching up with friends and family. And instead of relying on social media to interact, why not participate in more community events or join a fitness studio, allowing you to form connections that in turn will make you feel happier and more fulfilled.

Let us know how you go incorporating these holistic tips into your daily routine!

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