QUIZ - Summer Wellness Goals

If balancing your life, health and ambitions wasn’t already stressful enough in normal life conditions, a pandemic probably didn’t help. However, maybe it refocused your priorities, gave you more time with the fam, and upped your gratitude for the little things we take for granted.

It’s as important as ever to keep up with our self-care. Setting some summer goals that you can work towards and achieve in the next few months might just be the ticket to feeling like this time truly served a purpose and made you better. Take our quiz below to help determine your summer wellness goal, and then read on for some actionable tips to plan and execute it!

Get In Great Shape

 First, let’s define some tangible goals. These are quick, straightforward, measurable goals that you will either achieve or not. Whether you hit, fall short, or exceed these doesn’t matter as much as just making them to have a reference point of where you thought you would be.

 Next, figure out the actual amount of work that it will take to get there. Maybe a certain amount of calories per day and x amounts of workouts per week. Make it clear to yourself how much work is required to achieve your goal. This creates a plan of action, that you can look back and see clearly that you gave it your best shot or not.

 Now turn that plan into a schedule with actual exercises and eating tasks. Here is where you need to find inspiration for workouts and meal planning. We’re currently loving the videos on tiktok under #homeworkouts and #workoutplan. You can also google workouts that are aimed at achieving your exact goal, and Pinterest is a great place to scan those workouts visually.

Improve Your Mindset

 Figure out what you really want and who you want to be.

 Try to weigh through all of your own bs that you tell yourself, and be honest with yourself about what you want most in life. Be honest with what is bothering you most in life. And be honest about your own choices that are getting in the way. Only when you become truly self aware and honest with yourself can you start improving and rebuilding.

 Focus on outputting gratitude and kindness.

 The foundation of happiness is gratitude. Strip yourself of entitlement and “I deserve” and focus on how lucky you are. Of course we all want to be liked and respected, and it is only right to be treated fairly and with dignity, but we are often always looking at all of the negative and blaming others because we don’t want to admit that our problems are caused by ourselves.

 Just be grateful for everything. For being alive, for any health that you have, for any abilities that you have, and for anyone you have in your life that cares for you at all. All of those are major privileges and the ultimate forms of luck that we often overlook.

 Then return that gratitude with kindness. Kindness to yourself and others. This kindness doesn’t need to be extreme, in fact, it’s more important to just not be rude, mean, or have ill will towards others. Bringing down others and over-judging their situation is a horrible use of energy that we do too often. Learn to forgive, learn to be the bigger person. When you’re the bigger person in all situations, and truly shift your mindset away from negatively thinking of others (even when they kind of deserve it) life gets a lot better for you. And finally be kind to yourself. If you’re truly being a good person, and are grateful for what you have, then you have the right intent. If you have the right intent, then you can go easier on yourself. No one is even close to perfect and every second you spend over-judging yourself, is time of your life that is completely wasted.

Put in the work to improve and self-reflect.

 Now that you have a better mindset going, there will still be plenty of ambition to learn, improve, and succeed at things.

Our best advice here is just to focus on the work. Focus less on the results and arbitrary goals that you think will make you happy and just put in the work. Whether this is for health, relationships, or your career, working hard always feels good. And when you know you worked hard at something with the right intent, not only do you have the best chance of succeeding, but it feels good either way.

Get Healthier

 One of the most drastic ways to improve your health is through diet. Not dieting, but just making better food choices overall. People often eat to obtain specific goals for the outward appearance. However, it’s so important to eat to be healthy.

 This summer, let’s try to incorporate more foods that are nutritious, and weed out some of the obviously bad choices. We want you to increase the amount of fruits and veggies that you consume every week. Check out our 10 foods to boost your immune system article, and try to incorporate these into your weekly meals.

 Next, it’s time to tone down the bad choices. Start by limiting dessert to 2 times a week. Almost all desserts are nothing but sugar, which really has no health benefits and a lot of negatives. Next, cut down on the fried food. This means making better choices at restaurants. Limit your sugary drinks, and try to cut down on white bread.

In addition, make sure that you’re getting cardio in. This can be long walks, runs, bike rides, swimming, etc. A lot of us work out for our physiques, which is still great exercise, but doing cardio works the heart and your whole vascular system in a way that is beneficial to your overall health.

Finally, let’s work on some self-care. Take some time to relax, to treat yourself, and to take care of your body. Make an effort to get more sleep each week. Set a schedule for stretching and maintenance on parts of your body that are fatigued. Look for natural products that help rejuvenate your skin, and always protect yourself from too much sun. Lastly, treat yourself to some pampering, whether that’s a massage or a full day of home-pampering. Self-Care Sundays really are the best.