10 Simple Ways to Feel Better Now
Are you wanting to feel better? Sometimes we overthink “feeling better” as a big, overwhelming mountain to climb. The truth is, feeling better can be as easy as one simple, small action or thought at a time. Any step toward feeling relief, no matter how small, is always a step toward feeling better.
Check-in with yourself on how you feel right now? How is your body feeling? How is your mind feeling? No matter what you are feeling, there are ways that you can move a “vibrational” step up, and make you feel better. Here are ten simple ways to raise your vibration, no matter where you are on the scale, and feel better now.
Get some sleep! Being tired can effect how we feel because a tired mind may easily run old and negative habitual thought patterns that don’t necessarily feel good. The reason your mind will do this is that it is more efficient to think habitual thoughts than it is to choose new thoughts for yourself. If your old, habitual programming is toward the lower end of the emotional scale, chances are your thoughts will go there when you’re tired. Feeling tired also affects our patience and irritability. Lack of patience and irritability lower your vibration.
Try limiting screen time at least one hour before bed. Not only will this keep the bright light of your phone, tv, or iPad from disrupting your natural sleep rhythm, it helps calm your mental chatter.
Lower the lights in your home a few hours before bed to help signal to your body it’s getting close to sleep time. My favorite secret “tool” for this is to go into my bedroom an hour before bed with my Casper Glow Light set to dim in an hour and start reading a book. The light slowly dims signaling my body it’s time for bed. I often fall asleep before the hour. There are more affordable alternatives from Phillips, too. Most of the wake-up lights from Phillips even change the color to a more orange color over time to mimic sunset and wake you up with the sunrise.
Use a sound machine or a diffuser to help set some rituals around bedtime. White noise can help calm your thoughts, and keep unwanted noises from unexpectedly waking you up. Certain scents can signal your body to relax. My favorite scents to diffuse are from Young Living: peace and calming I, gentle baby, and lavender.
If you are a new parent and have a newborn in the house, (or a toddler that wakes up a lot in the night), try going to bed a little earlier than usual to give yourself that extra hour, (or three) that you are likely loosing in the middle of the night.
Make sure to get enough sleep. As Matthew Walker says in his book “Why We Sleep,” “the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.” Habitually sleeping less than you should affect your memory, your mood, and your health. All good excuses to get that extra hour you have been depriving yourself of. If you want to learn all about sleep, give his book a read.
Move your body MORE! Moving your body for as little as 20 minutes a day can help release serotonin and endorphins in the brain which are both correlated to helping you feel better
A 20-minute walk by yourself can help relieve stress and clear your mind. Or take the walk with someone with who you enjoy having a conversation.
Stretch your body lightly as soon as you get up in the morning, and try 10 jumping jacks (seriously, just 10 can help).
Try running for 15 minutes
Fresh Air and Natural Light
Getting outside for at least a portion of the day can help you feel better. Not only will you get a little vitamin D, but breathing fresh, clean, outdoor air has a calming effect.
If you can’t get outside, open blinds or windows and let natural light into your room.
Screen Detox (or limit it!)
Take a break from your TV, phone, and computer. Extend the break for long periods of time and see how you feel. If you can’t detox from your computer because of work, take a break from other outlets within the computer, like social media or the news. A study on children has shown that each hour of screen time during the day leads to 3-7 minutes less sleep at night and a much lower quality of sleep.
Minimize your screen time. A great book to read on the topic is “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport.
Use Do Not Disturb mode whenever possible. You’d be surprised how much more time you will seem to have without text messages and notifications disrupting you all day. Fewer distractions help you focus on your priorities, and even though that’s sometimes just taking a shower in the quick window you have when your kid naps, you’d be surprised how much better you feel when you get things that are important to you finished! The important thing is to set your phone so the second call from anyone goes through. If someone needs to reach you urgently, they’ll call a second time. And in addition, you can even set it to let calls from important people through even in Do No Disturb mode. If you use an iPhone, you can go to your settings, select or search for Do Not Disturb and you’ll find all the settings there.
Go through your notification settings on your phone and disable anything that isn’t essential. You’ll get so much more done if your phone doesn’t vibrate or ring every few seconds.
Unsubscribe from e-mail lists to keep you in front of your computer for less time. If you are having a hard time with this, you can use a tool like Unroll.me to help you out.
Choose food that nourishes your body
For most people, what they eat can affect their bodies and the way they feel inside and in their minds. Eating a diet with lots of sugar, for example, can leave you feeling more hungry all of the time and with lots of dips in your energy and your mood.
Be gentle with yourself: choosing healthy eating habits is a great way to feel better, but I do want to acknowledge how hard it can feel to create new habits around food, especially if it is not the norm for you! I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes at 32 weeks pregnant, and it turned my eating habits upside down while I tried to get my fasting numbers under control. It was socially a very hard thing for me to do, (and the sugar withdrawal was real), but committing to healthier habits kept me away from medication and ultimately made me feel better and healthier.
Practice checking in with yourself after eating certain foods and notice which ones make YOU feel better. Those are the ones you want to choose more to help you feel better now.
Eat mostly whole Foods and a LOT of vegetables
Cook as many meals as you can at home / Eat out less. This means you’ll have full knowledge and control about what you put into your body.
Drink lots of water or decaf tea. Tea has the extra benefit that it tastes good and has some antioxidants that water can’t offer.
Try cutting caffeine, alcohol, and sugar for at least a few weeks to see how it makes you feel. If you reintroduce any of it, pay close attention to your body. If you get a headache or don’t feel well, consider eliminating these more permanently.
Try to combine eating fat, protein, fiber, and GREENS for most of your meals to help you feel satisfied when you eat. Satisfaction feels good!
Have fun creating new meals from recipe books you’ve been meaning to try. Create a family night, date night, or friend hang around, making a meal together.
Find thoughts that feel a little better than the ones you are believing now
Even in the most difficult of situations, where we are SURE the worst is upon us, we can reach for a thought that feels a little better. The trick is to make sure the thought is believable so that you can actually feel better from thinking it. An easy way to find a believable, better thought, is to create thoughts that are more general within the thoughts that are making you feel bad.
Let’s say you’re looping in thoughts of, “My house is such a mess. My kids never pick up after themselves. I’m overwhelmed with work and life, and there’s always so much to do,” You can choose thoughts more general like, “I have a house. I have things. I have a job. I have a family. ” Reach for appreciation within the general thoughts of those statements.
Do something that that FEELS good to do
A few ideas: massage, acupuncture, acupressure, meditation, yoga, Listen to an uplifting podcast, take a bath, listen to relaxing or uplifting music, exercise, Journal, make a cup of tea, read, hug someone, clean a room, put on a song you love and dance, go rollerblading (why does rollerblading always makes me laugh and feel better right away!)
Be sure to avoid buffering and “false fix” activities that make you “feel good” at the moment but always lower your vibration later. Only you know what activities these are for you but buffering or “false fix” activities may include: drinking, drugs, overeating, eating sugary foods, overspending/online shopping, gambling, lots of social media time, etc (things that release dopamine in your brain and make you feel like you’re having lots of fun at the moment, but are really preventing you from feeling your true vibration and can often get in the way of your self-awareness). Social media is a prime example of this as social media often uses the same tricks as slot machines to make you come back for more and more.
Consistently gather or schedule time with people who uplift you
Having a routine date on the calendar to gather with people that uplift you is a great way to feel the anticipation and positive expectation, (which are good feelings)
Notice who you hang out with who leaves you feeling better than you arrived. Schedule more time together!
Build a group of close friends to spend time with. Studies have shown that lack of deep connections is one of the main factors contributing to depression. If you want to, check out Lost Connections, a very good book on the topic.
Start a book club and pick an uplifting book to read to gather people and conversation that feels good.
If you are experiencing a very low vibrational feeling such as fear, grief, or depression, consistently meeting with a therapist or support group that makes you feel better can help provide relief and help you move up the vibrational scale.
Try attending a retreat that is focused on things that would make you feel good.
Take Ownership Of Your Time
First, notice how often you say, “I’m SO busy, I’m TOO busy, I don’t have time for that, If only I had time for that.”
Acknowledge that you are in control of yourself, your decisions, and your time. (If you’re not, then start asking yourself who is?).
You are choosing, consciously or unconsciously, in every moment, what you are doing with your time.
Replace, “I don’t have time,” with, “I am choosing to spend my time here instead of there,” Owning that you are choosing takes back the power and responsibility of your time management to YOU. From there, you can start to “choose to use time” for the things you want to be doing, and start letting go of the things that you don’t want to be doing. Naturally, you will start to feel better. This also leads me to my favorite tip to feel better now:
Say No and Let Go
Say no when you don’t want to do something or if something feels out of alignment with feeling good
If saying no doesn’t “feel good,” try: “I really wish I could. I’ll let you know if that changes.”
Let go of the feeling of “I have to.” Start saying, “I could do that if I want to.” And then don’t do it if you don’t want to.
Let go of items/people/thoughts/activities in your life that “feel heavy” and leave you feeling lower vibrations. Decluttering is a great way to let go of things weighing you down and to create space for something new.
