Education plays a huge role in a person’s self-development. While much has already been said about the enormous benefits of a good formal education, the role of self-education should not be underestimated.
A formal education determines a person’s career trajectory. All things being equal, the more educated you are in a field, the more likely you are to have a flourishing career. However, self-education touches different aspects of your life. For instance, acquiring self-education about health can change your mindset about how you take care of yourself; which, in turn, will have a positive impact on your overall well-being.
Here, then, are 3 ways to educate yourself about how to change your own health, nutritional, and exercise habits.
1. Health habits
There is no point improving your diet and exercise if you don’t first remove bad health habits and introduce good ones.
Bad Habits:
The most interesting thing about bad habits is that there is no shortage of information about why smoking, drinking alcohol, or abusing drugs is bad. In an effort to help loved ones, people try to inform them about exactly why their actions are harmful. This is not the right approach. If someone has a major problem, it is because their addiction to it is stronger than any reasons, no matter how logical or well-researched, against it. In many cases, the assistance of drug detox centers may be necessary to help someone quit ruining their health.
Good Habits
When it comes to good habits, it’s not uncommon for people to neglect them or have a difficult time implementing them. Here are some ideas to adopt.
1. Sleep. Make sure you get enough sleep every night. Sleep deprivation is so disruptive to the body self-organizing biological systems that it can cause a variety of serious health problems like heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes. Sleep is also necessary for the brain to self-regulate by removing toxic biomolecules that accumulated during the course of normal neuronal function. When you sleep, your brain increases cerebrospinal fluid to wash away these toxins.
2. Water. You must drink enough fluids during the day, preferably water. This will help your body function properly. Just as you would never let your car engine run out of oil, you must not let your body get dehydrated. Most people wait until they are thirsty to drink water. This is actually a distress signal from your body, and it is much better to drink plenty of water before you get thirsty. Using the car engine analogy again, waiting to drink water when your thirsty is like only changing your oil when you see the red light on your dashboard.
2. Nutritional habits.
Although it’s easy enough to come up with a list of what not to eat, it’s much more difficult to come up with a list of what to eat. This difficulty is due to the fact that there are many diverse schools of thinking about eating properly, each one religiously believing that they have found the only way to eat right and have the research to prove it. Although it’s fine to prefer one philosophy over another if it works for you, one simple guide to the perplexed is to make sure that you have enough of the macronutrients like protein, carbohydrates, and fats, and enough of the micronutrients like vitamins and minerals. You also want to get enough roughage and probiotics to help with digestion and elimination.
3. Exercise habits.
Although there is plenty of research to show that you will be healthier if you exercise rather than being sedentary, only a small percentage of the population exercises, often excusing themselves with the claim that they get plenty of activity just getting through their busy day. So when it comes to exercise, the most important thing is to find your motivation. Once you find a type of exercise you like doing, then you need the motivation to stick with it.
In conclusion, while a formal education will help you get a good career, self-education will help you improve the quality of your life, and one of the most important things to strive to improve is your health and well-being.