While it’s easy to make resolutions while we are more relaxed, once the tan and the hangover wears off, the reality of deadlines and debt inevitably start to creep back in, eroding all of our best intentions. Maybe it’s time to ditch the hard-core resolutions and think about creating lasting change that is holistic, fun and keeps stress at bay so we can be our best selves.
Body/Mind
We all know that a healthy body and mind are the foundation of feeling good and negating stress.
How much you move your body and whatever way works for you is yours to define, however there are some golden pathways to live by, if you want to make being healthy a way of life.
Sydney-based fitness trainer and callisthenics expert, Miguel la Cruz, says his best advice to maintaining a healthy lifestyle has everything to do with attitude and defining your motivation.
“Consistency is key - make your exercise become habit, not a chore,” Cruz tells SBS.
“Any motivation to improve one's health should not be motivated by another person's opinion or approval. Success is achieved when you strive for your own greatness.”
So what’s Cruz’s favourite quote to keep him motivated to maintain a good mind-body-health balance? “‘Comfort Zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there’,” he says.
To connect with life, we need to reconnect with the great living spirit. Nature is the intuitive teacher, nature is the perfect healer, nature is a revealing experience. Nature knows.
Nature
With a Masters in Wilderness Therapy and Transpersonal Counselling Psychology, Haāweatea Holly Bryson is an advocate for wellness through reconnecting to nature and rites of passage.
The teacher and retreat leader says that “we need to rediscover nature because we need to break the small worlds that have been created by technology, the media, work, community and ourselves”.
“To connect with life, we need to reconnect with the great living spirit. Nature is the intuitive teacher, nature is the perfect healer, nature is a revealing experience. Nature knows.”
Bryson says that nature needs to be included more often in our daily lives. “We need to regularly come home to our senses. We can become so busy that we lose sense of who we are. Just a few minutes sitting with any aspect of nature; an indoor plant, our closest source of water, the very ground of dirt, sand or grass to lay our feet, this is where life knows what to do. It holds the answers to the questions we haven’t yet found a way to ask.”
Creativity
In her latest book, Big Magic, bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat,Pray,Love) advocates living a ‘creative life’.
Filled with gentle nudges towards dropping the self-judgement of our own creative urges, Gilbert believes that a creatively expressed life is the key to being fully ourselves, regardless of how the world labels us (wife, mother, daughter / lawyer, doctor, chef) and how much time we devote to a creative aspiration, the act itself is of utmost importance.
“Do whatever brings you to life,” say Gilbert. “Follow your fascinations, obsessions, compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest will take care of itself.”
Follow your fascinations, obsessions, compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest will take care of itself.
Play
The science of play is gaining popularity as a way of undoing stress and getting in to the ‘flow zone’ where time stops and life expands. Organisations such as Seeds of the Future whose aim is, ‘guiding people to connect with their unique self-expression, creating wellbeing and joy through workshops + education,’ are starting to emerge.
One of the founders of Seeds Of The Future, Samantha Rose describes, playfully, why taking time to play is important:
“Play is fun, silliness, laughter. Play allows for exploration, imagination, co-creation,” says Rose.
“Play is how we learnt to touch. Play is how we learnt to move. Play is how we learnt to interact with others. Play is how we learnt to be human beings.
“Play is inherently a natural way of being human.”
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