9 Radical Ways to Live Better Right Now

Amidst civil unrest, a worldwide pandemic, and repeated lockdowns, focusing on our overall physical and mental health is crucial.

Feelings of isolation, worry, and irritability can easily grow with time. We have a lot of time. Why not use it to instead improve your sense of resilience, health and overall well-being.

Some of these items may be alarming but at the same time it would be hard to dispute the effectiveness of the following nine radical ways to live better right now.

Delete Twitter and Facebook

It may initially sound like a terrible idea but recent studies have shown that our social media usage has adverse impacts on our mental health and leads to lesser sense of well-being.

25 million social media users in Canada checking their smartphones six times an hour adds up to a lot of needlessly unhappy Canadians.

As difficult as it might be, deleting Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media is a surefire way to connect with people who are actually meaningful to you. You have the contact information of those you truly care about. Will you really miss Jaden from grade seven?

No Fast Foods

For many reasons, cutting out fast food is another immediate way to improve your life. Aside from increasing your risk of heart disease and diabetes, fast food also affects your mood, as studies show links between fast food intake and depression. Garbage in, garbage out.

Get a Fish Tank

Beyond their beauty, keeping and watching fish has numerous benefits. Reductions in blood pressure, heart rate, stress, and anxiety can all be attained through watching an aquarium. It’s also been proven that the more fish you keep, the better the overall effect.

Cut the Credit Cards

Being stuck inside your house with unlimited access to every product on the planet, armed with a wallet full of plastic is a recipe for disaster, depending on your sensibilities.

With no immediate consequence, the instant gratification of buying an LED, multi-colour, artificial-jellyfish desk lamp outweighs the longer lasting load of debt. Keeping one card strictly for emergency purposes is one thing but when it comes to general spending, trash the rest of them.

Read Nonfiction

In an age of fake news, one-sided media, and censorship throughout major social media outlets, now might be a better time than ever to start reading nonfiction.

A great source of inspiration, understanding, and new information, nonfiction books let us look at life through an alternative lens, which can give us a better understanding of our own reality. All of that newly-found info also improves our ability to think critically, giving way to better decision-making, and, in turn, more happy.

Quit Smoking

A longer life, decreased risk of heart disease, stroke, and numerous other diseases are all well-documented benefits of quitting smoking. More energy, better looks, and an improved sense of taste and smell are even more reasons to quit smoking.

If those don’t click, find your own reason; your son or daughter, your dog, ridding yourself forever of yellow fingers. Whatever works, stinky.

Sleep

Another obvious but often neglected route to an improved state of being is simply to get enough sleep. No more watching tribal gents dig out swimming pools with their bare hands on YouTube at 2:00am.

Sleep provides our bodies with the ability to repair itself as needed as well as process the overwhelming amount of information stored in our brains, ensuring your properly prepared for the next day.

Out With the Energy Drinks

High levels of sugar and even higher levels of caffeine are two big giveaways as to why ditching your favorite form of canned speed would probably be a good idea, too. A jacked up intake of stimulants also leads to headaches, poor sleep, and general irritability. 

Learn a Language

As difficult as it may sound, learning a new language at any age is more than doable and there are plenty of good reasons to do so.

Better decision-making skills, improvements in attention spans, and even a bigger brain are all to gain from learning a second language.

Yet another study has found that being bilingual or multilingual actually delays the onset of dementia up to five years later versus those that speak only one language.

As said, some of these items may be freaky but imagine coming out of 2021 with no wasted moments and no regrets, no matter what may or may not have surrounded us throughout.