Last Updated on 9 June 2024 by Brisbane Livewell Clinic
When it comes to Detoxing, most of us think about our diet before our lifestyle but a healthy body needs a healthy mind and a healthy home. ‘Detoxing your Life’ can simply mean overhauling your daily routine and it’s all about creating change for the better.
We’ve come up with the 4 D’s to get you started on a Lifestyle Detox: Debrief, Decompress, Declutter and Digital Detox, to cover some easily neglected aspects of wellbeing.
Debrief
A healthy mind starts with a healthy mindset. Knowing how to ‘debrief’ can help to overcome stress and anxiety. Take your pick:
- Meditate: Meditation cultivates a calm yet focused mind, with studies showing that a 13-minute daily meditation practice for 8 weeks can decrease negative mood and anxiety. (1)
- Practice Mindfulness: Mindfulness aims to improve wellbeing through attention to present-moment experience. (2)
- Try Journalling: Positive affect journalling is an expressive technique, focusing on positive aspects of oneself (3) and proving to be a useful tool for many.
Decompress
A healthy mind needs some downtime. Finding an hour a month for a massage, an hour a week for a yoga class or an hour a day to go for a walk could be the ticket to a sense of wellbeing. While debriefing may have you drawing inward and becoming introspective, decompressing may come in a more active form.
Think twice if your idea of decompressing after a busy day is to watch TV. Studies show that TV watching and computer use can predict depression levels among adults. (4) Think less is more and know when to ‘switch off.’
Declutter
People actually spend 80-90% of their time indoors, meaning this environment is so important for health. (5) A cluttered space may be more susceptible to mould or vermin and easily accumulate dust. Reductions in indoor allergens like a household cockroach and dust mite are found to be associated with a reduction in asthma. (6)
Greenspace impacts our sense of wellbeing, so bring it inside. Indoor plants have been shown to have an indirect, unconscious, psychological effect on health and stress levels, acting as indoor air purifiers and effectively reducing pollutants. (5)
Digital Detox
Most of us are familiar with the concept of too much screen time. It’s easy to get caught up with the endless options available across multiple devices. Outside of the workplace, time on any device for adults should ideally be limited to a maximum of 2 hours per day.
Using a timer setting on your phone to shut down certain apps can help avoid late-night scrolling. The combination of no physical activity and high screen time has been demonstrated to have the greatest negative impact on health-related quality of life. (7) That’s reason enough to ditch the device. Ditching Netflix for a few weeks could open up a world of possibilities – like time for a debriefing practice before bed or reading a book that’s been sitting on the shelf for too long.
Do what works for you
Well-being comes from healthy habits, daily routines for wellness, and nurturing ourselves. A ‘Lifestyle Detox’ is about transforming to make new choices that best serve you. Start with what you feel strongest about and make the change stick. Nobody’s perfect but it will certainly feel much better knowing your daily life just got less toxic!
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