Strength grows from proper nutrition, exercise, relaxation and sleep.
- Why: Practicing a healthy diet, physical exercise, relaxation, and good sleep habits improves physical, emotional, and mental well-being. When you feel good, challenges are more easily managed. Strength is about good self-care.
- How: Find and practice plans for diet, exercise, relaxation, and sleep to fit your lifestyle while meeting the goals of good nutrition, aerobic exercise, stress reduction and adequate sleep.
- ☐ Consider your challenge and how it relates to diet, exercise, relaxation and sleep.
- ☐ Find and practice a healthy diet that fits your lifestyle yet lowers your health risks. Consider researched plans such as MyPlate, Healthy Eating Plate, Mediterranean, and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension).
- ☐ Find and practice a physical exercise plan that fits your lifestyle and provides at least 2 hours and 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity ideally spread evenly throughout the week.
- ☐ Find and practice a relaxation exercise, such as slow diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, social resilience, and mindfulness-based stress reduction.
- ☐ Practice good sleep hygiene by keeping a consistent sleep–wake schedule, exercising daily and eliminating long naps and naps within a few hours of bedtime.
- Example: I get anxious before and during high-stakes tests and that prevents me from doing as well as I could do. I need to find and practice a relaxation exercise.
- ☐ My challenge is to be relaxed before and while taking tests.
- ☐ I consider an easy relaxation exercise, such as diaphragmatic breathing, an exercise of slow controlled breathing. I put one hand on my chest and the other on my stomach. I breathe slowly so that the hand on my stomach moves up and down. I try to keep the hand on my chest from moving up and down. Each time I exhale, I focus on the word “relax.” Like any exercise I need to practice diaphragmatic breathing for several weeks before I master it. My plan is to practice it for about ten minutes before I go to sleep.
- ☐ I also consider an exercise plan to further reduce stress, diet plan to increase my energy, and good sleep to support the relaxation and improve my likelihood of doing even better on the test.
- ☐ I adjust or change any of the plans that are not working and monitor the changes.
- ☐ Just before a test, I practice diaphragmatic breathing thinking of the word “relax.”
