9 Reasons Why Health Consciousness is an Important Life Skill
While it’s easy to get ahead of ourselves and want to jump right into new big goals related to our health, there is one important first step: building our awareness around our current habits and thoughts.
Generally, being “conscious” means that you are aware of yourself (including your feelings, thoughts, sensations, and memories) and the world around you. Having adequate health consciousness can be beneficial for you for many reasons.
Today, we will dive into health consciousness, and I will give you nine reasons why it is important to be more health-conscious. Plus, we will explore ways you can focus on your health and practice health consciousness on a daily basis.
What is Health Consciousness?
Health consciousness is a behavior and attitude in which people are aware of how their daily choices affect their overall health.
Examples of being more health conscious include:
- Paying special attention to what you eat (choosing more healthy foods over junk food)
- Participating in consistent physical fitness (for boosting your physical health)
- Making daily decisions with the realization that each one affects your health at some level
- Taking time to nourish the body, mind, and soul daily with a healthy lifestyle
- Being intentional about the kind of lifestyle you lead
- Being aware of how your thoughts and reactions affect your reality and perception of the world
- Learning how you can take care of your body deliberately and holistically
- Living life in a way that provides health benefits, rather than burden
These examples will all help you achieve a higher health consciousness. If you don’t feel like you’re very high on the health consciousness scale, don’t worry- the next sections will help you get motivated and find your “why” to make some changes in your health behaviors.
9 Reasons to Be More Health Conscious
Of course, raising your health consciousness doesn’t happen overnight. It takes some time to cultivate this mentality and behavior.
Luckily, there are many reasons why you may consider starting to be more conscious regarding your health.
1. Enhanced Awareness of the World Around You
As you become more health-conscious, you realize that your awareness of your environment and yourself increases.
Enhanced awareness of your surroundings means that you consciously observe every type of information that comes from the outside. Let me give you a few examples of what that means:
- You may notice other people’s emotions better (empathy)
- You pay attention to the taste of the food you are eating (mindful eating)
- Gratitude becomes a daily habit. (You appreciate even the smallest positive things that happen to you, such as having a sunny day, a stranger smiling at you on the street, etc.)
Simply put: your perceptual awareness significantly expands when you focus on being more health-conscious.
2. A Better Self-Esteem
Being more health conscious helps you to get more in tune with yourself. For example, you will start acknowledging your feelings and looking at your strengths and weaknesses more objectively. You become aware of what you are capable of. This way, you can also accept your weaknesses more easily.
Health-conscious people, in general, embrace their imperfections! This is because they learn how to live together with them, and they don’t let these faults destroy their self-esteem. This is a huge benefit for mental health.
3. Self-discipline
Health consciousness can teach you self-discipline. This is because you are able to focus better on activities that are good for your body and mind, such as healthy eating, physical exercise, and other activities that promote health.
Having a disciplined mind can also help you at times when you are about to give up (for example, your healthy diet or regular workout). This can help you have a higher chance of achieving your health goals. Therefore, it is absolutely worth being more conscious and developing self-discipline for optimal health outcomes.
4. Improved Overall Health and Fitness Habits
You can master the art of well-being by turning your attention to the healthiness of your diet, movement, and lifestyle. Along the way, you can slowly start to develop many new healthy habits that ultimately lead to better health and fitness.
Most health-conscious people have the following healthy habits that they consciously take time to cultivate:
- Maintain a balanced and healthy diet
- Practice mindful eating
- Avoid harmful chemicals in their lives by being health-conscious consumers (for example, they pay attention to food safety, use natural products, eat organic food, filter their tap water, etc.)
- Exercise regularly
- Get up early in the morning (or at least without a snooze)
- Have a well-working morning routine and bedtime routine,
- Get adequate sleep each night
- Pay attention to water intake
- Procrastinate less,
- Practice gratitude,
- Meditate,
- Keep a journal
- Set goals that they can actually achieve
- Practice stress relief techniques
- Care for themselves (Self-care: both physically and mentally)
- and many more.
People with high health consciousness also try to eliminate bad habits that can negatively affect their lives, including smoking, eating excessive junk food, sitting for long hours, surfing social media all day long, etc. Thus, they can decrease the risk of having various illnesses and diseases.
5. Inner Peace
Inner peace is such an amazing benefit of being health-conscious. Although calm and deep awareness, serenity, and peacefulness can be found within each person, health-conscious people are better at accessing their inner calm. And if you think that this requires quiet, then you are wrong.
There are many simple ways to achieve a sense of inner peace without shutting out all the noise surrounding us. The secret to finding calmness may simply be how you think and design your daily routine.
Related read: How to Establish a Daily Mindfulness Routine
6. Better Mood
Do you know those people who are always in a good mood, and they seem to have it all together? Most likely, they have already reached a high level of consciousness and feel less reactive to the world when life doesn’t go as planned.
You can also improve your mood by concentrating on your overall well-being and developing healthy habits.
7. Emotional Intelligence
Getting a deep understanding of your current emotional state and why you feel that way is very important. This can help you control your emotions and maintain positive thinking regardless of the circumstances.
By understanding your own emotions, you can also understand others’ feelings better. This means that you can develop empathy by raising consciousness.
8. Increased Productivity
Since health-conscious people have mostly good habits, are self-disciplined, and usually take advantage of the early mornings, they tend to be much more productive than those who pay less attention to their health (it’s a snowball effect!). Increased productivity and enhanced problem-solving can be a huge advantage at work or school.
Related read: 11 Tips for Setting Long Term Goals that You’ll Actually Keep
9. Better Relationships
As a result of a better mood, increased awareness, and empathy, being health-conscious can also help you have better relationships. When you start to communicate with others naturally, listen to what others are saying, and show empathy, your friends and family members will trust you more and look for your company.
Related read: 9 Keys to a Healthy Relationship
The Bottom Line
Hopefully, by now, you have a basic understanding of health consciousness and why it is so important to prioritize your health (in balance with other aspects of your life).
Even if you make small changes in your diet or lifestyle, they can have significant positive effects on your life, from feeling better to having better relationships.
It is worth the extra effort to be more health-conscious! Remember, you create your reality with your emotions, mood, thoughts, and perspective- increasing awareness can help immensely!
Do you consider yourself to be health-conscious? Let me know in the comments.
