The extra hour of sunshine hitting my face in the afternoon this week has me feeling more energized than I have all winter. You may be feeling similarly, now that daylight savings time has arrived and the weather is starting to feel more like spring. This is the time of year we begin to think about the process of spring cleaning, and while we usually think of this in terms of cleaning up our homes and having yard sales, we can also apply this to our health practices. 

As the weather gets nicer, our schedules usually become more demanding. This can take a toll on our health, not only because we feel like we have less time to prioritize it, but also because oftentimes we are trying to practice healthy behaviors in either too many ways, or in ways that aren’t very relevant to us anymore. 

Our health is dynamic, and our practices around it should be dynamic too. As we go through different seasons in life, what we prioritize changes. As these priorities change, our practices to support them should also change. 

This is a perfect time of year to audit our health goals and what we’re doing to achieve them to ensure we don’t get stuck in patterns that used to work, but don’t anymore. 

To audit your current health goals, consider what is currently most important to you. When you ask yourself this question, many things may come up. It’s important we focus on one to a maximum of three goals at a time to give ourselves the best opportunity to achieve them without diluting our focus and energy across too many variables. 

Whether or not your current priorities have changed from the beginning of the year is less important than reminding ourselves of them and being clear on what they are. 

Once we know what our current health priorities are, we can create a plan to achieve them. It’s easy to overload ourselves with too many steps and routines. As we go through the process of spring cleaning our health priorities, we want to pick only the practices that will move us forward the most, and leave out the rest. We can always add in extra health-promoting behaviors later, but putting pressure on ourselves to complete everything possible will most likely lead us to feeling overloaded and giving up, rather than making progress. 

As you go through your spring cleaning, it’s also a great time to brain dump all of the lingering tasks you need to complete and have been putting off. Freeing up time by simplifying our health practices gives us the opportunity to complete some tasks that may feel like a burden now, but will feel even more relieving once they are completed. 

The mental load of having to think about things we need to do takes a large toll on our ability to make decisions, and the more difficult it is for us to make decisions, the more difficult it is for us to make healthy decisions. 

Cleaning up our health practices this time of year is a great self-care activity, and will leave us feeling as light and fresh as a beautiful spring day. Spend some time this month prioritizing this. Your future self will thank you.