Get your 3-a-day

On this morning's chilly leaf strewn three and a quarter mile jaunt, somehow I got to thinking about the government's 5-a-day recommendation that we should all eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables each day, and how that's become firmly embedded in most people's minds.

I do believe that we should all be encouraged to consume food that is healthier for us than the fast food diet that we have been encouraged to eat by the advertising messages that we have been bombarded with fairly mercilessly over the last ten or twenty years.

However, I wondered whether there could be an even more important message that we needed to hear about what we feed our minds.

That, in turn, helped me to come up with a new idea, and that's my 3-a-day recommendation.

So here it is.

1. Spend, a minimum of, 5 minutes each and every day doing some kind of exercise. This will get the blood pumping round your body, make you healthier and also make you feel more positive about yourself, about life and about the challenges you face.
   
   For me this is my Mile each Day, but it's anything that works for you, just as long as it's at least 5 minutes each day.
   
   
2. Perform one random act of kindness every day. By random I mean something that is not in response to something that someone has done for you, a tit for tat. If your act is over and above what you would normally expect to do in response, then it does count as a random act of kindness.
   
   This will not only make the recipient of the kindness feel better, it will also make you feel better about yourself. It will increase your confidence and provide a strong dose of self compassion, something that has recently been discovered to have a greater positive effect on us all than self esteem.
   
   For ideas on random acts of kindness have a look at How I Celebrated My Birthday and/or 22 Random Acts of Kindness.
   
   
3. Take one action (it doesn't matter how small) that will move you towards the life of your dreams.
   
   "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand" said Randy Pausch. Knowing that you have made progress every day with what's important to you will make you feel that you are living a worthwhile life and that you always have a choice in what the next step is.

Now I have to admit that apart from number 1 (above) I'm currently not doing the 3-a-day every day at the moment, but I intend to start an experiment to try it out myself.

I'd love to hear what your 3-a-day to feed your mind would be, and if you can't think of one, try my 3-a-day and let me know how it goes.