Conquering Teenage Chaos: How to Balance School, Mental Health and Physical Wellness

Do you find it tremendously hard to juggle school and your own mental and physical well-being? As a teenager, it sometimes feels impossible to balance school while keeping in touch with ourselves. For example, finding time to do our homework, workout, eat healthy and still do some other self-love actions. But the great thing is, that finding this balance is possible. Following these you can improve your ability to successfully balance school and your mental and physical health!

And writing these tips today is me - Ana De Sousa! I am a 15 year old teen influencer that makes content on Instagram and Youtube all surrounding fitness and health advice for us teenagers (scroll down to follow me!) I love spreading positivity and helping people of our age to achieve their health and fitness goals, especially as it has so much to do with our mental well-being too! I actually started my own fitness journey at 12 years old and it has not always been easy to balance everything. With time and practice, I have been able to conjure up the best tips that need to be implemented in your life so you can balance school and staying fit! 

1. Prioritize

A key factor when it comes to successfully balancing school and your health is to know how to prioritize. When you prioritize things, you are able to make time for them and they are essential to complete. Things you should be prioritizing are:

• Your sleep schedule 
• When you will be working out and for how long
• What you will be eating
• When you need to complete school activities such as homework or clubs
• Taking some time for you to do something fun

Prioritizing these things makes them important and you will start to see them as tasks you need to complete daily. It’s the same thing as when you prioritize washing your teeth in the morning and brushing your hair. When you successfully know how to prioritize these and make time for them, you will then be balancing them well. But you may question, even if I do prioritize these things, I feel like nothing ever goes to plan and I don't have time! This is why scheduling and routine are so important!

2. Schedule

Scheduling can be one of the most powerful components to boost your productivity and balance your school life with your overall wellness. As said before, prioritizing activities is important, but it’s just as important to actually find yourself the time to do them, otherwise you may find yourself not completing them at all! 

I personally have found the best method of scheduling to balance school and my health, and that is by creating a to-do list! We all know what a to-do list is, hardly anyone implements this amazing tool. People who write down their goals and activities will be 1.2 - 1.4x more likely to complete those goals than those who don’t. This helps a lot with procrastination too! I use an application called Notion to write down my tasks for the day. I usually complete this the night before, giving me a clear path for the day ahead. I make sure to prioritize time for school, exercise, and fun! There is absolutely no need to plan out every single minute of the day, but time block your day so you have a rough idea of what you want to complete!

During the pandemic, I have been doing online school and scheduling has been essential in supporting me to balance everything. I find that doing school during school hours is so important so that I don’t drain myself with work too early in the morning or too late in the night. This also really helps with my procrastination! The same thing goes with working out. I personally have found that if I workout straight after waking up, I'm more motivated to complete my workout, and I won’t procrastinate. The best times I have found to workout are times when you have momentum, for example after waking up or after coming back to school. Create a schedule and then build yourself a routine. I can promise you then that you will find it 100x easier to balance school and your health!

3. Flexibility

Although scheduling is crucial, also give yourself the flexibility to help you balance school and your physical and mental health. Luckily for us, not every single day is the same: some days we get a ton of homework and other days we don’t; some days we have our time all to ourselves and other days we don’t; some days our mental health is great and other days it isn’t. This is why flexibility is important so we can adapt to our day and successfully balance ourselves!

Don’t be afraid to change up your to-do list and add in or take away certain activities. If you have a lot of homework one day, move your workout to the next day. Perhaps instead of lounging around at your friends house, get active by running, swimming or going on a walk! If your mental health isn’t the greatest, you reschedule your homework tand give yourself a relaxing day, watching netflix and eating popcorn! Having the skills to adapt to your mood and arising situations is a major component to help you achieve balance.

4. Time management

While time management is involved with scheduling your day, it also relates to efficiency of your management skills. For instance, school and health do not have to be seperate items - you can unify them! They may seem like two different complete things, but you can join them together so that balancing them becomes easier. A great example of this is completing exercise at school and joining sports clubs. This unites your education, physical health, and your mental health as you interact with new people and release endorphins. Remember doing physical activity is super important for your mental health too!

Choosing your activities carefully is essential so that you can find the optimal balance! I sometimes feel finding the right workout for my time schedule can be difficult, and I also feel that finding and making healthy food is very challenging at times, especially with school. But it’s learning to choose the right support to help us with these activities! 

I am here to help support you so you can successfully balance school and your mental and physical well-being. Honestly, I believe one of the most difficult challenges to balancing these, is the food part of it all. I sometimes just don’t have the time to make healthy food because of school.  I struggle knowing what I should make, especially when it comes to a crucial meal, such as breakfast. However, I have collected some recipes that make balancing school and my health extremely easy! These can be found in my very own HEALTHY BREAKFAST eBook that has now officially launched!

This book is perfect for us indecisive and clueless teenagers who are trying to reach our health goals, but struggle finding what to eat for breakfast ( the most important meal of the day!). I cover breakfasts that require more preparation, as well as nutritious meals for when we are late for school and have 5 mins to make a healthy choice! In my eBook you can find healthy ice creams, pancakes, waffles and so much more! Who knew we could have so much fun making a time efficient, nutritious, delicious breakfasts?!

I have a 10% code for you which is JUSTGIRL10 (use it at the checkout) You can read more on the ebook and purchase it HERE!

If you're having any issues with purchasing the ebook, please either dm me on instagram or email me actuallyanabusiness@gmail.com

I hope this blog post helped you and opened your eyes in a new way on how you can genuinely balance school and your mental health and physical health! Come and follow me over on Instagram and Youtube so you can continue your health journey and educate yourself even more as a teen! YOU GOT THIS!! I believe in you ;)

Written by: Ana De Sousa

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