These days, there’s no shortage of ways to manage our well-being.

Want to exercise more? Your watch can offer workouts and track them for you.

Want to eat healthier? There are plenty of websites listing nutrition, calorie, and macronutrient information.

Want to meditate? There’s an app for that.

There’s nothing wrong with these tools and software. They can help you set goals, be consistent, and quantify progress.

But they’ll never know you as well as you know you.

Therefore, to help manage and improve my well-being, I ask myself two simple-but-powerful questions a few times per day:

“How am I feeling?”

“What do I need right now?”

By asking these questions, I’m…

1. Taking a proactive, mindful pause during my day
2. Checking in with my thoughts, feelings, and emotions
3. If necessary, making an outcome-based decision, acting on what’s real for me in the present moment

The answers to and actions taken from these questions are as unique as the individuals asking them.

For example, when asking, “How am I feeling?”, one might answer, “Anxious and overwhelmed.”

Then, when they follow it up with, “What do I need right now?“, the answer could be, “A five minute break from work so I can meditate.”

Through this example, it’s easy to see how these two questions can empower many aspects of our well-being.

If you’re feeling tired, maybe you decide you need to go for a walk, which contributes to your health through gentle movement.

If you’re feeling hungry, you can decide to mindfully prepare a meal that nourishes you, as opposed to reactively choosing the most convenient, usually less-nutritious option.

If you’re feeling happy and focused, you could choose to keep doing exactly what you’re doing and note to do more of that in the future.

In the end, what matters is that you check in with yourself, observe whatever you’re feeling without judgement, and make a decision – no matter how small – based on that.

If you make time once or even a few times per day to ask these two powerful questions, you’ll be well on your way to a more proactive, mindful, healthy day.

– Ian