How to Positively Self-Revitalize – Part One

Would you be surprised to learn that according to a 2025 New York Post article, 27% of women stated that among their top health goals, they wanted to “improve energy levels.” That’s a rather large percentage of women nationwide looking for more natural zest to get through the day. If this includes you, how can you increase your overall vitality, or self-revitalize naturally? While specific behaviors factor in, for the most effective outcome, the first thing to change is your mindset.

Know thyself

In busy times, you may get so caught up in the demands of your daily life that you risk losing track of yourself along the way, especially if you have little time in your day or evening that is yours alone, to think, journal, dream, and above all, get in touch with your feelings.

The ancient Greek term “Know thyself,” thought to be coined by the great Socrates, means to understand yourself fully, including your strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and limitations. It’s an invitation to self-reflection and introspection, encouraging you to examine your thoughts, feelings, and actions. This allows you to gain a deeper understanding of who you are and why you do the things you do.

Assess your daily routine

In France, the term la vie quotidienne refers to daily life. What can you learn by taking a closer look at your experience on a day to day basis?  When you invest time into gaining a better understanding of your daily choices and what motivates them, you can start to examine your patterns more closely, assessing them without judgment to determine what is serving you well, and what may detract from the quality of your life.

Taking stock without judgement allows you to zero in on which adjustments you might wish to make to improve your wellbeing, and how to prioritize them. This is important because new behaviors that are gradually incorporated into your lifestyle are most likely to be sustainable over time.

Establish a stress meter

We all have some degree of stress in our lives, the question is how much, and what level of control we have over the source, or at least how we respond to it. Stress is an insidious and pervasive problem with many negative symptoms. It can negatively impact your energy and well-being on every level−mentally, physically, and emotionally when it goes beyond its normal functions within your body’s stress response system.

Again, short term stress serves a necessary purpose, and when the threat abates, your adrenaline and cortisol levels decrease, and your heart rate and blood pressure return to normal. Chronic stress is another story, as long-term activation of the stress response system requires continual exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones. As noted by the Mayo Clinic, this is highly disruptive to many body systems, and increases your risk of many health problems, including:

• Anxiety.
• Depression.
• Digestive problems.
• Headaches.
• Muscle tension and pain.
• Heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure and stroke.
• Sleep problems.
• Weight gain.
• Problems with memory and focus.

For best results, let this information sink in first. Don’t worry about how exactly you will change your stress levels right now. The idea is to evaluate them objectively. Creating your own stress meter is like incorporating an internal warning system to help protect your overall well-being from the proven dangers of unmanaged stress. Once you become clear on the type, cause, and frequency of your primary daily life stressors, the next phase is what to do about it. We will be elaborating on this, along with other ideas discussed above, and creating an action plan accordingly in Part II of How to Positively Self-Revitalize.