Improving Quality of Life: 5 Essential Ways
When we set goals for our lives and seek to make meaningful improvements in how we live, what we’re really striving for is a higher quality of life. Improving quality of life leads to better outcomes in happiness, health, relationships and overall life satisfaction.
But what is quality of life, and how can we improve our lives? The American Psychological Association defines quality of life (QoL) as “the extent to which a person obtains satisfaction from life.”
According to psychologists, improving quality of life means achieving satisfaction across several aspects, including:
- Emotional and physical well-being
- Social relationships and engagement with others
- Personal and professional development, including learning new skills
- Determining and living by our own lifestyle choices and values
- Participating in and contributing to society in meaningful ways
Though we may each approach improving our quality of life in different ways, there are a few actions everyone can take to increase their daily enjoyment. Below are five steps to optimize your well-being and increase life satisfaction.
1. Feel the Benefits of Bodywork
Therapeutic touch and manipulation, also known as bodywork, have long been known to produce various immediate and long-term physical and mental health benefits. Bodywork, like deep tissue massage, chiropractic care, acupuncture, reflexology and more, helps target and release tension, pain and discomfort throughout the body—especially in areas that tend to retain physical and emotional stress or have suffered injury or trauma.
Some of the benefits of bodywork include:
- Lowers blood pressure
- Relieves anxiety and physical and mental stress
- Boosts blood circulation
- Increase range of motion and flexibility in joints
- Speeds up healing and recovery times
At Relax The Back, you’ll find a range of wellness solutions that provide the therapeutic benefits of bodywork at home. Our massage chairs are equipped with technology that mimics lifelike touch, immersing you in a healing bodywork experience from the comfort of your living room.
The Human Touch® Super Novo 2.0 Massage Chair offers features like heated low back massage, calf and knee massage and zero-gravity recline, addressing multiple dimensions of wellness.
For at-home chiropractic care, try inversion therapy. Inversion tables, like the Fitspine XC5 Inversion Table by Teeter, are designed to naturally decompress the spine using traction to alleviate pressure between spinal discs. Regular inversion therapy can help reverse the negative effects of sedentary living and may help keep chronic back and neck pain at bay.
2. Learn Stress-Management Skills
One of the keys to lifelong contentment is developing the ability to face the demands of life confidently. Stress is a fact of living in the world, so finding healthy, positive ways to handle tense moments is essential to living a high quality of life. Stress management, however, is not only a matter of merely coping with pressure but truly thriving despite life’s stressful situations.
Developing an action plan for how you’ll personally tackle stress can be a game-changing pursuit. Stress management techniques might include:
- Practicing mindfulness, relaxation techniques or other proven approaches to stress-reduction
- Setting personal goals that align with your values
- Making time for social connection and community
- Knowing when to ask for help if you have too much on your plate
The above stress management techniques require an ongoing commitment, including investing in products that can help you fully de-stress. At Relax The Back, we’re dedicated to curating the optimal solutions for relaxation. Our collection of zero-gravity recliners has helped thousands of customers prioritize and take stress management into their own hands.
Visit our showroom today to test out the Human Touch Perfect Chair—a zero-gravity recliner that’s ergonomically designed to promote the therapeutic neutral posture for spinal health and recovery.
3. Get Better Sleep
Ongoing research continues to show how essential sleep is to quality of life. Getting enough and getting better sleep keeps us feeling our best, prevents chronic illness and extends our lifespan. While we sleep, our bodies undergo numerous physiological processes, including repairing, restoring and healing the cells in our brains.
An important part of getting better sleep is knowing your personal sleeping preferences and patterns. Whether you’re a back, side or stomach sleeper, you need the right sleep set-up to help promote better comfort and support so you can rest deeply.
If you tend to sleep too hot or too cold, you need the right type of bedding to help keep your body temperature at an ideal level for undisturbed sleep. Hot sleepers need breathable linens and cooling mattresses, while cold sleepers need heavier blankets made from natural, warming fibers.
Relax The Back specializes in helping you find the perfect sleep system for your sleep style. As a leading provider of the renowned sleep brand Tempur-Pedic®, we have the perfect mattress, pillow and bed base combination for your needs. Choose from mattresses of different firmness levels, including the Tempur-ProAdapt Hybrid Mattress designed to relieve painful pressure points.
4. Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Achieving a healthy work-life balance is an essential way to improve your quality of life. Balancing your time and energy spent working vs. enjoying other aspects of life helps to keep you mentally and physically productive and satisfied. Without a healthy work-life balance, people tend to experience fatigue and burnout, which can affect other areas of life, including personal relationships.
While many people instinctively think of work-life balance in terms of a time trade-off, it’s really more about maximizing the time you spend in either area. Research shows that beyond a certain number of hours spent working, your productivity tends to plummet drastically. Therefore, increasing the quality of your productive time rather than the quantity can help you achieve a healthy work-life balance.
When it’s time to work, do so in the healthiest way for your body with ergonomic office furniture from Relax The Back. Invest in the ideal home workspace set-up with our collection of ergonomic X-Chair office chairs or adjustable standing desks. Ergonomic workspaces are designed to promote proper spinal alignment, improve circulation and reduce the risk of back and neck pain so you can stay focused and make the most of your time spent working.
5. Become More Active
Living an active lifestyle is a known way to maintain a high quality of life. Studies show that getting regular exercise increases quality of life in many different areas. According to one study, people derive emotional and social benefits from exercise, which makes us further motivated to stay physically active.
The benefits of an active lifestyle for the mind and body include:
- Boosts mood and enhances mental well-being
- Maintains and optimizes cognitive function
- Improves sleep quality, including the amount of deep sleep you get
- Staves off age-related chronic diseases
- Contributes to healthy aging, including better mobility in old age
Whether your goal is to lose weight, run a marathon or simply discover a love of fitness, Relax The Back has the exercise recovery and therapy tools you need to feel and move your best.
Prevent exercise injury and heal sore muscles faster with post-workout recovery tools, including therapeutic massage guns. The Hypervolt 2 Massager offers the latest in percussion massage technology, connecting to Bluetooth-enabled devices to provide personalized control over speed settings.
Treat yourself to deep relaxation after a tough workout with heat therapy devices, including the Relaxus Smart Tens Neck Massager or the Thermolax Far Infrared Heating Pad. Some benefits of heat therapy include increasing circulation, reducing inflammation and preventing injury so you can keep active.
Shop Wellness Solutions at Relax The Back
No matter what a good quality of life looks like for you, Relax The Back provides the solutions to help you get there. Whether you want to exercise more, increase your leisure time, work more productively or get a better night’s sleep, specialists at Relax The Back can help you find the wellness tools you need to live a better life.
Shop our lifestyle wellness collections online, including our massage chairs and recliners, ergonomic office furniture, sleep products, fitness and therapy devices and more. Visit us in person at a store near you or book a virtual appointment today to discuss your personalized wellness needs with one of our specialists.
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