Today’s habit for the 30 day healthy habit challenge is simple, powerful, and genuinely fun: set aside 10 minutes to do something creative or playful.

As adults, we often stop making time for “silly” or purely enjoyable moments, but those short creative breaks can lower stress, boost your mood, and make it easier to stay consistent with healthy habits the rest of the day. Whether you put on music and fully immerse yourself, try painting, cook, take photos, knit, or explore something totally new. This is about giving your brain a reset and letting yourself experience a little joy.

Takeaways

Today’s habit: Do 10 minutes of fun or creativity, in addition to your daily movement.

Fun isn’t “extra”, it can lower stress and support your overall well-being.

Short creative breaks can improve mood and stress resilience, making healthy choices feel easier.

As adults, we often forget how to play, making fun a habit helps bring that back.

If you work in a creative field, choose something different from your job to truly reset your brain.

Aim for an activity that helps you enter a mini flow state. This allows you to be extra focused and not thinking about everything else.

Try something new you’re not “good” at. Being a beginner can actually make it more immersive and fun.

If you’re too tired for “fun,” choose something restorative (like a relaxing read) and still count it.

Watch on YouTube

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Episode Transcript:

Cheryl McColgan (00:00.558)
Hey everyone, I’m Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal Nourish Grow and welcome to day 16 of your 30 days of healthy habits challenge. Today is fun because it actually is doing something fun or creative for 10 minutes. So this is of course, in addition to your 10 minutes of daily movement, but you’re going to take a separate 10 minutes at some point today and set that aside to do something creative or fun.

So this is often challenging for people. When I even think about it for myself, I’m like, what do I find fun? What would I actually do with this 10 minutes? Well, the beauty is it can be anything. And hopefully you have a hobby or a thing that you do, whether it’s art or singing or dancing or just something that speaks to you and creates fun.

This fun or creative activity, it can lower stress, it supports your well-being, and it just makes healthy habits throughout the day easier to maintain if you always have a little bit of fun. Short creative breaks can also support your mood and it creates stress resilience. fun, we don’t always make time for it, but you can make that a habit too. And that’s why I wanted to include this one in the challenge because I definitely think it’s something that when we become adults,

that we do this less and less. And it’s too bad because those times that you’re silly, and I find, at least for me, it’s often easiest for me to do this with friends, is that the silly creative or just fun times, it creates so much joy and you almost forget what it’s like. Whereas I feel like when we were younger and kids, we were more carefree and had less responsibilities.

it was easier to just say pull off work and do something fun for 10 minutes. But it really will pay you benefits if you look at it in terms of your work, because when you give yourself that little mental break, and especially if you’re in a creative field, it is nice to take a break and do something fun or different from whatever it is creative that you do for your actual job. So I would encourage you if you are in a creative field, if you do, for example, you do some people call it I do creative, I don’t know if I really think that it’s because I don’t.

Cheryl McColgan (02:12.332)
I don’t think of writing creativity in the same way that I think of like drawing or painting or things like that. To me, that seems more like creative activity, but it is, it really is creative. And even when you’re doing it kind of more in a work component, that it’s not, you know, I’m not writing fiction or anything like that. So it’s not creative in that way, but it is still a different kind of skill of creativity. So for mine, I would not choose writing, obviously, I would do something completely different. And for me, I’m more likely to choose fun.

for this challenge. So I would probably just maybe put on some music and you know really just take a moment to immerse myself into it and listen to it. I find that very fun and very rejuvenating and very refreshing break from work. So here’s some other ideas for you if none of that is resonating with anything so far but I already mentioned music. I mentioned drawing or painting. There’s also cooking.

or taking photos or some other hobby that you have. Maybe it’s knitting, crochet, maybe it’s, one of my friends does this thing with these little like sparkly crystal things, putting them into pictures and stuff. just anything like that. And ideally also something that you can get in a flow state with if you can within 10 minutes, because it’ll just give you that stress relief because you’re totally focused and you’re not thinking about anything else. And in the past when I’ve done this,

I haven’t thought it was fun. cannot draw or paint at all. Just was never a skill of mine, but I had bought this inexpensive acrylic set from Hobby Lobby. think those are pretty all over the US anyway. And it’s just a place that has a lot of different creative supplies and housewares and things to decorate with and stuff like that. So a lot of stuff for creativity. But being a person that doesn’t paint or draw at all bought

this little inexpensive paint kit with how to canvas and spent the afternoon on my patio and started, I had an inspiration piece that was a flat perspective thing that I had seen somewhere that I had a photo of and I got so immersed such in a flow state, was unbelievable. Excuse me. And I think that it was even more so of a flow state because I didn’t know what I was doing. So.

Cheryl McColgan (04:30.67)
Extra bonus points if you try something new with this challenge that you’re not used to because I think it can create an extra fun thing. So if you’re extra tired when you’re doing this and this fun doesn’t seem like the thing go for relaxation whether it’s just a 10 minute break to do something you don’t normally get to do like reading something like that. That would be fine as well. So that is your habit for today. And if you’re not yet signed up, you can always start at any time. We’d love to have you and that’s it for this one. So I’ll see you again tomorrow.