How to Boost Your Vitality in a Week

If you're going through a difficult time or feel that your days are boring and empty, we propose an exercise: make some changes for a week. Here are seven clues to boost your vitality.

Reviewed and approved by the psychologist Sergio De Dios González.

Written by Edith Sánchez

Last update: 07 March, 2023

Sometimes, you need to make certain changes to alter your level of vitality. This is even more important when you’re experiencing feelings of pessimism or sadness or a lack of motivation. Carrying out actions that boost your vitality is an effective way of improving your mood.

Encouragingly, there’s an effective strategy that’ll not only boost your vitality but also help to center yourself emotionally. It includes seven simple actions that anyone can carry out. The only condition is that you have to do them in one week.

At first, you might be reluctant to dedicate yourself to this week of empowerment. However, you won’t lose anything by trying. On the contrary, you may well gain a great deal. Here are the seven actions you need to carry out to boost your vitality in a week.

1. Stop criticizing yourself

“Stop criticizing yourself” sounds like a cliché. Therefore, it’s likely that the importance of this action might go unnoticed by you. While self-evaluation is extremely useful as it allows you to grow, self-criticism is a completely different matter, especially if you do it often.

How about you make up your mind to stop criticizing yourself, just for a week? It’s not that difficult. In fact, it’ll help you to understand the reason for your feelings of discomfort. After all, beating yourself up is a mental narrative that does little for you. In fact, it reduces your vitality. 

2. Forgive yourself

Put aside the idea that relentless self-demand is a path to growth. At least try to look at it differently for a week. How about giving yourself permission to stop dwelling on the mistakes you’ve made or accomplishments you’ve missed? Instead, focus on how much you’re worth.

You could be overlooking your virtues and successes. It might be time to stop to think and celebrate all that you’ve done and continue to do well. Become your own best friend for a week. Be understanding and kind to yourself. It’s well worth a try.

3. Identify the best of each situation

Your mood often falters because you can only see the problematic or unsympathetic side of each situation. Whilst it’s true that reality is full of complexities that are difficult to assimilate, there’s a positive element in absolutely everything.

You simply need to change your mental ‘chip’ and adopt a new perspective, at least for seven days. Explore and investigate the positive element that’s in each and every situation that you see today as unpleasant. This, in itself, will boost your vitality.

4. Challenge yourself

There’s nothing better for escaping states of passivity and boredom than giving yourself a challenge. It’ll be even better if there’s more than one. However, one will be enough to boost your vitality and make you feel much better. You don’t have to climb Everest, stop traffic with a street juggling act, or anything like that.

In fact, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that simply facing small challenges will give you a new perspective. One clue for defining your challenges lies in your fears. What are you afraid of? That’s where the answer lies. Find a way of dealing, to a certain extent, with one (or more) of your fears.

5. Thank yourself

Life is much easier when you know how to express gratitude. Indeed, this gesture speaks volumes about the person who does it. You only have to consider someone who’s overcome their personal vanity and egocentrism. They’ve recognized that they’re part of a collective and that they receive input from it.

Expressing gratitude is also a sign of appreciation for another person. Only people who love themselves are capable of finding this value in others. Apart from this, gratitude is linked to the perspective of positive recognition toward others. Feeling that you’re giving and receiving it makes your life happier.

6. Giving: a good way to boost your vitality

You might find it really interesting to give everything you can to others for a week. Just put yourself in the position of figuring out what others require or need. Then if possible, help them achieve it.

For example, give gifts such as hugs, kisses, kind words, recognition, listening, interest, etc. It’ll be well worth the effort. In fact, whenever possible, you should give something of yourself to another person. After only a couple of days, you’ll probably find yourself feeling pleasantly surprised.

7. Change your routine

One way of boosting your vitality is by changing something in your routine. As a matter of fact, you should try and make a change every day of this seven-day challenge. Don’t plan any large or permanent changes. Just do things differently.

The above are simple actions but they’ll be extremely revealing. Indeed, it’s highly likely that, at the end of the week, you’ll feel like you know yourself better and that you understand more about your emotions. Moreover, it’s almost certain that you’ll feel better and will have boosted your vitality.