Welcome to Living Well Daily, the newsletter serving up tips to help you live a healthier, happier life.
In today’s edition:
😊Mental / Emotional Well-Being: Ignite Your Playful Spirit
💖Longevity & Wellness: Triage Theory
🧠 Inner Reps: Building a Joyful, Heart-Centered Life
☀️Self-Care & Connection
🌱Trauma Healing: Self-Soothing
👇 And more good stuff!
Today’s Edition
We heard a rumour about you that… you are incredible! And guess what, it isn’t a rumour because it is true. Factually true. So we hope you have a day as incredible as you!
Ignite Your Playful Spirit
Somewhere along the way, many of us trade play for productivity (blah). But, my love, playfulness isn’t frivolous: it’s fuel for creativity, stress relief, and joy. When you give yourself permission to be silly, experiment, and laugh for no reason, you’re giving your nervous system a reset and your mind space to imagine new possibilities. Play can help us come alive.
Why play matters for adults:
🌟 It’s a stress buster. Play lowers stress hormones and boosts mood.
🧠 It sparks creativity. Lighthearted fun gets you out of rigid thinking.
💖 It reconnects you to joy. Play reminds you what it’s like to be fully present and free.
🌱 It builds resilience. Having moments of lightness makes it easier to navigate the heavy.
Play Boosting Ideas:
🎶 Have a spontaneous dance break in your kitchen.
🎨 Try a no-pressure creative activity like doodling, finger painting, or making up silly songs.
🏸 Play a casual game: cards, frisbee, or something you loved as a kid.
🤪 Add humor to your day by sending a silly meme, making funny faces in the mirror, or watching something lighthearted.
✅ Action Step: Pick one playful thing to do this week (no outcomes, no productivity) just joy for joy’s sake. Better yet, do something playful everyday, even a mini moment of play can help ignite your joyful spirit.
Ps. If life is feeling heavy right now, try to remember that play and joy can be acts of resistance. It helps me to remember that feelings aren’t exclusive, heaviness and playfulness can actually share a space.
Triage Theory
Triage theory was developed by Bruce Ames, and it proposed that when nutrients are scarce, the body prioritizes immediate survival and reproduction over long-term health. It does this by diverting vitamins and minerals from longevity-related processes like DNA repair to more immediate processes.
This makes total sense because why would your body use nutrients to help you survive in 10, 20, 30 years, etc., if it can’t function properly today or tomorrow?
Triage theory is important because this “rationing” can cause slow, undetectable biological damage, leading to accelerated aging and higher risks of chronic diseases.
To counteract this, it is important to consistently get an adequate intake of all essential nutrients (vitamins and minerals) so you have more than enough to fulfill your body’s short-term processes and can therefore undertake longevity-related processes.
3 ways to help get enough nutrients:
🥕Eat predominantly whole foods, as they tend to be higher in vitamins and minerals than more processed foods
🍅Take a multi-vitamin to top up your levels (if needed)
🫑Keep your gut healthy because that is how you absorb the nutrients from your food!
✅ Action Step: See if you can have 80% or more of your diet today come from whole foods.
Today’s Mental and Emotional Workout:
Today’s inner reps will help you build the neuropathways for a joyful, heart-centered life!
Replace “should” with “could” and see what opens. Language shapes possibility.
📖Journal Prompt:
What’s a challenge you’ve faced that showed you how strong you are? What lesson can you take forward from it?
🌟Spark of Joy:
Watch the clouds drift by — like when you spot shapes that make you smile.
🦋Weekly Connection & Kindness Challenge:
💬Ask a Thoughtful Question
Go beyond “How are you?” and really listen.
Self-Soothing Strategies: Calming Tools for Different Environments
Self-soothing is the act of calming your emotional distress, helping regulate your nervous system, especially when trauma responses are on overdrive.
Day 1: What Self-Soothing Is (and Isn’t)
Self-soothing isn’t about erasing emotions, it’s about supporting yourself while feeling them and helping your nervous system come back from heightened states.
🙃Big emotions are human and valid.
🐻Self-soothing offers stability when emotions feel overwhelming.
🦺Self-soothing helps build self-trust and psychological safety. When you trust you can get yourself back to a baseline, it can become safer to do healing work around bigger emotions and trauma without overwhelm.
🥰Stay tuned in for self-soothing techniques all week long.
Darling, don’t give up on yourself, you’re so worth it. Sending love 💕
Thank you for being here!
Before you go, let us know what you thought of today’s edition and if there are any subjects you would like us to cover in the future reply to this email and let us know!
What did you think of today's edition?
With love and care,
Lola & Joshua | The Living Well Team
Living Well Daily is for educational purposes only and is in no way a substitute for professional medical and mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a qualified professional for care unique to your needs.
Remember: It’s okay to ask for help. Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 (Canada & US).