Several years ago my mom had a stroke. It happened out of nowhere, and we were all obviously in shock when we found out. She went from being a busy, self-sufficient woman to needing different types of therapies to help with her left-side paralysis literally overnight. Then, years later, she was diagnosed with stage 3, triple-negative breast cancer. Again, we were all stunned and rallied to help her through the process. Fast forward to last year when my dad was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Once again, the worrier in me came out, but this time it brought with it an actual helpful sidekick – self-assessment.

While I don’t consider myself unhealthy, I am sometimes all too aware of my chronic health issues. So when I reflected on my parents’ health and took stock of my own, it was pretty easy to see the places that I needed to improve.

Now, I’m making even better choices as a preemptive strike in my personal wellness.

I stick to my self-care morning routine and clean eating so that I can reduce my stress load, let my body heal, and boost my immune system. These help to set my future self up for the win. While I know that there are no guarantees that I won’t have big health issues down the road, by taking care of myself now, I dramatically reduce the likelihood of that happening.

We all know there are things we should avoid to live a healthy and long life. Cutting out fast food is the easiest thing. So is limiting sugar intake and alcohol consumption. But what if you add in just 5 minutes of meditation each day? Or drinking more water? How about eating more veggies with each meal? These are super simple ways you can dramatically improve your life and live longer and happier.

To be completely transparent, I’m a total foodie and don’t love doing super challenging workouts, so it’s not like I’m talking from a place of “Why don’t you love this because it’s so much fun?!” I’ve made shifts in my life because I want to spend as much time with my loved ones as possible. I want to make a massive impact on this planet. And if I feel like crap, it doesn’t matter that I’m still technically alive. My quality of life completely sucks when I feel horrible.

By remembering why I’m making incredible changes to my lifestyle, it helps me stay the path and move forward with excitement.