In Personalized Health and Epigenetics, your Lifestyle Priority is a key area of daily life that has been determined to significantly impact your brain and body biology. Think of the Lifestyle Priority as your number one “bang for buck” item, or the one area that sets the rest of your life up for success across the board.

Lifestyle priorities are different for the different HealthTypes, as you can see below. Here we share about the Lifestyle Priority for each HealthType, plus some tips to help you optimize your body and brain health!

ACTIVATORS

Your biology is designed to MOVE!

Your Activator Lifestyle Priority is Fitness and movement which should be an important part of your daily routine.

Your Top 3 Tips are:

1. Start the day with a Burst of Activity – After a night’s rest, your body and mind is ready to burst into activity like the sun’s rays to kick start the day. Even if you feel slow and sluggish in the morning, you’ll be surprised how early morning kick start momentum can carry your energy levels through all day long! 
2. Rest – Just as important as MOVING, is the rest and recovery phase. Just know that it is an Activator tendency to go go go all the time, which leads to a high predisposition of fatigue in Activators. Ensure you create time in your schedule to rest, or even have a little cat nap as short as 10-15mins if you can easily slot it in. 
3. Take the Stairs – If you are feeling a little sluggish, or even bored in a meeting or sitting for long periods of time, give the person you are speaking to a head’s up that you may need to jump up and move. In our ShaeWellness meetings, we expect the Activators in the room to jump up and do some squats while in a meeting, or get up and move. This is healthy and natural and is encouraged. Others won’t find it strange if you give them the heads up that you will need to move after a short time of sitting. Moving will help you stay focused!

CONNECTORS

As a Connector – your lifestyle priority is your MIND. Once you understand how your Mind works, you have a better understanding of what can help or hinder your daily satisfaction.

As a Connector, your Mind processes information in a highly visual way. You may find yourself attracted to bold colours, visual cues and graphics, and take in a lot of information through your eyes. Top tips to maximize a Connector MIND Lifestyle priority – 

1. Sunshine – Overall, a healthy Connector has a naturally bright and sunny disposition compared to others. Getting some extra sun or even surrounding a Connector with pictures of the sun or drinking yellow or sun colour smoothies can be up lifting. Even seeing pictures of the sun, or sunny beaches can be an instant mood lifter. 
2. What you See is What you Get – Keeping your physical home, office, bedroom, and other areas of your home tidy and bright is a very tangible way of brightening up your physical space, to brighten up your mind space. Bold or pleasing colours can be a great way to add a little vitality to your clothes, your accessories, and your physical space to add some visual variety and interesting dimension to your life! Check your daily schedule for best time of day to take 10mins to tidy up your place, to tidy up your mind space. 
3. Connection – “Connector” truly is the perfect name for your natural gifts and way of being. Due to your Mind’s preference to process visual information, your brain thrives on picking up visual cues and stimulation while you are brain-storming, meeting, or  socializing with others. Get out and connect with the sun, connect with your network, connect with those around you to stimulate your Mind and mood!

DIPLOMATS

As a Diplomat, your Place is of highest priority. Your physical landscape is a direct representation of your mental landscape. Your Top 3 Tips for creating mental flow:

1. Create Space – Declutter, minimize, put things in their place. Compartmentalize your space to put things away to mirror this same process in your mind space. 
2. Natural Colours, Textures and Aesthetics – Forests, trees, stone, water…create a natural and calming sanctuary full of nature-inspired textures, colours, and tones for a sanctuary. 
3. Comfort – Adorn your space with items that bring you comfort, happiness, and joy, whatever that may look like for you!

Enjoy creating a space that feels expansive, natural, and relaxed.

CRUSADERS

As a Crusader, similar to a Connector but for very different reasons, your lifestyle priority is your MIND which is biologically engineered to thrive with strategic analysis, structure, and purpose.

Three tips to master your Crusader Mind as your Lifestyle Priority:

1. Purpose – If it doesn’t have a purpose, it isn’t a priority. Sound familiar? Before you start a meeting, or even social interaction, take a moment to clarify the purpose and intention of the interaction or the activity to gain clarity needed to achieve the outcome. Identifying the purpose at the outset puts your mind at ease instead of creating a mental frenzy while you attempt to collect data to calculate the purpose of the interaction in real-time. 
2. Strategy – You have permission, and it is how you are biologically hardwired, to desire a clear strategy. Strategy doesn’t have to be for corporate boardroom activities or business plans. You have a brain that revels in strategy. Even social interactions can benefit from a strategy to achieve the outcome you wish to achieve with the interaction. Others may come to you for help in creating a strategy for what they wish to achieve inside and outside work. 
3. Analysis – You are a natural analyzer, assessing many variables and factors at once. This is a genius you can own about yourself, but also offer others as a natural talent or genius. 

GUARDIANS

Guardians have a natural talent of putting others at ease, whether they realize it or not. Guardians may be the barometers of stress for your community or families – they feel the stress, worry, and anxiety others around them are experiencing.

Guardian Lifestyle Priority is their SOCIAL life. 3 Tips for successfully managing Guardian Social Life:

1. Create Fulfilling Connection – Schedule time in your weekly or daily calendar to check in with people whom you truly cherish, be it family, friends, or coworkers. Many people will be drawn to you and can easily drain your energy. How can you prioritize reaching out and talking to people who make you feel fulfilled? 
2. Create your own Sanctuary – So much of Guardian life is tending to the needs or demands of others. It is of utmost importance to have a space to connect with yourself. Somewhere you can go to feel relaxed, put on some comfy clothes, and watch tv, relax on the couch, or water the plants. Where can you escape to where you are not accessible to others demands? 
3. Find a Good Balance of Social and Alone Time – It’s ok to create boundaries and prioritize your alone time. Do you need quiet time in the morning to start your day off right? Or perhaps you need time at the end of the day to let go of the days demands and stresses? Guardians can typically be sensitive to others thoughts, opinions, emotions, ideas, always brokering peace and ensuring every one on the team or at home has their needs met so they can feel comfortable to do their jobs and being themselves. What can you do to help you shrug off the day of everyone else dumping their demands on you, that isn’t yours to carry? How can you release or let go?

SENSORS

The MIND is the Lifestyle Priority for the Sensor HealthType, and yet again for different reasons than Connector or Crusader! The Sensor Mind is a powerful gift and talent, which requires constant stimulation to keep it sharp and engaged.

Top 3 Tips for Sensor Minds:

1. Feed your Mind – Your mind naturally holds a large capacity for details and information processing. Explore a variety of satisfying intellectual pursuits down to the finest detail to keep your mind focused and nimble. 
2. Find Your Flow – The Latin word for brain translates to “malleable” – meaning a healthy brain is flexible and adaptable. Mental rigidity can be tempting; however, learning new information and evolving your perspective facilitates a healthy brain state, as opposed to rigid and stagnant thinking. 
3. Sensory Overload – You have the most highly attuned nervous system than all other body types. Your brain processes are influenced by the temperature of the room, noises around you, the lighting, and other ambient features others may not be as attuned. Support your mind by understanding how important the management of these ambient factors are for you. Dim the lights. Limit noise. Limit social interactions in a quiet area of the office, to minimize physical and mental friction for your mental processing.

A little effort in these key areas can have a big impact on balancing your biology. Focusing on your Lifestyle Priority is a highly recommended time and energy investment!