How to become the best version of yourself in 2023
Welcome to the Year of You…
Wellness
Looking after yourself should always be a priority, but particularly after a busy end-of-year and the festive season. Use this time as an excuse for a full health MOT, whether it’s for a check-up with your GP, that dreaded dental clean, or just a meditation class.
Sanskara
Opening its doors in Jumeirah in early 2023, Sanskara is a wellness space, day retreat and chic eatery. Sanskara promises a ‘simple, clean, conscious and mindful approach’ through an accessible, diverse, and inclusive wellness offering. Private therapy and group sessions will be offered by expert practitioners from doctors and therapists to yogis and energy healers. Expect to be able to attend everything from yoga and meditation classes to wellness workshops across five events spaces, including a beautiful rooftop perfect for events in the cooler months.
The Hundred Wellness Centre
A serene and tranquil space, The Hundred Wellness Centre offers Pilates, Infrared Sauna, body composition analysis, chiropractic services, occupational therapists, life & relationship coaching as well as a healthy café. The centre’s team of experts are on-hand to ensure that visitors achieve their personal goals, with a programme tailored to suit their individual needs. Cutting-edge technologies like DNA testing and chronic disease prevention are also available.
Maison Santé
Preventative practices are the mantra of Maison Santé, a wellness clinic found in Meyan Mall. Combining a series of services from physiotherapy to psychology, Chinese medicine, laser IV and more, alongside a cafe and supplement store. Visitors can choose their preferred treatment following a consultation with founder, Dr Maria Alonso. Blending Eastern and Western medical knowledge, Maison Santé aims to be a home for regeneration, balance and growth of body and mind.
Biolite
Biolite is a city retreat in Umm Suqeim. While there has always been a roster of cosmetic and anti-ageing treatments available, this represents the clinic’s first ‘healthness’ centre, dedicated to personalised and preventative therapies for beauty from within. To bring its wellness offering to the next level, Biolite has a range of treatments, biohacking therapies, and advanced technologies as well as an expert team to help you find the best combination.
Mindfulness
Harnessing the power of the mind can make an unfathomable difference to the rest of our daily life. If you do just one thing this year, dedicate some time to understanding your own mind and the ways in which you can take control of it. Check in with yourself regularly keep track of your progress, so that by the end of the year you can look back and see just how far you’ve come.
The Lighthouse Arabia
Dubai’s leading centre for mental health and wellness is The LightHouse Arabia. It helps UAE residents with a wide range of mental health and wellbeing challenges – from personal issues such as depression, anxiety, chronic stress, and addictions, to interpersonal issues such as conflict at work and marriage difficulties. The team of over 30 psychologists, psychiatrists, occupational and speech & language therapists are available in-person or via Zoom to carry out a huge range of services.
5 minutes with Denis Murphy
Denis Murphy is the co-founder of RoundTable Global and a high-performance coach. He helps people reach new levels of freedom, honesty, happiness, success, and optimal performance, by recovering from a ‘blame addiction’. His direct and honest approach to overcoming blame and its influence on our mental and physical health, as well as on our levels of performance and success, has led him to become a leading expert in the subject.
What are your quick tips for living an optimal life?
More than ever, people crave honesty not positivity. The current advice to get better at self-control and being fake positive not only requires a lot of energy to sustain, but it teaches us to lie to ourselves (and others). This energy and focus would be better directed to learning the skill of listening to our mind and body, rather than trying to control and defeat it.
What’s one thing you wish more people understood about health?
How our mental, emotional, and physical health is directly impacted by how much we blame others and ourselves. What is often missed is how blaming automatically puts us in a victim mentality. This makes us feel powerless to change our situation and it results in us being chronically stressed. It is an exhausting way to live. It is a simple equation but – less blame equals less pain (mental or physical).
What are the benefits of hiring a high-performance coach?
The main benefit is their ability to unpack a client’s underlying issues rather than focusing on the story they think is causing their stress and illness. A high-performance coach helps you see the simplicity in all the complexity. They offer you different ways of seeing the world, while giving you exercises that help you reach new levels of potential you thought impossible.
How do you think modern life impacts our minds, and what can be done to counteract any negative effects?
I no longer blame the external world for the way I feel. I look at everything as a reflection on how I honestly feel. So, for example, if someone is scrolling on social media for hours then there is something else feeding this habit. It is the same with consuming alcohol or sugary foods in excess. There is nothing inherently wrong with social media, alcohol or eating sweets. When we honestly heal, we naturally no longer desire the escapism that these past times provide.
3 books that will change your life
Atomic Habits by James Clear
We are a sum of all the small, seemingly insignificant decisions we make each day. Atomic Habits provides practical strategies that will teach you how to transform your habits to deliver remarkable results.
Breathe In, Breathe Out by Stuart Sandeman
We generally don’t pay much attention to our breathing. But mastering your breath can lead to benefits across your body, your mind and your health. By implementing the tools and techniques in this book, you can change your daily breathing to take back control of your body and mind.
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
On average, each person will live for around four thousand weeks. Pretty brief, right? With that knowledge, doesn’t it make more sense to make the most of our time than spend it worrying about unnecessary troubles? This uplifting and realistic exploration of life will motivate you to change your life for the better.
Fitness
Too many mince pies last month? Don’t beat yourself up over it, just use it as extra fuel to get back into a healthy gym routine. If you’re bored of the same old classes though, how about trying something new to kickstart your workout regime?
Blended
On both the rooftop and within its health centre, Blended Wellness offers a range of fitness classes, and personal training sessions. Covering everything from yoga to reformer Pilates, boxing, spin and barre, Blended aims to cater to a range of goals and fitness abilities, by creating a tailored programme to suit each client’s needs. Helping you refuel post-class is a dedicated juice bar offering vitamin-packed beverages to keep you topped up with all the important nutrients needed for optimum recovery.
Danube Sports World
If your new year’s resolution for 2023 is to discover a new sport, you might want to head in the direction of Habtoor City. There, a huge indoor dome sports venue has been erected, and is home to several exciting sports. Fitness fans can get active on the padel court, as well as football, badminton, boxing, cricket, tennis, beach volleyball and table tennis.
Embody Fitness
Embody has recently launched its second centre, found in ICD Brookfield Place, DIFC. Here, members sign up for body transformations, helping them to become their best possible selves both inside and out. The new space promotes healing with a high-tech infrared sauna and ice-bath room, which has been given a futuristic touch thanks to facial recognition technology.
Beauty
While taking care of your inside is one of the most important ways to be your best self, looking after the external parts can also do no harm in moderation. Life is all about balance and finding that balance is crucial to overall harmony. With that in mind, here are some exciting beauty salons to be pampered in.
Nail’d It
Hailing from London, this famed nail bar recently opened its first UAE outpost in The Dubai Mall. We Nailed It is loved by celebrities and bloggers, thanks to its all-pink interiors, premium product offering, and extensive list of glamorous services. Options include eyelash extensions, hair styling, waxing, hand and feet treatments, and special nail effects. Find the rose-hued salon in Fashion Avenue.
Soak
Soak is all about making you feel pampered and relaxed throughout your treatment. Much attention to detail is paid, with Soak-branded fluffy towels and wooden trays where a neat menu of hot and cold drinks is served as you get pampered. The treatment menu focuses a lot on nails, but there’s also a lash and brow room for lash lifts and brow laminations, and there’s a trio of sinks where you can book in for a blow dry or hair treatment, with cut and colour services set to launch soon.
Pretty Wow
Long-standing popular salon Pretty Wow has opened a bigger and better venue, found close to the original in JLT. The 2.0 version is home to 20 new hair styling stations, a luxury manicure and pedicure area with plush seats, a lash and brow room, a makeup bar, and four private luxury treatment rooms offering premium facial and skin treatments. There’s even a stylish drinks and colour bar right at the centre.
Upskilling
Studies have shown that entering ‘flow state’ can have incalculable benefits to the mind. Flow state is the zone you enter when working on something that is both enjoyable and challenging. You’ll know if you’re in it by a few signals, for some it’s their tongue poking out subconsciously, for others, hours feel like minutes while working on the project. The more things we can do to switch off from social media and into flow state, the better we’ll all be. Not sure how to find your flow state? Here are some institutes which will help you learn something new and find the thing that makes time fly by.
SAE Creative Media Institute
Open to anyone above the age of 16, SAE offers both short and long courses across a range of creative industries. Courses cover topics from animation to filmmaking, learn to DJ, photography, graphic design, video editing and much more. Even if you’re not looking for a career change, many of the skills offered are transferrable to business, leadership, and even personal life.
Atton Institute
Atton Institute is an accredited corporate provider of short-term certified courses in Dubai. Public courses last from one to three days, covering a wide range of professional categories. Learn everything from public speaking to digital marketing, management, and leadership, as well as sales, finance, soft skills and customer service. The courses run on a predefined calendar, taking place at top hotels and venues around Dubai.
Eton Institute
If learning a new language is on your agenda this year, Eton Institute can help you achieve that goal. Whether you’re keen to brush up on your Arabic, add some French flair to your vocabulary, or challenge your brain with Japanese classes, Eton Institute has over 15 courses available in-person or online.