Coffee doesn’t just energize your life—it has the potential to change your life in a big way! If that sounds over the top, perhaps you haven’t considered the many benefits of drinking coffee as a group. Perhaps you aren’t aware of all of them. There are benefits to kickstarting so many activities with coffee. Be it a project, conversations, work, chores, a road trip—or just a regular workday. Regular coffee drinking can even bring potential health benefits and buoy your mood.
Of course, to see a big impact with coffee drinking, you must compare to someone who doesn’t drink coffee at all and could benefit from java-infused energy in a few areas of their life. Who can benefit from coffee energy the most? Non-morning people benefit, first and foremost! Those who need to power through work or school turn to coffee, of course. Introverted folks, or people who need to find common interests with new people, can play chatty Cathy long enough to build relational bridges. Some surprising health and mood benefits of regular coffee drinking top off the list.
Fighting Off Grog and Fatigue
A Morning Person’s Advantage
Being a “morning person” versus a “night owl” can have a large impact on a person’s life. Night owls tend to have more trouble paying attention during standard work or school hours. They may also react slower. Also, if you don’t embrace mornings and have the energy to get going, there can be ramifications. People who don’t rise naturally have more trouble getting ready for the day and may be more likely to forget something they need. Proactivity is not their forté. They also may not dress and groom themselves as well, giving off a worse impression than a coordinated morning person. Morning grumps might be mean to others or even get road rage. Once it’s time for work, school or homemaking, people who don’t like mornings don’t tend to get as much done in the first few hours.
Schedule Changes
Drinking coffee is a weapon against schedule changes. Traveling for work or pleasure? Experts in jet lag recommend just staying up as long as it takes to adjust to a normal schedule in the time zone you’re visiting. That means going to sleep at night—even if you have to stay up extra hours to make it until their 9 p.m. Coffee can help propel you to achieve this. For example, if you live on the East Coast of the US and take a hiking trip in Honduras, you might want to delight in some excellent local Honduran coffee the first day to stay up until night. That will avoid having to rely on caffeine later on when you need to stay hydrated.
Conversational Power
Sometimes we need to talk or give a presentation, but don’t feel like it. As long as you don’t drink enough to induce anxiety, coffee makes many people more expressive. It can help you think on your feet and make you more likely to generate new ideas. Need to speak up in a discussion or participation-based class? Coffee can help propel you to participate with less hesitation. Who knows, the conversation might even become fun or funny!
Sometimes we haven’t yet found points of commonality or interest with others, but the potential exists. It can take extra work to carve out that potential! Putting yourself out there or searching around for topics while you network or host business guests, or just entertain your in-laws, becomes more feasible with coffee energy. Sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error to find points of interest. Aside from potential commonalities, you can relate by asking them questions about their hobbies and interests. Opening up about your own pastimes and life experiences gets easier with a cup of coffee. For struggling conversations, there’s coffee, and for more interesting fast small talk, there’s Irish Coffee (with a little Bailey’s liqueur)!
Power through Projects with Coffee
While it’s normal to call the many types of endeavors in life “work,” the term “projects” adds a positive spin. A delectable cup of coffee can add an even more positive spin, especially if you try an interesting new coffee.
Household and Life Maintenance Tasks
In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, he recommends pairing something you like with a task you must get done and don’t like as much. He calls it “Habit Stacking.” The idea is to pair something you don’t like doing with something you already do or prefer. Honing in on the “prefer”, pairing a great cup of coffee with a chore or dreaded work assignment can help. For example, if you don’t like loading the dishwasher, you could pair it with a cup of a beloved coffee—creating a better association with loading the dishwasher in your mind. Or, if you can’t add a cup of coffee earlier in the morning, wake up a little earlier and load the dishwasher. If waking up earlier is hard, try switching to delicious coffee from Honduras you can associate with a great cause—educating youth. Exploring different high-altitude coffee or single origins can get you out of bed or thwart procrastination on chores.
Work Responsibilities
Coffee has been the elixir with which we tackle work (paid work) debacles for some time. Did you know that single-serve coffee in pods was invented to replace stale coffee in office pots? After sales of single-serve coffee began, employers used them to try to entice new employees. Bosses also wanted them to come straight to work instead of getting in the coffee shop line.
Drinking coffee strategically at work, or for work, is probably the area where coffee really could change your life. If you’re a regular coffee drinker, can you imagine not drinking coffee to start the day? If you drink coffee later in the day too, or all day, not having coffee could seem potentially catastrophic. Some people need it to power through reports or spreadsheets. Others drink it on a construction site on a cold day. Coffee can help you stay alert during trainings, meetings and presentations. If you talk to clients or customers for a living, a delicious cup of coffee can help you stay informative and convincing.
Wellness and Mood Benefits of Coffee
Coffee can also help you feel and look better in several ways. Maintaining a healthy weight is easier with coffee. It can also ward off depression for some people. Just one cup of coffee can lower the risk of depression by eight percent. Drinking coffee can increase a person’s ability to attack problems, persevere in the face of hardship and even take proactive steps to prevent problems…proactivity is sometimes boring and tedious! Pairing it with coffee is a great idea.
Health Benefits of Coffee
Coffee has some surprising potential health benefits. It has been linked to lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes. Drinking at least one cup per day was important in the study. Coffee may also help protect against neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Read more about the health benefits of coffee here. Finally, it’s important to avoid unhealthy coffees that may contain pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Choosing a coffee grown with sustainable methods safe for your body doesn’t negate coffee’s many benefits for controlling your life.
Excellent, Ethically Driven Single-Origin Coffee from Honduras
A morning or afternoon cup of coffee can do more than just improve your life—it can help improve other people’s lives and futures too. The proceeds from Subida Coffee Co. create a brighter future for Honduran youth. With two delicious roasts of single-origin coffee from Honduras’ highlands, Subida offers a great cause in a great mug of coffee.
