HEALTHY HABITS FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

Maintaining your mental health, or recovering it, is important to your daily life. Stress, poor mental health, and an overwhelming amount of negativity can affect your physical health, as well as your ability to function. Though society seems to operate around success and hard work to the detriment of rest, this isn’t a healthy attitude. As much as you need to look after your body, you need to look after your mind, too.

A necessary step to look after your mental health is giving yourself permission to do so. It can become easy to push yourself and your needs aside to care for others, but you can’t allow responsibilities to swallow up your resources and time. Take care of yourself, meet your needs, and unwind so you have the resources necessary for your day-to-date life and whatever extraordinary circumstances you find yourself in. You can’t depend on anyone else to make yourself a priority. How people process themselves and the environment around them comes from the narrative in their heads. It translates our experiences and interprets our senses into a story. In this story is how we see ourselves. Many people talk about hearing a disapproving parent or adult figure scolding them when they’ve done something wrong. It’s also this voice that tells you how you feel about yourself. But this voice and the story it tells isn’t permanent.

Try focusing on the positives, correct the voice when it tells you something negative, and learn to change the story in your head. You’ll be surprised by what a difference it can make in your life and how you feel about yourself.

A lot of people don’t have time for hobbies or enjoyable activities anymore. With TV becoming cheaper and with a wider variety of shows, it’s easy to waste free time “unwinding” in front of a screen. However, the boost a hobby can provide to your mental health is priceless. Find one or two things you like to do—sport, reading, something creative, cooking, going for walks, or writing—and spend some time with it. Allow yourself time to enjoy it. You don’t have to do something productive all the time, but instead of zoning out in front of the TV, engage with the world around you, which will help you slow down and improve your mental health.

Mental health is something people have slowly become more aware of in the last 10 years, but it’s always been a part of life, and a big one. Taking care of your mental health is as important as taking care of your physical health, and should be as much a priority. For those who are feeling stressed or too negative, there are a few things you can do to help find balance. But if nothing seems to help and you’re feeling in a rut, don’t be afraid to speak to someone. Mental health issues aren’t as taboo as they have been and you may not realize the cloud you’ve been operating under until it starts to clear. The difference will be surprising.