Mental health is key to a productive and healthy living. Therefore, it’s necessary and essential to take care of yourself and get the most from life. In this article are 7 practical ways to care after your mental health. Following these practical steps will impart the way you live but these simple changes doesn’t cost a fortune or take up loads of time. The advice is for everyone, you can start today.
1. Care for Your Body
Regular exercise can improve your self-esteem, concentration, sleep and general well-being. Physical exercise helps to maintain the brain and your other vital organs healthy. Exercise improves your mood, helps decrease depression and anxiety. Eat nutritious foods, drink enough water, avoid smoking and drugs. Your mental health can improve with good physical care of yourself.
2. Learn to Handle Stress
Stress is inevitable in life whether we like it or not. For a good mental health, you must learn how to deal with stress. When you find yourself under pressure or stress practice the following: take a break, do something different, exercise, take a nature walk, listen to music or dance as a stress reducer. See the humor in life and always smile. Enjoy the little things. Laughter can boost your immune system, ease pain, relax your muscles and reduce stress.
3. Good Support System
Always surround yourself with good people. Individuals with good and strong family or social connections are generally healthier than those who lack such. Maintain good relationship with people around and within your life. Attend activities where you can meet new people, such as a church service, club, class, training or ceremony.
4. Self-Acceptance
You’re unique, accept who you are. We’re all not the same. It’s healthier to embrace the truth that you’re unique than wishing you were more like someone else. Self-acceptance fuels good mental health and feeling which boosts your confidence to learn new skills, take up new challenge, visit new places and make new friends. Good self-esteem will help you cope if life takes a difficult turn. Treat yourself with respect, love and kindness, and avoid self-criticism.
5. Be of Service
Make it your practice to give your resources, time and energy to help someone else. There is always a good feeling about doing something tangible to help someone in need. Caring for others is an important part of maintaining relationships with family and people around you. This helps in bringing you closer to other people.
6. Don’t Bottle Up
Talking about your feelings could help you maintain good mental health and deal with stress. Talking can help you deal with a problem you’ve been carrying around in your head for a while. You feel supported and less alone by just being listened to. Mutual conversation is magical and it works both ways. When you open up, it might encourage someone to do the same.
Trust me it’s not always easy to describe how one feels. But, if you can’t think of one word, use lots of word. How does it feel like inside your head? Does it make you feel like doing something? Talking about your feelings may seem awkward at first, give it time. The easiest way to talk about your feeling is to pray. No one listens and pays attention as God does. Make it a habit to talk to Him first and always.
7. Seek for Help
Sometimes you might get tired or overwhelmed by how you feel when things don’t go to plan. If things are getting unbearable for you and you feel you can’t cope, seek for help. A professional counselor, a family member or friend may be able to offer practical help or a listening ear. Seeking help does not in anyway portray weakness but rather strength. Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone at some point in life have felt discouraged and depressed, so you are not alone. Moreover, failure, disappointment and rejection is not peculiar to you. They happen to all and it’s in such situations we discover our true self, strength, purpose and define our goals. Suicide is not a solution but a path to more pain and sorrow for the living, that shouldn’t be your legacy. But that of triumph, an inspiration to others who might be in similar situation you were. You’re made of more and stronger than you think!!
