11 Habits to Improve your Mental Health
Habits to Improve Your Mental Health? Taking care of mental health requires adopting a series of habits. Among them are the establishment of limits, the validation of our emotions, and the search for social support. In this article, we will talk about some simple habits that, if established daily, can significantly improve our emotional health.
We all know that to maintain good physical health, we must hydrate, eat a healthy diet, and exercise regularly. However, we are unclear about what to do when it comes to preserving mental health. The hustle and bustle of everyday life and obligations lead us to adopt habits and customs that do a disservice to our psychological balance. We forget about ourselves and listen to our needs. Next, we will discuss some of the most useful activities to manage our mental health in everyday life.
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Set Boundaries Between Your Work and Personal Life
Many times, work and the responsibilities associated with it end up overshadowing the rest of the facets of our lives. Even when we are supposed to be in a moment of leisure and rest, we are attentive to our phone or email in case someone needs us. Knowing how to stop, rest and cultivate other areas besides work is essential.
When you leave work, try to clean the slate and take your mind off other issues. Spend quality time with your family, exercise or walk without thinking about anything else. Knowing how to separate work from the rest also implies setting limits and not staying up late daily. Unless it is strictly necessary, avoid working overtime and respect your break.
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Take Care of Your Rest
The quality of sleep is extremely important for health. Sleeping enough hours in a deep way is key to replenishing energy and keeping our body functioning. To avoid sleep problems, it is advisable not to look at screens before bed, to exercise during the day, and have a light dinner.
If you need it, it may help to do relaxation exercises or take a hot bath before going to sleep, as this will relax your body and make it easier for you to rest. Insufficient sleep increases irritability, lower stress tolerance, and causes poorer daily performance.
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Have an Orderly Routine
Although the routine has a very bad reputation, the truth is that it is beneficial for our minds. It helps us to have order, certainty, and stability. During the week, knowing what we must do allows us to have more mental calm and efficiency. For this reason, your mental health will thank you for having a predictable day, leaving improvisation for the weekend. When we have good time planning, we avoid procrastinating and accumulating tasks that only increase stress.
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Try to Practice Informal Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a practice that helps us maintain a connection with the present, fostering acceptance of ourselves and what surrounds us without judgment. This way of living is of great help in learning to live with stress or discomfort daily. To practice mindfulness, you can take advantage of the daily tasks of your day. Try to focus on them without thinking about other things while doing them.
If you notice your mind starting to think about the next task or other concerns, try to bring your attention back to what you are doing. If, for example, you are taking a shower, try to concentrate on the sensations of your body, the sound of the water, the aroma of the soap, etc. This simple practice is easy to fit into your day-to-day life, and if you feel comfortable with it, you can consider learning more formal mindfulness techniques.
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Surround Yourself with People Who Give You Peace
Although mental health care requires that we act to achieve it, this is much more difficult if we surround ourselves with the wrong people. Our psychological well-being depends enormously on our social environment since it is from it that we obtain love, support, and attention. After all, we build who we are from our relationships with other people. For this reason, it is very helpful to have a circle of people who respect, value, and provide us with serenity.
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Enjoy Your Leisure
It is useless to have free time if it is not used well. Therefore, it is key that when your time to stop comes, you know how to do it well. Do not start answering emails or stay home thinking about all the work you must recover when you return. Try to do those activities that do you good, hang out with people, and get outside to get some fresh air. On weekends you can even take a getaway for a change of scenery. Anything that allows you to enjoy your personal time is welcome. Remember that rest is your right, and not complying with it sooner or later takes its toll on mental health.
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Stay Motivated with Goals and Projects
Having tranquility and peace of mind does not have to be synonymous with boredom. A satisfying life with good mental health requires motivation and enthusiasm for the future. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you have plans, projects, or goals that help you look forward. We all need to have a reason to move forward. Otherwise, we wither in monotony. It is not about doing something very ambitious or complex. Find something you want to achieve because it fills your soul, and go for it.
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Take Care of Your Habits
Usually, physical health and mental health are spoken of as two separate entities. However, the reality is that health is an integrated whole. Therefore, our lifestyles have an impact not only on our physiological state but also on our emotions. Maintaining good mental health requires eating, exercising, hydrating, sleeping, and avoiding alcohol and drug use.
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Ask For Help and Delegate
We live in a society where being “strong” and “powerful with everything” are rewarded. This makes many people unable to ask for help or delegate when they feel they can’t take it anymore. Remember that you are not a superhero or superheroine and do not have to cover everything with your arms. Knowing how to ask for help from a loved one or a professional is never a mistake. In the same way, it is key that you know how to delegate, that is, place some responsibilities on others. It is impossible to do everything without the support of those around us. Asking for a hand does not make us weak, but human.
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Listen and Validate Your Emotions
It is important to learn to listen to our emotions openly. They have taught us that there are good and bad emotions, but nothing is further from reality. All our emotions are natural and necessary since they fulfill a function. When we try to fight what we feel by hiding it, it often increases our suffering. Added to the painful emotions we feel is guilt for experiencing them. For this reason, even the most unpleasant ones should not be suppressed or hidden. Good mental health requires learning to listen to all our emotions since we can only understand and manage them healthily.
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Identify Your Values And Act Accordingly
Something that many people tend to forget has to do with the identification of values. Knowing which values are essential for us in life is key since these allow us to have a compass that guides us. When unclear about what is truly important, we lose direction and meaning in life. Thus, those who do an exercise in introspection and find what moves them tend to live a fuller and more satisfying life. Therefore, working on this issue is also a way of improving our mental health.
Conclusions
In this article, we have talked about some habits that can help us have good mental health. In recent years we have seen more and more talk about mental health and its importance. Although the stigma is less and less, the reality is that it is still common for us to neglect our psychological well-being completely. In everyday life, there are many situations that we do not know how to handle and harm us emotionally.
Therefore, it is advisable to learn to establish limits between personal and professional life, take care of our rest and leisure, surround yourself with people who provide serenity and support, have an orderly daily routine, stay motivated with goals and projects, take care of life habits, know how to ask for help and delegate. Additionally, it is important to know how to listen and validate our emotions and identify which essential values we want to guide our lives.
