What is Mental Health?
We all always keep hearing ‘mental health’, or ‘mental wellbeing’, but we always think that it is related to not being fine or not related to us. Let’s now know what actually is mental health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”.
Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. Over the course of your life, if you experience mental health problems, your thinking, mood, and behavior could be affected.
Let’s see what all you can do to develop a healthy mental health
- Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. Mindfulness is being in present, being in the now. It helps you to enjoy the present moments in your life without thinking about past or the future. Mindfulness allows you to have conscious awareness of what you are doing, so you can make choices to override automatic thinking and make positive changes in thoughts and behavior. When you are mindful, you are able to observe events in a non-judgmental way, which allows you to detach from negative emotions, as opposed to being controlled by them. As a result, the way you respond to events in your life starts to change. Your emotions are better regulated, and you stop getting so upset, angry, or fearful over things you can’t control. You are also not flooding your brain with fear and worry about the future or resentments from the past, which has the profoundly positive effect of resetting your emotional state to calm and peaceful.
2. Surround yourself with Positivity
We all live in a social world where we meet and come in contact with a lot of people and gain many experiences. However it is not possible to always have positive experiences and/or feelings. The more we stay surrounded by people who are positive, are happy, etc. the more we can soak in the positivity and happiness. For example: if you watch a scary movie at night, even the small noise can make you feel scared. That’s how we soak in information and it affects our emotions. So surround yourself with positivity in order to regulate your emotions.
3. Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. We often hear that everything starts from you and not from your relationships or job or status or percentages or the salary you earn. That is because, if you don’t love yourself, you won’t be able to have people in your life who love you enough. Loving yourself is the key because without it, you cannot find true happiness. There will be people around who can criticize, make you feel down, and tell you things that annoy you, but it is all that you think about yourself will matter in the end.
4. Physical Wellness
Mind and body are not separate, they are connected. Maintaining a healthy diet and a routine of exercise in your daily life can make you feel healthy and happy. Exercise releases hormone called endorphins which are happy hormones. It is also proven that exercise reduces stress. When you feel healthy it affects positive feelings and emotions. Just imagine how would you feel if you were not physically fit? Would you feel happy and relaxed or would be constantly thinking about the problem? Hence a healthy lifestyle can help you maintain your mental wellbeing.
5. Do things with others
As it is said, happiness increases when you increase and spread happiness with others. Doing something with others gives you a sense of accomplishment as well as connectedness. When you spread happiness, it makes you feel more happy, because you are giving happiness to others. For example, we all love going to café’s or restaurant with our friends and/or relatives, or that when we receive a good news we all want to rush and make a phone call to our loved ones because we become more happy.
6. Do something creative
Art has been said to be an outlet to help expressing one’s emotions when words can’t help to express them. Engage in your hobbies, it helps in one’s emotional, mental and physical wellbeing, confidence and also increase self-esteem.
7. Connect with people you love
Investing your time in connecting with people you love is important for your mental health. We always feel good being connected with people we love and trust the most. We all are social animals and we like being around people who bring happiness in our lives. So stay connected with your loved ones and invest in those close relationships.
8. Focus on your Strengths
It is very common that others will point our weaknesses and also make us feel bad about them. When you focus on your strengths you will feel positive and good about yourself.
9. Take time out
Taking breaks is healthy. When we are relaxing, we give ourselves the permission to let go off all the thoughts and problems and relax for a while which helps you to relax and be happy.
10. Sleep well
Sleep is giving your body rest as all our organs are not functioning at that time. You can retain and remember more information, your memory improves, etc. when you sleep well. Because when you don’t sleep well, you don’t get up fresh and your mood is not good which affects your entire day.
11. Start Journaling
Journaling your thoughts can help manage your emotions by letting you vent them out in a safe space because the journal is a very personal thing, you cannot hurt anyone or anybody when you are venting out any emotion, even if it is negative emotion. When you journal, you also get to reflect on your thoughts and feelings, you can know what triggers your emotions and where do you get more vulnerable.
12. Practice Gratitude
When you start counting your blessings, it really makes you feel happy and relaxed instantly. It is because we all become happy remembering our happy moments. When we remember those happy moments, we naturally pause every other worry and then think about our blessings. This can also help to gain strength through the stressful moments, because when you know that you have so many things to be stressful for, you can definitely pass the stressful moments.
Happy World Mental Health Day!!
