Improving your mental health is not joke. It’s very serious. For anyone to improve their overall quality of life, you need to find ways to be mentally healthy and happy.
Having any form of mental health challenges can harm every aspect of someone’s life; their work, personal relationships, physical and not to mention financially.
There are days where you may feel disheartened, miserable and aggressively moody and overwhelmed by certain situations you find yourself in especially for an extended amount of time
You may become so worried that, if not careful, may lead to depression.
Whether you’re suffering from depression or not, taking care of your mental health is important.
You should always try to improve your mental state. No matter how healthy you feel, there’s always something to improve on.
I will highlight 6 ways to improve mental health
1. Self-Love –Positive thinking
Everyone has that little voice in their head that challenges us from time to time. Sometimes you empower those thoughts by believing it and start applying them to your lives.
These voices normally toss negative, degrading thoughts around in your mind so everything you do comes under scrutiny; how you talk, dress, act, even the people you have in our circle.
These thoughts telling you’re not good enough, and then you just give in.
You now become crippled in your mind, and once the mind is crippled, everything else is.
You must speak positively in your situations, even when it seems like hell has broken loose over in your life because it is the positive that you focus on that will give your mental muscle the boost it needs.
Love yourself that way you will love others wholesomely. Constant criticism of yourself isn’t self-love.
Mark you, you should see where you went wrong and take corrective actions, but not in a degrading way.
Speak positive over your life, and positive will come.
Don’t develop a habit of criticizing and self.
-hating. Make it a mission of yours to speak at least 5 words of affirmation each day.
Amid failures, a lesson can be learned. Equip yourself with the lesson and continue your path.
2. Start Journalling
Many of your problems and the things you go through can seem overbearing. At the surface level, situations may be viewed as devastating, but only if you just take a deep look into it.
Journal helps you to look at the situation more in-depth. It causes you to focus more on the core of the matter. This often shows that the problem isn’t as much a big of a deal as you initially thought.
Your thoughts bombarded coupled with being in an unpredictable situation can render your brain too active to assess the circumstance at hand.
However, when you channel all those thoughts on paper, it allows you to go through and weigh in on what the problem is and how it affects you.
That then gives you the clarity to make certain decision hence freeing your mind. Don’t undermine this method. This teaches you how to be mentally healthy and happy.
3. Be Generous and Helpful
You might find it hard to believe but having a kind heart can improve our mental state. It’s easy to get so self minded when problems arise and you are going through your situations that people’s feelings, thoughts, and needs get neglected; everything is about you.
In reality, one has to face the battles and seek to rise out on top, so I’m not suggesting that your matters should be abandoned, not in the very least am I insinuating that.
However, I based on my own experiences that your healing can come through helping others.
It allows you to be selfless by nature. The feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes with helping others is so heartwarming. It opens our eyes to a part of you that you didn’t know exists.
Being helpful can trim down all the negativity that seeks to take root in your life because by helping, it gives you a sense of purpose, a sense that you can have a positive influence over someone else’s someone’s life, and that change can start your process of improving your mental health.
4. Physical Health Care
As humans, we are such a unique creation that we have our mind interconnected with our body. This means that whatever affects the mind, affects the body and vice Versa.
If physically, you are not well, no matter how strong you claim to be, it’s going to affect your mind.
Have you ever been happy then something physically happens to you, all of a sudden, you start feeling uneasy; start to become bothered.
If you become sick, the body becomes weak or doesn’t function as it should, you become worried which is quite natural. Wouldn’t it be better if you just start taking care of your health.
For good physical health, you should start to eat more nutritious food, start exercising or do it more frequently and get enough sleep.
You can make a positive impact on your mental health by simply taking better care of your physical health.
5. Surround Yourself with Positive People
By having negative people around you, you can be swallowed up by their negativity. It will be extremely difficult to live a positive life with people who are negative surrounding you all the time.
You won’t have time to think or do anything right. By way of association even without you realizing, you will start to adapt to their negative behaviors, before you know it, you’re stuck in the same situation years later.
You then get stressed out and overwhelmed and gradually depression creeps up on you.
Associate yourself with kind-heart, optimistic people who generally have your interest at heart, and people who will even make sacrifices for you.
Every time you make an effort to rise out of your struggles, the negative energy will pull you down. Your true purpose will never surface because you will never get the chance to tap into your gift which is just waiting for the right opportunity to launch out.
Negative people stifle your growth.
Take a look at your family members, your friends, even your closest co-workers.
Are they the kind of people who challenges you in a good way; a way that pricks your conscience and encourages to you to do better?
So they uplift you?
Are their goals and dreams parallel to yours?
Free your mind, let your mind soar, and the only way the mind can do that is through positive association.
6. Find a true confidant
There’s a saying that say no man is an island, no man stands alone. If you find yourself in a situation that you feel like you’re about to get lost or you can’t find a way out, find someone you trust whom you can talk with.
Trust is important so find that one person you can rely on and can lend you a shoulder.
No matter how strong you portrays to be, at some point in your life, and that’s okay. It’s called life. Everyone has gone through struggles.
Even if you’re on a good path now, the reality of life is that somewhere down the line, you will encounter an overwhelming situation.
It’s not about being pessimistic; it’s just the reality of life. The beauty, however, is that you can have a support system when the needs arises
Opening up to someone eases your mind and allow you to focus better. If the situation is delicate and you don’t want family or friends to know, don’t try to push your thoughts and feelings under the rug, bring them to the surface and deal with them one at a time.
You can always find counselors to talk to.
7. Set Realistic Goals and Plans for yourself
One of the mistakes humans make is setting too many unrealistic goals that we want to achieve. We create this belief that we must achieve big goals by a certain age or year because that’s what our family wants or that is what society dictates.
With those high goals that we have set for ourselves, we often fail because we are not thinking so much about what we can do, but we are focus on trying to please people or impress people.
Your life shouldn’t be about living for people and trying to achieve their validation. You should rather live in our own true happiness.
What makes you happy?
What do you ultimately want to get out of life?
After you come up with those thoughts, come up with a small task that leads up to that greater goal.
What are your thoughts on improving one’s mental health?
