2 Habits for Better Mental Health
Optimal mental health is good for your body and your mind. Mental health affects you psychologically and physically, so it is essential to keep yourself mentally well. Our therapist in Windermere recommends these habits for better mental health:
Be mindful
Plenty of research confirms the value of mindfulness. There are various activities you can do to be more mindful in your daily life, so find the one that suits you most for the best possible outcome. Here are a few mindfulness activities that may work for you:
- Visualization: There are various visualization exercises for using your creativity with different goals in mind like confidence building, relaxation, and more.
- Mindful breathing: We constantly breathe, but how often are we focusing on our breaths? Concentrating on the sensation of breathing will slow your mind and provide your lungs with the extra attention they deserve.
- Yoga: Yoga is a mindfulness technique that brings attention to different body parts through movement. It also helps improve flexibility and build strength.
- Mindful eating: This process involves slowing your eating habits to focus on smell, texture, taste, and other sensations.
At its core, mindfulness encourages developing a sense of awareness about yourself and your environment. Mindfulness practices will shine a mental light onto parts of you that you may tend to overlook, including your body’s sensation, tension, comfort, and mental state. By allowing time each day to sense your feelings, you may discover new things about yourself.
Practice healthy boundaries
You do not necessarily have to cut something completely out of your life to draw a healthy boundary. Boundaries are a way to prioritize your mental health while staying involved in a situation, relationship, or idea. They emphasize your connection to what is happening and allow you to ensure that everything you do stays positive. Boundaries are crucial for your thoughts, the workplace, and school. Setting boundaries looks different in every situation.
It is critical to recognize the reason for a boundary before you set one, so journaling can be a helpful tool for identifying things that are affecting you. Here are some situations where you might need boundaries:
- • Your parents are constantly commenting about how you live your life. Their comments feel like criticism even though they do not mean to be. You ask them to stop making these comments because they are frustrating and intrusive.
- Your coworker constantly presents your ideas as their own. You have mentioned the problem in the past, but now it is time to stop sharing your ideas with them.
- Your significant other teases you continuously about the time you upset a mutual friend. That particular memory causes you guilt, even though the friend forgave you. So you ask your significant other to stop bringing the memory up.
Boundaries are critical because they promote self-sustainability. You may continually experience situations that cause frustration and stress without them. You can determine the best course of action by examining your reactions to these situations. You may have to ask someone to change their behaviors or remove yourself entirely from a particular situation. Setting boundaries prioritizes your well-being.
