Millennial women and Mental health?

It's becoming a big hype about adding the word millennial in front of everything; Women have been working 9 to 5, getting married and becoming mothers ever since we found the oldest-known fossils around 3.5 billion years back. What's the whole hype about women and mental health now?

Sometime back, when I was much younger and clueless, I wrote an article about Stress and Millennial mothers, after which a lot of people reached out to me for various reasons. Some felt my article inspired them; some thought I'm giving them wrong ideas about stress. sigh*

Though I love writing about Product Management, I couldn't ignore this elephant in the room. Ask the following questions and you're good to go.

Are you feeling like a fraud?

As women, we always think inadequate. We firmly believe the other person in the room knows better. This notion needs the same treatment of OCD patients—you have to agree to your weakness and work on them when someone is better than you it is because they've made more mistakes than you. I spent the first few years of my professional life trying to master the art of pretending, but I feel it's not worth it, and it affects your mental health. Let's stop acting like we're perfect; it's OK if you don't know. It's impossible to be perfect (whatever that means) all the time.

Stress comes when you try to be a different person. :)

Are you talking?

The biggest problem with people today is disconnection, not with the world but with ourselves. We love talking to our social groups; the quality of the talk is predominantly on the quality of the group— some groups talk about men, some groups talk about ideas, and few groups may also gossip. But, when was the last time you spoke to yourself? Or you genuinely loved and pampered yourself?

Women often give a step-motherly treatment to themselves by being hard and undervaluing their potentials. Can we stop doing this? Self-speaking makes us improve the self-awareness—if we win this, half the battle is won already.

One of the never-gratifying conversations I have, start when they lament, "I never wanted my life to go this way." Now, this feeling is typical, I am not complaining, but when I ask them "What did you want?" after a long pause, the usual answer is "I don't know."

This is your life, and you are responsible for it, so talk to yourself.

Are you still believing that?

Most of us are never happy with the who we are, and that's the only reason why the crazy apps with photo filters are downloaded in billions. Our rational brain knows the fact people only show their highlight reel, but the emotional brain is never ready to accept it. For a day, delete these apps and try to see observe your anxiety. It's not easy, just like drug-addicts can't come out in a day. Regularly putting up Instagram posts, checking the likes every millisecond, or deleting the photo if it didn't get at least 150 likes if you do any it—I pity if you're still believing that.

Are you mindful?

I'm telling you this not only because I'm from India, but also because this is a gift to humankind—yoga and meditation. Yoga is not twisting your body left, right, and centre; yoga is focusing on yourself.

Forget about what you need externally from the world; start the change internally, what you eat, what you drink and what you see.

Bring small changes, low risk and high rewards. Stop listening to that mindless radio talking about a useless topic, and instead, pick a subject from TED, podcasts or as an audiobook when you're driving. Cut down on sugar (there is a huge reason why sugar is connected to your mental health), and spend every minute mindfully. 

Are you with the right people?

People around us design our lives; they impact our habits and activities on a big scale. Find the people who're connected to goals bigger than their life. Depending on your phase of mental health needs, join the social groups, which can help you come out of this illusion.

You cannot always control what goes on outside, but, you can forever control what goes on inside. And, here I end with my favourite line that I'm never tired of saying again and again:

You own you, and the only person who can keep you happy is YOU :)

Few groups run by some fantastic people around us,

General mental health - Subscribe to LonePack, a non-profit run by young professionals to shatter the stigma around mental health issues, and see how beautiful things can happen around.

Divorce mental health - 3 out of 10 my friends are going through this trauma, and I found Project Kintsugi very helpful, which transformed people's way of looking at things.

Also comment your opinion here and that will encourage me to write more, you may also like my other articles related to this topic.

Yes, I am 28 years old. Now, what does that mean?

Why 'stress' is just a hype?

Are you suffering from 'passion' problem?

Are you ‘that’ millennial mother?

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