What are some ways to improve Mental Health?

Introduction

Your mental health is probably the most important thing that you ever own in your personal life. Only yesterday, I shared the three "lived exprienced" steps to achieving good mental well-being. However, today I want to focus on a more general outlook about things that certainly work for me in my personal life when trying to combat things like depression, panic attacks, and even epilepsy - which, in my case, is a very rare type of epilepsy called non-epileptic attack disorder.

Therefore, today's article will center around small actions to improve your daily life to achieve happiness but also to combat stress because stress is a very real commodity in life, and we cannot just switch off a button inside ourselves and never experience stress in our life again. Stress is a human emotion that we experience from one day to the next, and unfortunately, in education today and for many years, nobody has really taught us how to cope with stress. Moreover, there is no curriculum or specific unit in primary, secondary, and further education on mental health. In my research, I have never found a working curriculum that actively promotes good mental well-being.

What is mental health?

Definition: Mental health is a state of well-being in which the individual realizes their own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to their own community. ( World Health Organization )

This is one of the best definitions of mental health, and if you are familiar with my content and you watch and read a lot of my material, you will notice that I use the word "fruitful" quite a lot. I think this is really important because mental health is really about understanding your stress points and how you cope with those stress points to live a more fruitful life.

What is the main danger of not managing stress well?

If you let stress overtake your mind and general well-being, it can lead to many long-term medical and psychological health conditions. I'm going to advise you to always consult with your GP first regarding your mental health if you feel you are not managing it well. However, this is not always a reality because sometimes we feel that even our general practitioners are not really listening to what we are feeling. And more often than not, GPs will refer you to a Healthy Minds Occupational Clinic or somewhere where you can go and get counseling for free if you live in the UK.

Therefore, it is important to realize that the main danger of not managing stress well can indeed lead to poor mental health and, of course, lower your mood. It is quite surprising that it only takes a couple of weeks for a human to reach quite a severe level of depression. Moreover, it is very important to have daily check-ins, which we'll talk about next in this special article, and help youmanage your mental health much better than you have been in the past.

What are daily check-ins, and how can they help my mental health?

Check-ins are something that a lot of psychologists and counsellors use to help people experiencing stress before they get to the point where they feel they can't cope. A check-in is essentially making a conscious effort to turn towards your inner emotions and ask yourself how you're doing. It doesn't matter whether you're feeling low in mood or stressed, what matters is that you've asked the question, allowing your brain to slowly rationalize your thoughts.

When we slow down and check-in with ourselves, even if it's just halfway through the day, we can start to process where our stress is coming from. Essentially, we're trying to put our stress into a box in the short term, before it explodes out into our conscious and unconscious minds. Effectively, we're managing our stress to a good level where we can experience it, know where it's coming from, and simplify what's going on in our life that is causing us to feel anxious.

However, anxiety is something that we all experience, and sadly, many people get confused or misdiagnosed. I would argue that even through my own experience, doctors don't generally understand anxiety and are very quick to prescribe antidepressants before actually listening to the patient and referring them to a mental health professional.

Empathy in Action and Rationlizing your Thoughts

Empathy in action, where somebody listens to how you're feeling and shows empathy towards your stress and anxiety, can help the brain to heal slowly but surely. But this is not the only way we can rationalize our thoughts. We can also do this in a conscious way ourselves by simply going for a walk, sitting down and meditating on our stress, and coming to a rational decision about what to do next.

So, I have already mentioned that going for a walk and sitting down in a chair are some of the best ways we can rationalize our human thoughts, which will lead to lower stress and anxiety. Now, the point to remember here is that stress and anxiety will always exist in your body and your mind. First, it is important that you recognize that as you're feeling a particularly low mood on one day and you've been so busy, for example, you forgot to check-in on yourself, and you just feel unwell. It is very important at that particular stage that you sit down wherever you are. If you sit down as you feel and experience stress or anxiety, you will effectively put the brakes on that stress, and you will start to come down and relax into a state of rationalization.

"I have used this technique personally many times, and it has helped and stopped me from having a non-epileptic attack disorder episode."

How can I live a more fruitful life and increase my general well-being?

The techniques I've briefly given you today in this article are very effective, as I've stated previously that I've used them myself, and they are very, very effective. The only rule I've learned to master a more fruitful life and increase my general well-being is just to go about life every single day. It doesn't mean that you have to listen to the sound of eye of the tiger and do 100 push-ups every single day with lots of different motivational music. Although that is quite funny and interesting because a lot of people do try to take this step in the field of growth mindset.

One of the fundamental flaws of the growth mindset is that it can put you in a state of complete readiness to always want to win in life. The fundamental flaw about this state of mind is that you will hit a wall nine times at end at some stage in your life.

Conclusions

We all have our goals and dreams, yet our mental health is the most important asset we possess in our personal lives. At the end of the day, money is important, but our mental health should be the most valuable thing we cherish. Some of the smartest people on earth still suffer from depression because they have not taken action on some of the steps I have provided, and they are not managing their emotions particularly well.

"You can read 100 studies and listen to 100 different podcasts, but at the end of the day, managing your mental health is really your responsibility."

So, I want you to do me a favor and go through the steps I've given you, start practicing daily check-ins, rationalize your thoughts through increased exercise, and just generally take your mental health a lot more seriously. You don't have to be a psychologist or pay for one to manage your mental health successfully. You don't even have to go to your local bookstore (I do this myself just for research purposes) and buy 100 different self-help books to manage your mental health effectively. What is far more important is that you acknowledge that, for the rest of your life, not every single day is going to be perfect.

Nobody is Superman and nobody is superwoman. Once you realize that and appreciate what you've got around you, and also the fact that by simply going for a walk, you can ease off the stress pedal and lower your anxiety, you will start to experience happiness.

"Learn to engage and manage your mental health not run away from it."

Mental Health 4U