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It can be difficult to know which daily habits you should take up. Well, we’ve put together some mental health advice to help you feel better! These are simple daily things you can do that have been shown to improve your mental health.
Here are seven daily habits you can use to bolster your mental health and get into a good routine.
We often go through life without stopping and reflecting on what has happened during our days. It’s easy to become so busy and immersed in our daily stresses and the things we have to do that we don’t stop to think about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
Keeping a journal is a great form of therapy and self-discovery. You may be saying to yourself, “I’m not a writer” or “I’m not creative enough,” but that’s the thing about keeping a journal; it’s just for you and nobody else has to see it! It’s your thoughts and feelings written the way you want to write them. And there are even proven benefits to this activity!
One study showed that journaling regularly helped people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). You may not deal with PTSD, but you still likely experience stress from things that happened to you during your week, both at work and in your social life. Writing reflections on things that have happened in your daily life can help you work through them. We learn from looking back on what we’ve been through, so reviewing difficult experiences and how we felt and reacted while they were happening can help us make better decisions going forward.
Journaling can also help you form goals. You can review what you’ve written and decide on where you want to go in your life. Having a written log of what you’ve been doing and what you’re feeling can help you plan ahead.
In short, writing about our feelings helps us manage our anxiety and make sense of difficult emotions.
If you don’t feel good physically you won’t feel good mentally. That doesn’t mean your body has to look great all the time, but it does mean you have to look after your body. When it comes to physical health, we can look at three important factors:
These are three things that play a role in how we feel, not just physically, but mentally. Let’s break them down.
What you put into your body acts as fuel. If what you take in is good for your body, your body will make you feel good in return. The most key substance to make sure you’re getting enough of is water. Every organ and cell in our bodies needs water to function. Studies have also shown that drinking enough water is linked to reduced anxiety and depression. Our body needs water for everything, including getting rid of bodily waste. You especially need to take in more water if you’re sick or the outside temperature is very high. Drinking water before a meal aids you in digestion, and drinking water when you wake up helps your organs “wake up” too.
Aside from water, you need to make sure you eat right. A healthy, balanced diet is important to getting all the vitamins, minerals, protein, and carbohydrates you need. Your diet should include vitamins A, C, D, E, K, and all the B vitamins. B vitamins are particularly important for psychological and mental health. And, for a healthy brain, it’s important to eat leafy greens and fatty fish.
You may also want to enjoy alcohol or high sugar snacks from time to time, and that’s okay, but it’s important to have these in moderation.
Being physically active has many benefits and will give your mental health a huge boost! As well as helping your bones and muscles, exercise also helps your brain in producing hormones, like dopamine, that make us feel good.
We all need to get moderately intense physical exercise every day to ensure a healthy body and a healthy mind, but make sure you’re exercising with the aim of personal growth and self-improvement. Exercising for the wrong reasons can lead to exercise dependence and, in turn, can lead to a decline in mental well-being. Whether it’s going for a walk, heading to the gym, or doing some calisthenics, daily exercise makes you feel better.
Getting good quality sleep is really important as it helps us recover from the day. Our mental health improves when we get quality sleep—especially when we can get between seven to nine hours a night. For good sleep hygiene, it’s also beneficial to go to bed and get up at roughly the same time each day. Avoid drinking caffeine before going to bed and take a break from bright screens like your phone and laptop while you get ready to go to sleep.
Humans are social creatures. In order to maintain good mental health, we require positive social interaction. Loneliness can be a painful thing to go through and it’s very easy to lose touch. It’s important to make an effort to connect with friends and loved ones. Socializing can seem daunting to some people if you don’t have many close friends, but with some practice and by finding people you click with, you’ll feel much better after sharing your time with others. What’s more, in-person socializing is beneficial for your mental and psychological health and has been shown to lower the risk of dementia.
When you’re going through a personal problem or something is causing you stress, make sure you talk to someone. Communicating about things that make you stressed is healthy in relationships. If you have people you can trust, make sure you let them know if you’re struggling.
And of course, we all need some alone time, so it’s okay to take a break from socializing and to focus on yourself too.
Do you want to know something about your mood? Feeling good feels good! Laughing and smiling can help with stress and anxiety, and improves your emotional well-being. When we laugh, our body relaxes and any tension we’re feeling is reduced. Laughing actually gives our immune system a boost too, as when we laugh the number of antibodies produced increases.
As for mental health, laughing releases endorphins, which are hormones that make us happy. Thus, laughing lifts our mood and aids in reducing anxiety. Laughter is also linked to socializing! When we laugh with our friends, it strengthens the emotional bond we have with them, which leads to better interpersonal relationships.
So, do things that make you laugh and smile. Life is short and it’s important to take the time to feel good, especially with other people!
Social media isn’t a bad thing. It has its upsides, like giving us the ability to connect with people all around the world, learn about different cultures, follow news stories, and express ourselves.
But oftentimes the way we use social media is unhealthy. Using too much social media has been shown to have an adverse effect on people’s mental health and there are a number of reasons for this.
Think about what kind of things people tend to post on social media. It’s usually content that shows off how great their life is. If you’re constantly being bombarded by pictures of the great lives of other people, it’s easy to start feeling inadequate. In reality, nobody’s life is as good as they pretend it is on their social media, so being overexposed to a constant stream of posts about how happy people are can warp our perception of our own lives.
Social media overuse can have other negative effects like cyberbullying or neglecting in-person contact. You don’t have to avoid it completely, but make sure you don’t overdo it with the time you spend on social media; it’s not a replacement for real life interaction.
The world is a hectic, busy, stressful place, so it’s important to take some time to just relax. This could involve doing some mindfulness or some breathing exercises. Schedule time each day to allow yourself to relax.
If you want to have good mental health, you need to be nice to yourself. Staying positive can be a challenge, but do your best to speak to yourself in a positive way. Remember to show yourself compassion too.
Practicing gratitude has been shown to have a positive impact on your mental health. Set some time aside to focus on the good things in life and show some self-love.
In order to have good mental health, you need a good routine. Having a healthy, consistent routine will help you avoid depression and will allow you to feel better. It takes practice to build daily habits, but it’s worth making them something you do each day. If you follow this mental health advice it will stay with you in the long run. Replace your bad habits with these good ones and you’ll have a routine that boosts your mental health!
