13 Daily Activities to Improve Mental Health
Taking care of your mental health is as important as your physical health. Even if your body is perfectly healthy, if your mental condition isn’t at its best, it might drag your overall well-being with it. With that, you need to prioritize your mental health to help put yourself in a good place and spread a positive impact on your surroundings.
Everybody goes through stress as it’s part of what makes you human. It could be from the intense workload, conflict with peers, or even missing out on an important event due to unforeseen circumstances. But this doesn’t mean you have to let stress take over your life and allow yourself to always be in a bad mood. Professionals from Insight Northwest Counseling In Portland OR and other institutes even recommend that everyone should do various daily activities that can help improve their mental health.
To help you out, listed below are some things you can do:
1. Get Enough Sleep
Sleep is extremely important as it lets your body rest and prepare for the next day. As you sleep, you allow your body to take a quick refresh and keep it away from overthinking stress. Ideally, you should get at least seven to nine hours of sleep daily as this will help make your body more productive and well-rested. It’s the perfect recipe to get your day right.
To help you sleep better, you could begin by improving your bedroom environment. Replace your mattress and sheets, as well as indulge in a relaxing bubble bath minutes before you hit the hay.
2. Compliment Yourself
Self-love is essential as it helps you to understand further and appreciate your own body. This way, you won’t need other people’s opinions to make yourself feel good as you already love yourself for who you are, regardless of what other people think.
To practice self-love, compliment yourself the moment you wake up by highlighting the things you love about yourself. This could be focusing on your physical or personality. This little act can already boost you and make you feel more confident about being you.
3. Prioritize Your Health
Your health plays an important role when it comes to your mental health. If you don’t take care of your body, how do you expect your body to help take care of you? To avoid any more complications, you should begin prioritizing your overall health.
You can start exercising regularly for at least 20-30 minutes daily. You should also form a healthy and nutritious diet to keep your body healthy and strong. While you can always give in to some cheat days, prioritizing healthy food can give your body plenty of benefits.
4. Do Small Good Deeds
Even if they’re small, nothing feels better than knowing you’ve done something to make other people’s lives a bit easier, better, and more bearable. While it doesn’t require you to be extra on doing good deeds, trying to be a better person, one act at a time, would surely benefit you and your surroundings.
For your mental health, you should do small good deeds every day. It could be opening a door for someone else, picking up a piece of trash from the floor, or cheering someone up from a terrible day. While it might be small for you, it’ll produce a big impact on the people around you, putting them in a better mood, which surely makes your heart flutter.
5. Learn to Handle Stress
Stress happens to everyone, whether you like it or not. There would come a time when you’ll face a stressful situation that you either need to resolve or just let it float around you. But this doesn’t mean you can let stress take over your day and pull you down. You need to handle it and be above what life brings you.
With that, you need to learn how to manage stress and move your life with it. You can begin by doing some breathing exercises, playing with a stress ball, getting a massage, or even taking a walk. Whichever works best for you should be something you should do to free or minimize your stress levels.
6. Appreciate Small Things
Small things are often taken for granted since people are too focused on the big results. While they’re truly great, you must know that it takes plenty of small things to make big things happen.
To learn to love life more and be happy with what’s happening, even if life seems to be pulling you apart, you should learn to appreciate small things in life. It could be writing in perfect ink, having the right crunch and moistness of your toast, the perfect aroma for your coffee, or even the great weather you’re having. With the appreciation of small things, you’ll learn to love life more and enjoy what you already have.
7. Do Yoga
Practicing yoga can help reduce your stress levels and allow your body a short break from all the chaos that floats around you. You can do a quick yoga as your mental health refresher or use this as your daily exercise replacement if you don’t have much time on your hands.
As you practice yoga, you’re letting stress out of your system, focusing on your breathing and flexibility. It should help you recharge your mental health and continue your day in a good mood as you can also keep your body moving.
8. Meditate
Another form of relaxation technique is meditation. This process involves taking a few minutes of your time and blanking your mind by trying to focus solely on your breathing alone.
During this process, you need to blank everything from what you see, hear, and smell. This small process can help you feel fully relaxed as you’re keeping your mind off the things that make you stressed and frustrated. Practicing meditation every day gives you a quick restart and puts you back in a better mood.
9. Surround With the Right People
Your environment greatly affects your mental health as it influences what you think of things. It could be influencing you to do something you shouldn’t do or continuously hearing negative opinions about a certain situation or person who doesn’t deserve those harsh words.
To make peace with your mind, you should begin by surrounding yourself with the right people, which involves getting rid of the negative influence from your life. As you switch your circle to a better crowd, you can feed your mind with positive thoughts and free yourself from all the negativity it brings.
10. Be Social
Being social helps stimulate your mind as it allows you to blurt yourself out and have someone to listen to your opinions and anything you have to say. Moreover, social interactions can also contribute to positive well-being.
You can begin by making small talk with other people or frequently chatting with your crowd whenever you have the chance. Catch up with your old friends and allow yourself to be present with various social activities. But if you feel like you need a break from socialization once in a while, it’s fine. As long as you put yourself back, it’ll all be good.
11. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask For Help
Some people aren’t comfortable asking for help from someone as it makes them feel weak. Some also avoid asking for help as they fear being judged for not knowing it in the first place. But if it’s something you really need to accomplish, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help.
Pushing yourself to do things you clearly can’t only cause more trouble as it might make the situation worse, but you stick yourself in the same loop, which can surely make you feel frustrated and affect your mental health. To make progress, you should ask for help when needed.
12. Keep a Journal
Every day, there will always be things that can make you feel grateful. To fully appreciate what life brings you, you might want to consider keeping a journal and putting all the things you’re thankful for at the end of the day.
You could write at least three to five things each day. It could be waking up in the morning, getting in a steamy shower, having the perfect lunch, and so on. As you retrace your steps for the day, you’ll feel good about your day as there are things worth appreciating that you haven’t noticed just because you’re too focused on the bigger picture.
13. Have No Screen Time
The world of social media has become a poison for some people. It’s where people often compare their progress with others and focus on the good things happening to strangers rather than on themselves. It’s turning into a place where people frequently flaunt or boast about their achievements, which can make people envious or inspired.
To avoid social media’s drama, you should have no screen time each day and just focus on the present. Ideally, you should do this at least two to three hours before hitting the hay as it can also help you sleep better. You should also do this when speaking with someone or eating to focus on the moment.
Takeaway
As you go on with your day, you should always put your mental health on your priority list. This will help you feel good about yourself and be able to start your day in an optimistic mood. Luckily, there are plenty of things you can do each day that help improve your mental health. With these small practices, you can allow yourself to feel better and be able to free yourself from handling intense stress.
