Written by: Scott Robinson, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Mental health is the foundation for all your relationships, thoughts and feelings. Prioritizing your mental health is extremely important for your overall well-being. Mental health awareness can significantly impact how you act, think and feel daily. Therefore, it is essential to prioritize your mental health just like your physical health.
When your daily routine becomes too chaotic, you may be tempted to put your mental and emotional health on the back burner. However, mental health can significantly impact every aspect of our lives. To reconnect with the best version of yourself, you must consistently find time to boost your mental health.
Mental health awareness can help you improve your well-being and help you avoid physical health issues. However, if left unacknowledged or neglected, mental health issues like anxiety and depression can worsen and disturb your daily functioning. While mental health issues may be challenging to recognize or avoid, small changes in behavioural patterns and new habits can help you prioritize your mental health.
How You Can Prioritize Your Mental Health:
1. Make Time for Rest and Self-Care
Making time for rest and self-care can be one of the most effective ways to balance out your mental health. Sleep deprivation has been linked to many adverse effects, such as irritability, anger and depression. Therefore, relaxing and practising self-care can help you avoid mental burnout, stress and fatigue.
Self-care may look different for everyone. Finding a hobby, sport or activity that you enjoy that can help you mitigate the pressures of your daily routine can help improve decision-making and may even increase motivation. Even a few minutes of relaxation a day can be cathartic.
2. Set Realistic Goals and Expectations
Setting realistic goals and expectations and fulfilling them as anticipated can be cumbersome. However, unrealistic goals and expectations can often be highly demotivating and mentally debilitating. While many may view lofty goals and expectations as ambitious, they can often be emotionally draining and add unnecessary pressure to your psyche.
Instead, setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goals can help you improve your mental health without compromising on a need for achievement. SMART goals can help consciously identify, acknowledge and work towards goals and expectations in a more focused, controlled and satisfying manner. This can help you prioritize your mental health by setting yourself up for long-term, attainable success.
3. Integrate Physical Activity Into Your Daily Routine
Our current global landscape is increasingly moving towards digitalization and technology. Therefore, you may find yourself in front of your phones and computer screens for a significant portion of your day. You may even try to relax by watching television or browsing the internet. However, high screen time has been linked to poor mental health and may even contribute to depression, anxiety and brain fog. Watching television and browsing the internet can often further hinder our ability to relax, especially if the content is violent or contains graphic content.
Therefore, spending time away from your desk and digital screens and integrating physical activity into your daily routine can benefit your mental health. Physical activity can also help increase serotonin levels and produce endorphins that can reduce stress, improve mood and alleviate pain. Low-impact exercises like yoga can also help lower stress hormone levels in the body, reduce anxiety and encourage mindfulness. A recent study conducted by the American Psychological Association has shown that 62% of adults feel that exercise is a highly effective stress management technique.
4. Eat More Nutritious and Balanced Meals
Research has indicated a significant link between the food you eat and its effects on our mental health. An unbalanced diet could lead to mood fluctuations and an inability to focus. Furthermore, nutritional deficiencies could also lead to depression, irritability and cognitive decline.
Therefore, ensuring that you eat nutritious and balanced meals daily is crucial. A healthy meal typically involves a wide variety of nutrients, vitamins and minerals, and ingredients from numerous food groups. Staying hydrated, eating at regular intervals, and including protein with every meal are straightforward yet highly effective steps to improving mental health.
5. Spend Time In Nature
Spending time in nature can have various benefits for mental and physical well-being. Activities such as gardening, exercising outdoors or spending time around wildlife have been shown to improve confidence, self-esteem and overall mood and potentially reduce stress, anger and loneliness. Ecotherapy has also been linked to increased mindfulness, motivation to exercise and opportunities for social inclusion and connection.
Research has shown that people with the least exposure to nature in their childhood were up to 55% more likely to develop a mental illness than those with a large amount of exposure to nature. Therefore, spending more time in nature is extremely important and can be beneficial for helping you improve your emotional, psychological and physical well-being.
Mental health awareness can be highly transformative for helping you avoid various mental health issues such as anxiety. Furthermore, increased awareness and prioritization of your mental health can help improve almost every aspect of your life. Therefore, the abovementioned list of tips can help you understand why and how to prioritize your mental health.
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Scott Robinson, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Scott Robinson is a Finance Professional and Yoga Teacher. He is also the founder of Yogibanker ‒ a specialised yoga & wellbeing service for the financial services industry. He helped found 'dbYoga' at Deutsche Bank, one of the world's leading financial services companies as well as leading regular mindfulness sessions under the brand of 'Mindfulness Mondays'. Over the years, Scott has helped hundreds of finance professionals become stronger, more flexible and less stressed through yoga & mindfulness. Scott's passion is to bring yoga & wellbeing to the financial services industry ‒ one that is kinder, more sustainable with wellbeing at its core.
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