How To Improve Your Mental Health

Nowadays, we talk so much about physical health. Diet fads such as the keto diet, or intermittent fasting are the subject of discussion at almost every single dinner party and how to lose weight fast, or best workout plans for bikini season are searched frequently on Google.

While I think that looking your best directly correlates to feeling your best and having confidence in yourself, I also believe that we need to focus more on mental health in general. A lot of the time, I think that fitness goals and physical looks are so important to everyone that they get to into it and start comparing themselves with others around them, which is not good for mental health.

For example, just the other day, I witnessed two ladies working out. Both of them were in their 40’s and one had worked out (pretty intensely) her entire life, while the other one never worked out and never played sports. Obviously, the lady who had worked out in the past was able to do more than the one who had never worked out, but the one that never worked out kept comparing herself to everyone around her. In the end, it led to her running off in tears because she could not compete. Yes, physical health is so very important, but this comparison game that we play, such as the example above, is detrimental to mental health.

It goes above and beyond physical comparisons, as well. We live in a world where more is better and it is very easy to compare yourself to others. If you think that you are in a spot in life where you are starting to compare yourself to others and are possibly struggling with your mental health, I highly encourage you to keep reading this post on how to improve your mental health. Below, you will find just a few easy ways that you can improve your mental health and get out of this constant comparison game that is so very easy to get involved in nowadays.

Keep A Journal

I love the simple task of keeping a journal by your bedside, or even in your car. Bullet journaling is ‘in’ right now, but I think that even if you simply write down your thoughts, feeling, and positive (and maybe negative) things about the day, it can be a great way to review it, re-evaluate, and improve in the future. Plus, I absolutely love going back and re-reading old journals – it is the best trip down memory lane!

Quiet Your Mind

According to Huffington Post,  ““Meditation is mindfulness without agitation,” Narasimhan says. Stress creates agitation and is something most of us deal with on some level. And it’s increasing, given the rising use of anti-anxiety medications, notes Stanford University researcher Emma Seppälä. Meditation allows people to take charge of their own nervous system and emotions. “Studies have shown improved ability to [permanently] regulate emotions in the brain,” adds Seppälä, who is also the associate director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford. “It’s very empowering.”” They say that meditation can help improve your concentration, promote a healthy lifestyle, increase self-awareness, increase happiness, increase acceptance, slows aging, and last but not least, it can help improve cardiovascular and immune health, as well.

Remove Toxic People & Things

Everyone has those people or things in their life that they should probably do without. You know what I’m talking about. In order to fully improve your mental health, you need to rid yourself of these toxic people or things. It will not only improve your mental health, but it will make you overall healthier and happier.

Set Realistic Goals

Setting realistic goals is a great way to get back on track with your mental health. If you have fallen off the wagon, it’s okay – you can easily get back on, I promise! First, you need to evaluate and figure out what you need to set your goals for. If you are wanting to lose weight, make sure you are choosing a healthy number and have a workout and eating plan that is healthy for you, specifically. If you are wanting to set realistic goals in your work environment, I think that is great because it will give you a sense of accomplishment when you hit those goals and it will also create healthy boundaries when it comes to getting your work done. Whatever it is that you need to set realistic goals for, just make sure to evaluate it first and think about it!

Get Help

Learn How to Boost Your Self-Esteem

Building self esteem is a first step towards a happy, healthy and productive life. Yet having low self-esteem is perhaps the most common flaw of our humanity. Having self-, esteem will help build your confidence. If you have self-confidence, you will feel a self-worth and respect yourself as a person. If you respect yourself you can respect others, improve your life by improving your relationships with your love ones, friends and co-workers. You will be able to achieve your goals in life and obtain true happiness in your life.

Low self-esteem can cause people to develop depression, unhappiness, insecurity and a poor confidence level. When you have low self-esteem ever little mistake that occurs in your life is taken to heart. When people critisize you, when you make mistakes, a joke directed toward you and it will cause you to run away from every opportunity that comes your way and every challenge will seem impossible to accomplish. This will cause you to feel stagnant and lose meaning and direction in your life.

You can develop high self-esteem, just like learning to read or dance. Secondly, people do not understand the importance of having high self-esteem. I cannot even begin to stress the importance of having high self-esteem; it is the key to having mental, physical and spiritual strength.

The first stage of developing strength is learning to love yourself and your life. You need to learn to be grateful of what God has given you. You need to let go of all those angry emotions inside. Holding anger inside yourself will not help you, it will only hurt you. The past is the past; you can only change the present.

You need to love yourself by accepting all your faults and putting the past behind you, but if, you focus on your faults than you will only experience an unhappy life. You need to think positively and focus on your accomplishments.

To live with a happy state of mind, you need to have high self-esteem. You need to feel that you are no different from anyone else and that you can be the person you set in your mind to be. You need to reconstruct your life. You need to put yourself in a lifestyle that will make you happy and bring you as little stress as possible.

To begin the healing process you need to develop strength, wisdom, confidence and knowledge. If you can develop these qualities, you will achieve all your goals and dreams. First, you must focus on the goals and dreams you want to fulfill. I am going to teach you the true meanings of having strength, wisdom, confidence and knowledge. I will help shoe you how to obtain and use them. These four steps will help you live a happy life and gain high self-esteem.! Below are four steps to high self-esteem.

1. Strength- the development of strength in the inner body begins in the mind. The inner body is our mind, soul and spirit. How we think and program our minds to work, helps us build mental, physical and spiritual strength. Our strength comes from how we feel about ourselves. The higher our self-esteem, the stronger we feel and in turn, we can do more for ourselves.

Yet, if you have the strength and motivation, you can make the present anything you want. To free all your negative emotions that are holding you back, you have to say to yourself. I accept myself for who I am and that I am unable to change the past. Nevertheless, I can change my future because I love myself and refuse to hurt myself by drowning in my own self-pity. You cannot rely on others. You need to learn to rely on yourself.

You have to believe in yourself, develop a sense of pride in yourself. It does not matter what others think about you, what matters is how you think about yourself. God put us on this earth to love others, not to hurt ourselves and take our anger out on others, who are usually the people we care about the most and ourselves.

2. Knowledge – is the second part of the process of change, it is another important factor in helping yourself. Knowledge comes from experience from being open minded to suggestions others may give. We may not always agree with other people’s suggestions, yet it is always wise to listen to what others have to say. Some individuals may try to be controlling and may get frustrated if we do not act on what they have to say. You should to set these people straight and tell them; I will listen to what you have to say; however, that does not necessarily mean I am going to agree with you. I have my own mind, too and I need to do what is best for me.

We learn from each other and we acquire knowledge from the world around us that we should pass along to others by helping them. We need to take our experience and use it in our present life now, including the mistakes we have made in life. The mistakes we have made are where we get most of our knowledge that helps us become stronger individuals. What weakens us when we repeatedly make the same mistakes?

Do not pity yourself for the mistakes you made in life or imperfections. Studies have shown that people who have negative attitudes are more like to live chaotic lives. They are more likely to become mentally or physically ill with extremely debilitating or life threatening illnesses. Many people have a hard time focusing on the positive because they allow their negative sides to consume them… I firmly believe that focusing on the negatives will causes seizures.

Say to yourself, OK, what I have learned from these mistakes or from my shortcomings. Taking what you have learned and using it to help others is the best therapy. When you help, you feel a sense of accomplishment and self-worth. You are overlooking any negative characteristics because you are too busy focusing on helping others’.

3. Confidence- our confidence comes from our self-esteem. To have high self-esteem we need to feel good about ourselves, to get to this point in life you need to begin by starting to do things in life to make yourself happy by focusing on the future, creating direction in your life. Begin by planning short and long-term goals for yourself and confidence level will rise.

It worked for me. When I started accomplishing some of my short-term goals, I had more self-respect. I developed a greater sense of pride and my inner strength and self-worth increased.

4. Wisdom- comes from God. We all have five senses, our sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, yet I believe wisdom to be our sixth sense. Wisdom understands the inner signals and the directions that your body sends out to you, becoming aware of what your body is trying to tell you. Your sixth sense always leads you to the right answers. It is up to us to learn to understand our inner self (spirit) and to follow the signals it sends out to us.

Listening to what our inner self has to say is essential. For example, have you ever felt like you had a feeling something was the right thing to do. You need to learn to understand your mind, so you can understand your inner soul and all the wonderful things it is capable of doing. When we listen and act on the signals our body, it gives us a stronger understanding to our body as a whole. Spiritually you can give your body what it needs.

We feed our body food to survive on a daily basis. Spiritually we need to feed our body with love, understanding and different forms of relaxation, such as meditation. I strongly suggest to everyone that you start with at least five minutes each day with some type of relaxation exercise. Either in the morning when you start your day, the afternoon if you are able too or at night before bed to release the tension that has built up throughout the day. Each week you should add five minutes until you get to hour each day.

When you do these things, you increase your level of strength, wisdom, knowledge and confidence. By having a high level of strength you feel as though, you can conquer the world. This helps you decrease your stress level.

Once you accept yourself, you can cope with the world around you and accept the fact that you can do everything you expected to do in life. Nevertheless, to accept that yourself you first have to love who you are and be proud of the person you have become.

5. A Relationship with God, is one sure cure for low self esteem and your oveall mental health.

There are many things in life you are capable of doing, but you must develop the motivation and the will to get out there and JUST DO THEM!
This week is actually National Suicide Awareness Week, so I thought this post was fitting. Did you know that suicide is often the result of an untreated mental health condition? This is why it is so important to make sure you are constantly improving your mental health and also so important to get help when you need it!