By George Hyland
If you are thinking about trying to look after yourself better, there are a lot of things that you might want to think about here in order to make sure you are doing that right. One area that is absolutely worth thinking about is your mental health. As long as you are doing all you can to have better mental health, you are going to find that you are so much more likely to really enjoy your life, and that you will also feel physically better too, so it affects everything quite positively to do this.
In this post, then, we are going to discuss some of the things you can do to take better care of your mental health. As long as you are doing at least some of the following, you should find that you are going to be so much more likely to feel good and to allow this to sustain you and help you make the most of life.
Be kind to yourself
One of the things that really helps is to make sure you are trying to be as kind to yourself as possible. This is all about adopting a way of being which is very gentle and self-forgiving, and it tends to mean that you are going to be much more likely to be kind to yourself and to really enjoy your day to day life more as a result. If you find that you are sometimes a little harsh with yourself, or not so accepting, then that can add up and you might find yourself in a situation where you are quite depressed or not self-loving. So it’s much better if you can practice this kind of self-acceptance.
For many of us, however, it can feel quite radical to accept ourselves entirely. You might find that you are going to struggle with it at first, and that you need to try and therefore work on it more. That’s all the more reason to practice it and to turn it into something that you return to time and time again. If you can do that, you should find that it gets easier with time - it really is a practice like anything else in this sense.
Learn To Relax
A lot of us don’t really take the time to relax, and that can be quite a problematic situation to find yourself in. It’s important to relax regularly, because that’s the only way you can expect your mind to really calm and to have stronger mental health. But if you are never relaxing, you’ll find that you really struggle to start. So if you want to learn to relax, you might find it helpful to make a list of things that you enjoy doing generally and then you follow that list and start to actually do them.
That might sound obvious but the truth is it can really highlight for you how you can unwind and therefore look after your mind more effectively. It could be as simple as doing a crossword, having a bath, going for a walk in nature, or whatever else is relaxing to you - maybe dancing. Whatever it is, make sure that you are learning to relax and that you make good use of it regularly in your life. That is going to help a great deal.
Reframe unhelpful thoughts
One skill that is really worth developing is that to reframe unhelpful thoughts. You might find that you do this quite naturally from time to time, or it might be something that you have to remind yourself to do. Then again, perhaps you have never really done it and you need help just getting started. In any case, it’s something that you are going to want to think about if you are keen on trying to improve your mental health. Having the ability to reframe unhelpful thoughts is one of the most powerful things you can develop in yourself.
If you do that more and more, you are going to find that your mental health does improve, and perhaps a lot more quickly than you might have thought possible too. So it’s absolutely the kind of thing that you should think about.
