World Mental Health Day: 9Ordinary ways in which you can take care of your mental health every day

World Mental Health Day – This year, the World Mental Health Day is celebrated on 10th October, 2023. This initiative is 3 decades old and it has been started in 1992. Each year, there is a new and fresh theme assigned to this day. This year the theme for World Mental Health Day is mental health is a universal human right.

The main purpose and agenda behind this day is to create awareness about mental health. Mental health is a severe issue and lots of people suffer from different mental health conditions about which they do not have idea because it is still considered taboo. People are not aware of the mental issues they are facing and to let them know more about it, this day has been created.

This day is observed as an opportunity for people and communities to unite and learn more about mental health. The aim of this day is to improve the knowledge about mental health, make it normal, raise awareness and drive actions to let everyone that their mental health should be a priority.

Cut to the chase in 2023, lots of advancements have been made around this topic. People are more vocal about their mental health, people are normally talking about it on social platforms to let others know that they are not alone, and more.

While we are on the topic of mental health, we want to share some really warm things that we all can do in our daily lives to take care of our mental health. This is not strictly for someone suffering from anxiety, depression, or other things. This is for everyone because it is required for all of us to take care of our mental health as we take care of our physical health.

P.S. – These are some real life-changing lifestyle patterns to adopt to make sure that we are in check with our mental health status. You need to prioritise your mental health above everything else.

World Mental Health Day

1. Understand the stress pattern, if you have any

One of the most common mental health issues that we all face on a regular basis is stress. All of us, irrespective of what we are doing, what is happening in our lives, how privileged we are, and what’s our age, are all stressed out for some or other reason. It’s normal. But, in case stress is something that has become an inevitable part of your life and you find it very difficult to come out of it, it might be something more. For this, you need to understand what is the prime core reason for your stress, what is the pattern that is causing that stress, and how you are reacting to it. This is the first step to work on it.

2. Understand and Listen to your triggers, to reduce them

Lots of our actions like sadness, crying, anger, abuse, etc is actually not an action but reaction to someone or something else’s actions. These are called triggers. Triggers are usually something that invokes some part of our brains which is troubled. Triggers are something that leads us to express our emotions/trauma in a negative or stressful way. For example, you might have been bullied in school because of your skin colour and later in life when someone comments on your colour, you get triggered and react to it by being sad, abusive, or anything. So, this shows that you are not healed from this trauma and it is still a trigger for you. Hence, to reduce them, you need to understand your trigger.

3. Track your habits and moods every day, to understand your mind

If you constantly feel that you are being sad or life is being unfair to you, then this is something we really recommend you to do. You can download an app that can help you with habits and mood tracking. This way, you can track your daily habits and moods (however you are feeling, why you are feeling that way, whatever you have done, etc) every day and evaluate it each week. This way, you can see how your mood was for the whole week and if you were sad, why were you sad particularly and if happy, then why. This way, you can work on the things that make you happy more. 

4. Spend 10 minutes every day with yourself, to rejuvenate and connect

This is something that is totally recommended as it really helps you to understand yourself. This can also be categorised as ‘me time’ which is very important. No matter how busy you are, you need to take time every day for yourself to sit with your thoughts, tackle whatever is going on in your mind, journal your thoughts, practice gratitude, and just let yourself unwind the series of thoughts troubling you. This way, you will be able to solve a lot of things all by yourself instead of being stressed out. Take time for the things you love.

5. Practise Gratitude, it will help you feel lighter

One of the most important and the most underrated things to do to take care of your mental health is to journal and practise gratitude. Gratitude is something that we all need to practice as it helps us be grounded and in touch with our reality. With lots of things happening in the lives of our peers and us having access to everything, feeling insecure and left out in life is something very common. For this, we need to practice gratitude to count our blessings. This way, we will be able to feel relaxed, not stressed, and not left out.

6. Create a balance in your life, wrt to everything

One of the most common things that we all are suffering from is not being able to create the perfect work-life balance. This is something we all are striving for and most of us are not able to achieve this because of a lot of reasons. However, this is very important because if we balance things out, we automatically release stress and anxiety from our lives. For example, we are extremely stressed about workload. But, if we are able to manage to go out with the people we love, we are ignoring the stress factor for some time which in turn reduces stress-causing hormones in our brains by releasing happy hormones called endorphins.

7. Work on your physical fitness, as per your requirement

This is again something that goes extremely unnoticed and over the top, but this is important. No matter how cliche this is, this actually works. To take care of your mental health, you need to take care of your physical health as well. If every day, you take some time out to move your body by doing simple things like walking, jogging, running, or even doing the full-blow cardio, etc, you are doing enough for yourself. By doing the workout, your body releases happy endorphins which makes you happy, lets you feel content, and reduces stress.

8. Talk to someone you trust, to share your experiences

Not all days are the same for all of us. There will be days when you will not be able to do any of the above-mentioned things. Or even if you do all of the above-mentioned things, you might still not feel well. It could be extremely overwhelming for you on some day to express your emotions and take care of them all by yourself. On those days, what you can do is simply talk to someone you genuinely trust. Oversharing your feelings and thoughts with random people is something we do not encourage but sharing your feelings with people you love, is really going to help out. On some days, the comfort of people you love is everything that you need. Maybe a hug from them can fix everything.

9. Try to remove toxicity from your life, in every way possible

We might not realise but we might be stressed out because of some toxic people, toxic situations, toxic thoughts, and toxic habits of ours. It is very important to recognise these and get rid of them. You might come across situations that are tough for you to face and you need to learn to say No to such situations. There might be people in your lives who are negative and you need to cut off ties with them for your personal benefit. You might be a toxic person to yourself for a lot of things, you need to understand that and work on it as well. For all of these, the first step is the recognition of the issue, working on that issue, and fixing it for your own benefit.

Conclusion

See, we told you we are going to suggest some lifestyle habits that will help you take care of your mental health better. In this competitive and fast-paced world, it is very common to feel the pressure of being left out, feel strong FOMO, feel stressed out, constantly be in the circle of anxiousness, and feel insecure. To tackle all of these, you can try out the things mentioned above and release the regular pressure from your mind. Since we thrive in the same timeline, we can tell you that you are not alone, whatever you are feeling is real, and everything will fall into place. Take care!

World Mental Health Day – This year, the World Mental Health Day is celebrated on 10th October, 2023. This initiative is 3 decades old and it has been started in 1992. Each year, there is a new and fresh theme assigned to this day. This year the theme for World Mental Health Day is mental…