Life is full of ups and downs. In the midst of all that you have to face, you have to show up for work, take care of your health, make money, keep up with friends, be committed and responsible to your partner, and handle losses at work or projects, among other challenges.
How do you take care of your mental health in the midst of all this? There are tips in this article to guide you.
What is mental health?
Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act.
It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.
It is defined on mental health.gov as a concept that has to do with our emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
In other words, this concept affects how we think, feel, and act. It also influences how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.
It is hard to detect that something is wrong with your mental health, compared to your body. When you have a headache, you can quickly spot that and use medications, right? But with your mental health, it’s not easy to pinpoint if your mental health is in place or not.
How do you protect your mental health?
1. Declutter your mind
Imagine how it would be if your room was cluttered with clothes and shoes and books and other things. You would not be able to move around without stumbling.
That’s how it could be in your mind. If your mind is cluttered, it will be hard not to take steps without stumbling or getting overwhelmed. There’ll be a lack of flow in your thoughts and actions.
A wise man once said that your energy goes where your attention goes. Your energy could drain quickly because your attention goes to many things at the same time.
To declutter your mind means separating the irrelevant things from the relevant ones while discarding the irrelevant ones.
You will know you need to declutter when you find yourself being unproductive, excessively thinking about issues without making progress. You also find yourself postponing tasks till you don’t do them eventually.
Also, you create to-do lists full of irrelevant and unrealistic goals. You find yourself holding on to hurtful happenings from the past.
You also give yourself to thinking about pleasing people other than yourself, and you end up being unhappy. You also give gifts and money to people when you are not up to the task, hoping that you’ll be in their good books.
How do you declutter?
You declutter by identifying those negative emotions and overwhelming thoughts that you wouldn’t ordinarily admit that they are there.
Identify your stressors and deal with them accordingly. Set SMART goals , set your priorities right. Don’t multitask if there are other ways to go about your work.
Journaling your thoughts can also help with decluttering your mind. Take a break from whatever it is that is stressing you.
2. Set boundaries
According to Pietje S. Kobus, a writer, setting boundaries could mean the following.
- Ending a phone call if the person on the other side of the call continues to shout at you.
- Rejecting an offer if you can’t make it.
- Expressing that you are uncomfortable about a conversation.
- Requesting time to think about an issue.
- Not responding to work emails at the weekend.
These are a few ways to set boundaries to keep your mental health in check.
3. Take a long break
When you see that you’re being overwhelmed and you appear to be losing yourself, just take a break. Guess what? The world will not end if you decide to take a break for a while. You should do this for you. It’s called self-care.
4. Learn to understand yourself
Protect your mental health by seeking to understand yourself instead of getting other people to be your major source of happiness.
Learn to befriend yourself and get comfortable with being friends with yourself. This is one way to protect your mental health.
Placing your happiness in the hands of others will mean signing yourself up for unhappiness.
Everyone has their own life to live, and in the lives of people around you and the world generally, you are not the main character. In other words, the world does not revolve around you alone.
Be friends with yourself and seek to be comfortable with yourself. Everyone has their lives to live and their problems to deal with. They cannot always be there for you.
5. Seek support from people you trust
This is another way to protect your mental health. Seek help from people if you are lost and unable to show up for certain things in your life. Why stress yourself when there are people to always reach out to help you ease off the burden?
6. Do things that can make you happy
Learn new recipes, listen to your favourite podcast, read a book, start a YouTube channel, write a book, play games, and start a club. It could be anything – really!
7. Stay off social media
This right here is a major way to protect your mental health. Everyone has something to say. Everyone has their two cents to give. Information does not leave you the same, so you might want to stay off social media where everyone has an opinion about something.
