A person who is active and takes care of herself or himself, often feels better. However, life should not be all about completing things: it should also be enjoyed!
How to promote your mental health:
- Keep in touch with others in real life, not just on social media.
- Do things that you enjoy!
- Challenge yourself and learn new skills!
- Get familiar with your strengths!
- Do good. Listen and help others!
Take care of the basic habits: exercise, eat well and sleep adequately!
Know yourself better
Good self-esteem helps you to see yourself and your future better. As you have a good self-esteem, you feel more often valuable and important, and you’re able to appreciate other people as well.
People that are close to you have a great impact on your self-esteem. An accepting, supportive, and safe community is the best ground for a good self-esteem. Even failure doesn’t feel so bad when you know that the people around you are supportive and helpful. These things strengthen self-confidence and provide protection against future challenges. It is quite normal for the self-esteem to vary in different situations and stages of life.
Look for the positive traits in yourself, and consider where you are skilled or good at. Awareness of one’s own values is also a part of self-esteem. What is important to you in life?
Emotions and emotional skills
Emotional skills indicate recognizing, accepting, naming, expressing, and regulating emotions.
You can, and you should strengthen your emotional skills because good emotional skills help to create and maintain relationships, resolve conflicts and face challenges in life. Emotional skills are also protective against addictions, stress and anxiety.
Recognizing and naming the emotion helps to understand the meaning of the emotion, and to be aware of what should be done with the emotion. Grief signals renunciation, anxiety conflict, and happiness can indicate affection, joy of life, or gratitude.
It is not worth running away from emotions, but facing them and living through them.
Manage your emotions
All emotions are meant to be felt, even the most difficult ones. Feeling an emotion is different than the action based on a feeling. One should learn to live even with the most difficult feelings. Suppressing emotions endangers both physical and mental health. At best, strong emotions give us a tremendous amount of energy: for example, anger can give you the courage to overcome even the most difficult challenges!
Strong negative emotions can lead to rash words and actions. You can’t really control your own emotions, but you can control your own behavior.
Try to calm your emotional outbursts with these methods:
- Breathe deep.
- Count to ten.
- Step aside for a moment.
- Think of calming things consciously.
Exercise and mental well-being
By exercising you can get positive mental health effects. It lowers blood pressure, helps to prevent anxiety, stress and body tension, and it often results in a relaxed and good feeling. Exercise also increases self-confidence and satisfaction with one’s body. In addition, exercising in a group teaches a wide range of social skills.
Feel-good hormones are already secreted during a light exercise that lasts 45 minutes.
Stress management
Life is easily filled with things you want to do and experience, and at the same time you should fulfill your own and sometimes others’ expectations in studies or in work life. Stress due to exams, for example, is okay, but constant mental overload is detrimental to the health of the mind and the body. Symptoms of overload are individual. Heart rate may increase, muscles may become tense, sweating may increase, and attention and memory may be impaired. Others have trouble sleeping.
Short-term stress gives you a kick and makes you try your best but long-term stress is harmful and can predispose you to depression. Relaxation and calming exercises help to tolerate stress, reduce anxiety, and relieve pain.
Relaxation
Constant rush and the flood of information may easily burden the mind. Calming one’s mind is a skill that can be strengthened, and for which there are countless exercises.
Are you constantly in a hurry? Does your body feel tense all the time? By relaxing, one can slow down the breathing rate and heart rate as well as decrease the level of stress hormones, and pleasure hormones flow in to replace them. With regular relaxation, your immune system improves and you can avoid flus.
Calming also gives opportunity for the recognition of the messages of one’s own mind and body. When you calm down, you realize what you really want and need. Try the exercises found online to calm your mind and feel better.