Your mental health and well-being are just as important to protect and strengthen as your physical fitness levels. Learning how to practice mindfulness and be considerably more present at the moment can help you immeasurably.
So, whether you have lately feeling under the weather and are looking for ways and means of feeling better about yourself, both on the inside and the outside, then continue reading.
Here is how to be more present in the moment and nurture your mental health.
Practice Positivity
When you smile or even laugh, you can release positive, feel-good hormones, which give you a boost in hormones and make you feel better about yourself briefly. Finding ways to regularly boost this by finding ways to bring more joy into your life, while it might sound trivial, can be beneficial for your mental health.
There is even a brand of relatively new therapy called Laughter Therapy, which has been studied for its beneficial effects. Even if you are at home alone and cannot think of anything particularly funny, smiling and laughing to yourself can help your mental health, so try it out this evening!
Try to Reduce How Much You Worry
Worrying can range from remembering whether you set your Sky box to record your favorite television show when out at a local restaurant to serious concerns about anything from job security to the health of your heart.
Worrying is, on the whole, a positive emotion as it tells your brain to be wary of a certain situation or person and helps you to prepare yourself to try and eradicate the very thing you are worrying about in the first place.
Luckily, there are many ways to help try and reduce the amount of worrying you do in a typical week, including the following:
- Bite the bullet and make a doctor’s appointment if you feel as if something is not right with your physical health.
- Try and identify those things for which you are truly grateful for and even write them down.
- Distinguish the elements in your life you are in control of and, conversely, those in which you are not.
- Try a burst of physical exercise to distract the mind when caught in a cycle of worry.
Give to Others
It may well be the case that, between your professional commitments and your personal responsibilities, there is little to no time each day to dedicate to yourself, let alone give your time to others.
There is, however, something to be said of making a concerted effort to communicate more openly and honestly, both with your partner and children at home and your colleagues and bosses at work.
You could choose to help out at a community coffee morning at the weekend, offer to walk dogs for the local rescue center when you are walking your own, sponsor a wild animal in Africa, or even donate your old clothing to the local charity shop.
Take Action When Wronged
Many people adopt the tried and tested philosophy to ‘live and let live’, and as much as this can be useful advice in some situations, if you always acquiesce to other people, both at work and in your personal life, your self-esteem simply cannot be as high as it should be.
If you feel as if you have been the victim of a botched cosmetic procedure, for example, then instead of chalking it up to experience and considering it to merely be a ‘learning curve’, contact prestigious and established medical malpractice lawyers to see whether or not you have a case.
Avoid Too Much Multitasking
Finally, when it comes to enacting daily and often mundane chores and tasks, many naturally tend to multitask and combine washing the dishes, for example, with watching a movie on their tablet.
As much as this may feel as if you are entertaining yourself and therefore saving your brain from boredom, you will find that if you designate a smaller window of time to complete the washing-up, your mind will naturally wander, but only to topics in the immediate ‘now’.
Additionally, striving to complete one task at a time will speed things up and mean each task is finished to a higher level of perfection.
