10 Easy Tips for Boosting Mental Health Before Winter Arrives
Mental health is important. You know that. But for most of the country, winter is coming. For all of us, the holidays are coming. And if you’re like millions of people, that means a strain on your mental health. So now is the time to prepare and make boosting your mental health a priority. But making your mental health a priority takes a little bit of intentional practice and some key habits that are really easy to establish. Let’s start with these ten.
1. Be Social
We are social creatures. We are meant to be around other people. Our mental (and physical) health will suffer when we are not. Thirty years ago, I wouldn’t have written that sentence. There was no need. If you needed to speak with someone, you had limited options. You could write a letter, pick up a phone and call them, or go to them physically.
What was once a no-brainer for everyone on the planet has now dropped to the bottom of the list. We can send an instant message, comment on a social post, or send a text. All of which create no actual human connection. The world of the internet was intended to bring us together. Instead, it has isolated us more. So you need to be super intentional about making and maintaining real human social connections.
2. Be Active
You work all day or go to school and study all day. You’re drained—physically and mentally. By the time you get home, all you can imagine doing is sitting on the couch with a bag of chili cheese Cheetos and relaxing. You’ve earned it.
Yes, you did. But that might not be the best possible way to reward yourself. At least not all the time. An active body helps build and maintain an active mind. Walking, biking, yoga, weightlifting, playing a sport, rock climbing, etc.—you name it, if it’s active, it’s good for your mind.
Daily activity can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance cognitive function, improve memory, and give your brain an overall boost. Bodily movement and our minds are completely interconnected. Don’t have time, you say? Too busy? Too tired at the end of your day? Instead of meeting around a table or in an office, take a walk. Steve Jobs did it. So you have that going for you. Need a study break? Go for a run, toss the football around, do some jumping jacks, for goodness sake. No need to build an entire workout routine (unless you’re into that sort of thing), just be active.
Click Here to Learn More Exersise Benefits
3. Build Trusting Relationships
At RemedyLIVE, we talk a lot about meaningful conversations and the need to share our secret struggles. We say it because we deeply believe in the power of conversation. We know that when you open up to a trusted person—whether a professional therapist or just a close friend—you begin to create a way for that weight to be lifted.
Talking about your feelings, your struggles, and your worries do a couple of key things for your mind. First, it reminds you that you're not alone. While you might believe that you are the only one in the world who feels this way and that no one understands you. You’re wrong. All of us have some kind of anxiety at one time. Most people feel depressed at some point in their life. And everyone has something they are struggling with, and far too many are too scared, proud, or embarrassed to talk about it.
Second, talking about what we are dealing with helps to make the emotion or struggle real. Facing reality is a critical first step toward the healing we need. It forces you to deal with the emotion, the problem, the fear, and the struggle. Burying it only makes it worse.
Click Here to Learn More About Sharing Secret Struggles
4. Pay Attention to What’s Around You
Ok, this one is a little weird, but stay with me. Given the pace most of us operate on a daily basis, it is easy to ignore the world around us. It’s easy to ignore the fall colors, a cool breeze, the warm sun, a storm rolling in, or the first snowfall. Allowing our minds to take a minute and enjoy the world around us has incredible mental health benefits.
No tips or tricks here. Just pay attention. Breathe. Don’t allow the busy pace of life to rob you of a deep appreciation of the simple yet beautiful things in life.
Click Here to Learn About the Negative Impacts of Busyness
5. Practice Meditation and Mindfulness
I used to believe that good mental health meant never being angry and always in perfect control of my feelings. Yeah, that’s not a thing. Feelings are normal and natural. All of them. And that includes anger, fear, anxiety, jubilation, and joy. It’s not about suppressing emotions but about properly processing them.
Click Here to Learn About Embracing Your Emotions
My wife has practiced this with our kids over the last several months. She is using something called; think, feel, choose. It’s basically a form of mindfulness, and it goes like this:
Think: first, take about 10 seconds and think about what you are feeling. This time allows you to notice your surroundings and your physical state. It buys you time, so you don’t just react—or worse, overreact—to the situation you find yourself in.
Feel: When our kids are angry, we don’t tell them they can’t be angry. We want them to understand why and respond correctly. So accept what you’re feeling and try to understand why. What’s the root cause?
Choose: We consciously choose to react to the situation with love and grace. We can do this because we give our minds time to catch up and process.
This simple exercise is a quick meditative process that helps you retrain your brain to successfully process the litany of emotions we experience daily.
Click Here to Learn More About Categorizing emotions
6. Carve Out Time For Rest
We all know that we live in a culture that places a high value on performance and endurance. Successfully, people hustle, work relentlessly, never rest, and ultimately win. Maybe? But at what cost? Family? Health? Purpose and fulfillment? The truth is our culture is wrong.
There is nothing wrong with a hard day’s work. But there is equal importance on adequate rest. We were never made to run at the pace we think produces success. It’s simply not possible. So take the time to rest. In fact, research shows that those who rest end up being more productive and achieve a healthier balance in body and mind.
Click Here to Learn How to Make Time For Rest
7. Eat The Right Foods
I remember, as a kid, being told that if I ate too much sugar, my teeth would rot right out of my mouth. I am pretty sure that was slightly exaggerated—like making a face so long it will stay that way. Mom and grandma might have been off a bit about sugar, but not entirely. There is a negative effect. Maybe not tooth rot. But our minds.
You might realize it, but there is sugar in almost everything we eat, and it’s affecting how we think, how we act, and even how we feel. And it’s addictive. Too much sugar can impair your memory, contribute to increased levels of depression and anxiety, and increase the risk of age-related cognitive decline.
It’s simple. What we eat significantly affects how we think. So pay attention.
Click Here to Learn More About Healthy Sugar Intake
8. Get The Right Kind of Sleep
I live in a small house with a large family. Which means that most of the time, our house is pretty chaotic. But as an introvert, I love the quiet. The problem is that the only time I can find quiet is very late at night or early in the morning. So to get that time, I end up sacrificing sleep to have that coveted peace and quiet. Some time away from the chaos. There’s only one problem. The real peace and quiet my brain needs comes from sleep.
Maybe you’re like me. In college, I sincerely believed in the delusion that I could survive with minimal sleep. All-nighters were a badge of honor, sleep deprivation was something to be bragged about and celebrated, and being tired was validation of a job well done. Not to mention it was also an excuse for some of the dumb things we did.
I often wonder how much better I would have done in school if I had focused on getting enough sleep. When we sleep, our minds go into cleaning mode. Clearing away the junk, putting things away, even some deep cleaning—everything you need to be ready for the next day. Imagine going day after day with dirty clothes and no shower. Imagine driving a car without proper maintenance or taking a test without studying. It’s not sustainable because you haven’t what is necessary to prepare yourself for the long term. The same is true for what sleep does for your brain.
Click Here to Learn More About Sleep
9. Don’t Just Pursue Happiness. Find Purpose.
I wrote about this in a previous blog. You can read that here. So I will only touch on it here briefly. Somewhere many of us were taught that happiness in life was the ultimate goal and prize to be had. Happiness was the highest level of achievement. That’s wrong.
Purpose and fulfillment are.
Chasing after happiness is a race you will not only never win, but you’ll never even reach the end. The harder you run, the further away the finish line is. There is always more, something else, something bigger and better. Happiness comes and goes. Purpose sticks around.
10. Don’t Fear the Professionals
The world we are trying to navigate, be successful in, and find relationships and value in is complicated. Don’t be embarrassed, too proud, or afraid to ask a professional for help. Think of it like hiring a personal trainer—for your mind.
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