In this article, we discuss 10 simple-to-implement ways for improving your mental health and well-being rapidly and properly.

In today’s fast paced world, stress and worry have become a common source of many other ailments. It has become of utmost importance that all of us learn to inculcate habits that can help us lead peaceful and joyous lives filled with contentment and satisfaction.

There are a number of simple daily habits that we can develop in order to manage our stress effectively thereby improving our mental health and emotional wellbeing. But before we do that, let’s briefly talk about some of the most common causes of stress and anxiety that we all come across on a frequent basis.

Undoubtedly, workplace discontent is by far the worst trigger of stress when it comes to aspiring professionals who form a major portion of the community falling prey to this mental predator. Some of us aren’t happy with our existing jobs, some of us may be working in extremely hazardous environments, some of us may be trying (and failing hopelessly) to tackle everyday office politics. The list goes on and on.

Another prevalent cause is disharmony at home. Arguments and quarrels are part and parcel of any intimate relationship. Or so we have been told. Disagreement and conflict are bound to occur between two people living together. We will never be able to do away with differing ideas and perspectives over an issue no matter what. How we handle our conflicts makes all the difference in the world.

Great! Now that we’ve established the most common causes of stress, let us now begin with the topic at hand: top 10 techniques that we can apply today to improve our mental health remarkably.

Take care of your physical body

This includes eating well, consuming plenty of water, exercising regularly, avoiding smoking and excessive drinking, and getting sufficient rest. Maintaining good physical health will inevitably lead you to improving and sustaining good mental health in the longer run. All of these points are equally important and need to be explained in detail.

Eating well

We are all accustomed to ingesting junk beyond the toleration limit of our bodies. This leads to obesity and related diseases. It is safe to say that we are in fact addicted to the wrong category of edibles. If you really want to lift up a hefty burden off your body, stop feeding anything and everything that’s unhelpful to maintaining good physical health. We are not saying that you should completely eliminate delicious delights from your menu. Occasional ice-creams and chocolates are just as essential for elevating a bad mood. But moderation is key.

Fill your diet with food items that are light and easy to process. Avoid eating calorie dense meals like pizzas, donuts, sweets, etc. Also, do not immediately stop eating junk food altogether. Remember, we are here to make a long lasting change. Take baby steps at first and gradually work your way towards incorporating the perfect diet plan full of nutrition and energy. Do whatever feels comfortable and give some time to your body to get acquainted with the new you.

One good practice would be to ensure that no compromise is made with the taste and flavor of your meals. Eating bland food for days is a sure shot way to failure. Do not hesitate to put in the required herbs, spices, and seasonings so as to prepare the best possible dish for yourself. As persistent food enthusiasts, we look forward to eating luscious meals and this is something we should not take away from ourselves if we wish to get into the habit of eating healthy and nutrition rich food.

Consuming plenty of water

We can survive without food for days, but without water, not so much. On an average, we all should drink 2-3 liters of water everyday. That’s 8 glasses in 16 hours or 1 glass in every 2 hours to be precise. That’s it! Surely we can manage that. Some of the overlooked benefits of staying hydrated are: it increases brain function, cleanses the body, facilitates good bowel movement, promotes weight-loss, etc.

In short, keeping a healthy lifestyle directly aids in improving your mental health, and consuming enough water directly aids in keeping a healthy lifestyle. All you’ve got to do is carry a bottle wherever you go, and always place it in visible range. As long as you’ll be able to see it, your natural instinct as a creature of habit will force you to feed on it and will eventually help you achieve your daily hydration limit in no time.

Exercising regularly

Exercising regularly (not necessarily daily) can work wonders for your physical and consequently your mental health. You don’t have to spend hours working out in the gym in order to maintain good physical health. Brisk walking every other day in the evening for 20-30 mins is more than enough.

You can take up other forms of physical activities like yoga, swimming, cycling, dancing, sports (ex. badminton, cricket or football), etc. If you find yourself at a loss of time, you can try rope skipping for 10-15 mins and that should do the trick. Consistent physical movement is our main goal here. Just set out 30 mins for 4 out of 7 days in a week and you’ll achieve more than you think you can. Go for something that interests you so that exercising does not seem like a tedious task.

If you like watching movies and series, combine that activity with your work-out sessions. All you need is a screen and a home-cycling equipment. If you like listening to music, audiobooks or podcasts, prepare a nicely curated playlist filled with songs or audio files that you like the most, and take it with you the next time you go out for that brisk walk we talked about.

Avoiding smoking and excessive drinking

This does not need much explanation for we are all aware of the harmful effects of smoking and excessive drinking. And yet we continue to practice both so diligently. If you really wish to improve your mental health, you’re going to have to stop smoking completely and reduce the amount of alcohol intake. There’s no way around it.

Obviously, you don’t have to stop suddenly. If you currently have 4 cigarettes per day, bring that number down to 2, then 1 and then get rid of it completely. Set milestones for yourself so that you experience a sense of achievement every time you reduce the number by half. Take your time, but be true to yourself. If you deceive yourself by entering the procrastination mode, you’ll be harming no one but yourself.

The same goes for drinking. Gradually reduce your alcohol intake over a period 3 months. If you are in the habit of consuming alcohol on a daily basis, switch to drinking on alternate days instead. And if you find lowering your smoking and drinking frequency simultaneously somewhat challenging, then start by working on any one of them first, preferably smoking. This does not mean that you increase your liquor consumption as compensation. You must limit the same to your current levels if not less.

Also, it’ll be a good idea to steer clear of gatherings and meetings that are sure to put you in a situation wherein you’ll be tempted to relapse till you know you can handle your urges. Talk to your friends who share your propensities and tell them not to force you to indulge in these practices even if that makes you seem like a spoilsport. You are the only person in-charge of improving your mental health because no one else will ever do it for you. You ought to help yourself, be true to yourself, and do right by yourself.

Getting sufficient rest

We all tend to overexert ourselves and it can actually prove to be quite dangerous if left unchecked. Depriving your body of the rest it requires can open doors for a plethora of diseases, both mental and physical. Sleep deprivation can significantly reduce your mental abilities, make you feel agitated and irritable, cause memory loss and sudden weight gain, increase blood pressure and risk of diabetes, reduce immunity and sex drive, etc.

Allow your body to sink into the comfort of your bunk so that it may continue to serve you for years to come. Set strict limits for yourself regarding your sleep cycle. Generally, we need 6-8 hours of deep slumber but this number can vary for different individuals. Test and ascertain what works best for you and then make sure you stick to your guidelines without fail.

Avoid engaging in activities that involve screen time 2 hours prior to your nap time because of the blue light that’s emitted from most of the devices that we use for entertainment as well as for work. For those who are unaware of the concept, blue light suppresses the release of the hormone melatonin which is responsible for controlling our sleep-wake cycles, also known as the ‘circadian rhythm’. This in turn disrupts our sleeping pattern and makes it difficult for us to fall into a deep slumber at night. Maintaining a good sleep cycle helps regulate our mood, stress response, metabolism, immune response, etc.

Meditation & Mindfulness

The benefits of meditating frequently are virtually unlimited. The kind of soothing and calming effect that meditating for a bare minimum of 10 minutes can have on our state of mind can not be attained by any other activity. Sitting quietly with our eyes closed and intuition open can enable us to gain a completely different and empowering perspective on any given problem that we might be struggling with. It can also help increase creativity, patience, self-awareness, and can allow us to become better managers of stress and anxiety. All in all, practicing meditation can almost miraculously improve our mental health and also supply us with the wisdom to deal with everyday challenges in a much more efficient manner.

Practicing meditation: Sit in a cross-legged position with your back straightened out as if you were trying to touch the roof of your room with the top of your head. You can sit on a chair as well if you aren’t used to sitting in the crossed-legged position. Place your hands on your thighs and let them rest with your palms facing upwards. Now, gently close your eyes while looking at 45° from the horizontal and bring your attention to the flow of your breath. Focus on how your breath flows in through your nostrils, feel your lungs expand slightly. Then focus on how your breath flows out through your nostrils, feel your lungs contract back to their original shape. Also pay attention to the movement of your abdomen. Observe how it inflates and deflates with each breath.

Mindfulness is another interesting concept to talk about. It refers to the practice of consciously being aware of your surroundings, your thoughts, feelings, emotions as well as your body. In simpler terms mindfulness is the art of being mindful about everything we see, taste, smell, hear, touch, think and feel at any given moment in time. It sounds overwhelming, but once you get a hang of it, it can very well become second nature.

Next time you indulge in any activity, even if it’s something as trivial as reading a book, pay attention to how the pages of that book feel, notice the colors that have been used for designing the cover, the font that has been used to narrate the story, etc. Give your brain the time to process things at its own pace.

The best condition to implement here would be to practice mindfulness while doing meditation. In this, all you need to do is be aware of the many thoughts that you witness on the screen of your imagination. You don’t have to restrict and discard any idea. Instead be welcoming of it. If you experience thoughts related to any of the negative emotions like anger, insecurity, jealousy, greed, etc., do not chastise yourself for feeling or thinking this way. The more you’ll suppress such thoughts, the more they’ll push back against your efforts, and the more difficult it will become for you to control them. Instead, make peace with them. Understand them. And then try to reason with them. The sooner you’ll realize that these so-called negative emotions play an extremely crucial role in ensuring our wellbeing, the easier it will become for you to channel them.

You can also practice mindfulness with meditation for deducing answers to a lingering problem, or for generating ideas for an upcoming creation. Sit quietly in the meditative pose as described above, and let your thoughts fly to wherever they wish to go in relation to your problem or creation. As you’ll learn to reach deeper states of consciousness with time and regular practice, you’ll be able to find a much better outlook towards anything and everything that may hold your attention.

Study Psychology

The power that we gain from knowledge is truly remarkable. Simply reading about a subject can give us such great insight on the matter, so much so that it can bring about a massive paradigm shift in our perspective. Which is why we recommend studying the basics of psychology at least. There are so many things that we don’t know about ourselves, like the effect that childhood trauma can have on our current sense of judgement and acquired instincts.

Studying psychology not only helps us understand ourselves, but others as well. Why do people behave the way they do? Why won’t my spouse understand my side of the story? Why is my boss always so grumpy and irritable? These are questions that we want answers to but don’t really know where to get them from. Well. This is where psychology comes in. Read about attachment styles, child psychology, social psychology, etc. This will empower you to take an objective stance in any given situation and will allow you to manage conflicts in a much more prudent manner.

Studying psychology will make you a better communicator and will help develop good critical thinking skills. It will also enable you to get rid of any unhelpful thinking patterns that you might have picked up over the years. And when you will have done enough research and gained sufficient proficiency in the subject, you’ll easily be able to see through many of the so-called ‘difficult to explain’ behaviors of those around you as well as your own. In order to help you in your quest for improving your mental health, we’ll be adding a few links to popular books related to psychology under the ‘resources’ section.

Avoid self-criticism

Self-criticism is one of the worst symptoms of self-hatred that one can develop with time. People don’t understand that the words they tell themselves form perhaps the most effective and impactful set of suggestions that they’ll ever receive from anyone. Before we move on to explaining about the remedies for treating self-criticism, let us first cover the most prominent signs that you are in fact being overly judgmental and critical of yourself.

You end up blaming yourself for all your misfortunes and failures. You always tend to undermine your own capabilities and are never satisfied with your achievements. You have anxiety issues. You frequently compare yourself with others and find yourself to be the inferior one. You demotivate yourself even before you’ve started working on a particular task. The points are just a few to begin with. That nagging voice you keep hearing in your head that always makes you feel like you aren’t good enough, that’s the voice of self-criticism, and you need to get rid of it as soon as possible. Let us see how.

Keep your thoughts in check

Pay close attention to your thoughts and work towards coercively pulling out the unhelpful or the negative ones. The messages you send to yourself shape your subconscious mind and your subconscious mind in turn shapes your overall personality and outlook towards life. If you allow unhelpful thinking patterns to foster inside your head, it can have a profoundly damaging effect on your general state of mind.

Every time you find yourself having self-critical thoughts, imagine a large ‘STOP’ sign standing right in the middle of your land of thoughts. Feel the resistance it provides to negative thoughts and images. Listen to the increasing silence of that nagging voice we talked about before. And keep focusing on the ‘STOP’ sign for as long as you have to. Once you believe that the unhelpful train of thoughts has passed, you can get back to your task at hand. If you cannot find the strength to pull yourself up at the moment, the least you can do is to not push yourself down especially when things are already going south.

The Replacement Therapy

Once you’ve mastered reigning in your negative stream of thoughts, the next step is to replace it with a helpful and positive one. To do this, whenever you catch yourself having a self-critical thought, simply say to yourself “cancel, cancel” or “erase, erase” with the idea of erasing the negative thought you’ve just had. Next, replace that thought with a positive one. This last step is extremely important because simply deleting a pessimistic thought is not enough. You need to provide your mind with something to hold on to and look forward to so that it can stay optimistic and passionate in times of despair.

For ex. Let’s say you caught yourself with a thought exclaiming “you never do anything right”. Immediately imagine the ‘STOP’ sign as before and take control of your stream of thoughts. Next, verbally say to yourself “cancel, cancel” with the intent of completely eliminating the negative thought pattern. Then plant a new positive thought that affirms “you are doing your best to succeed, and sometimes things don’t work out as planned, but you will continue to put your best foot forward no matter what”. It’s as simple as that. This 3 step exercise when done consistently will unquestionably elevate your state your mind and will help prepare an easy access point for you to improve your mental health exponentially.

Exaggerated Cognitive Reasoning

Deep down, at some level, you do realize that your unhelpful thinking pattern is not true at all. Otherwise, you would not be working towards achieving your dreams anyway. The problem lies in the fact that you are now used to hearing a voice in your head that keeps putting you down. You’ve gotten comfortable with staying in that place of constant criticism and it almost feels like home, but it’s high time you started cognitively reasoning with it.

When you think of a limiting belief such as “you will never become successful”, ask yourself: what would happen if this were actually true? What would the world look like if you were somehow made incapable of achieving your dreams no matter how hard you tried? And what could possibly be so wrong with you that you could not succeed at becoming good enough? Are these thoughts even real or a figment of a twisted imagination? Am I simply telling stories to myself, or does this thought process hold any practical value? Cognitively reasoning with your critical voice will eventually shut it down because in the end, we’re all intelligent beings who respond well to logic and reason when provided in the right way.

Take a break

It’s important to give yourself some leisure time every once in a while. Rome wasn’t built overnight. It not only took years of perseverance, commitment and dedication, but also, patience and careful planning. Knowing when to go all in is just as important as gauging when to hold back and let your pieces fall in place all by themselves. And the most crucial part would be to create a sustainable ecosystem for yourself so that you can commit to something larger over an extended period of time. Bottom line is, it’s imperative to find your balance.

If you’re really looking forward to making a long term difference and achieving substantial success in whatever your end goal is, you’re going to have to learn to find your balance in life. We’ve all heard the saying “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, and it’s very much applicable to us even in adulthood. Working tirelessly can in fact reduce our efficiency greatly. We become incapable of finding the right solutions to our problem, or meeting the required deadlines, or devising the perfect roadmap for our company. The best approach in all these cases would be to take a break, distract our busy minds, and revisit the issue with a fresh perspective.

So if you think you’ve been working hard a long time without any significant breaks, you should probably consider planning a small vacation to a place that can make you feel rejuvenated. It could very well be a comfortable couch and a tv screen with popcorn, or it could be a lovely beach or a beautiful hill station. The point is to let your mind relax and recalibrate itself so that it can serve you better in order to fulfill your targets and objectives in the most efficient manner.

Know thyself

Many of us often end up setting unrealistic goals for ourselves. And when we fail to accomplish them, we become frustrated and demotivated. It’s paramount to be aware of our abilities as well as our limitations. Overestimating how much we can achieve in our existing capacity can chronically harm our mental health because when the actual reality hits us, we are almost never prepared to accept it. This leads to a distorted sense of failure and incompetence, and in severe cases, living with a constant sense of failure can further lead to depression and nervous breakdown even.

Learning to say “no” is yet another skill that we all need to equip ourselves with. If you find it difficult to handle 3 big projects simultaneously and are beginning to feel cornered, be expressive about it. Talk to your superiors and let them know that you require a proper team to deliver the outstanding results that they’ve been expecting and that this isn’t a one man job. If you cannot make it to that reunion because you have had your fair share of exhausting social gatherings this month and are in dire need of a break, tell the concerned personnel that you will have to take a rain check indeed.

You must respect your limitations as a human being. There are feats you can achieve, and feats you cannot achieve. There are commitments you can fulfill, and commitments you cannot fulfill. There’s no need to feel embarrassed for choosing your mental health and wellbeing over dispensable formalities. Now, in no way are we suggesting that you start shying away from challenges. If you genuinely believe that you can handle a particular task under the given circumstances, you should go ahead and give it your best shot. But be just with yourself. No one else is going to look after your mental health. You will have to take a stand for yourself as and when the need shall arise.

Getting to know about your strengths and weaknesses will not only help improve your mental health but will also help gain victory in your day-to-day challenges. Once you start creating plans while keeping your positives and negatives in mind, you will be able to achieve much better results no matter the nature of the problem you might be dealing with. Recklessness and over-ambition go hand in hand, and we should strive to maintain a healthy distance from them both. Stay true to yourself, and you will attain the peak of your mental health in no time.

Synergic Companionship

Mankind is a social animal and requires regular meaningful interaction with other human beings. We all require good emotional and mental support, be it from our families or our friends. The happiness and the feeling of nostalgia that is brought by meeting a familiar face after a long time is truly delightful. The heavy burden which is lifted off our shoulders by talking about our problems with someone who understands and cares for us can be unfathomably elevating. They may not be able to provide us with effective solutions, but simply knowing that someone is there for us in our times of need has a peculiarly strengthening effect on our state of mind.

Let us now discuss about the importance of fostering synergic companionships both at work as well as at home. It is no secret that group activities are the most engaging ones of all. We all love making new friends or at least one friend in all our major places of function, and rightfully so. There have been numerous studies and surveys in regard to this, and they all conclude the same thing: if you wish to keep life interesting, try making friends.

If you wish to make spending time at office a much more enjoyable experience, have a bare minimum of one friend with whom you can talk and be comfortable with. He or she need not be your best friend or a close friend even. Just someone you can share some of the things on your mind, or may be have coffee or lunch with during break hours. You don’t have to divulge any of the personal issues you’ve been having, or invite them home for dinner, or gossip about other people behind their backs. All you need is someone to spend time with when you aren’t working, and who knows, may be they could use a similar relationship too.

Nurturing synergy at home is probably a hundred times more crucial than nurturing the same at your workplace. After spending an entire day battling the outside world, we all look forward to enjoying the warmth and the comfort provided by our loved ones. However, more often than not, we find ourselves to be trapped in an endless argument over an ocean of non-essential issues, and the worst part is that we fail to understand how and when the entire situation escalated to such an exaggerated degree. Believe it or not, in the end it all comes down to effective communication and a little bit of empathy.

Start by making your loved ones aware of your side of the story. Let us take the most relevant example here, i.e. your spouse. A lot of times we remain under the influence of this idea that our better halves won’t understand what we go through. May be it’s because we feel they won’t be able to relate to us. Or maybe we derive this conclusion from our past experiences. The point here is to realize that we are all intelligent beings who respond positively to logic when conveyed in the right fashion. So try talking to them in a loving and caring manner. Resist reacting if they don’t respond in the way you expect them to respond. Resist reacting if they get mad and start arguing on some issue that they feel is important to them. They’ll get there sooner than later. But here’s the challenging part: you’re going to have to keep an open mind to their side of the story as well.

The goal is to inculcate a daily ritual of spending some quality time getting to know each other’s perspectives. It has to be a fair exchange of thoughts and emotions wherein both parties get an equal chance at understanding and being understood. Add to this frequent displays of love and gratitude, and you’ll have significantly improved the quality of your relationship in no time. Even when you feel that you don’t really need to say it, say it. When you feel that you don’t really need to apologize, apologize all the more. We tend to believe that apologizing makes us appear submissive, when the truth is completely the opposite. It makes us appear emotionally mature and in control. Because when we take the first step, we essentially become the ones in charge of driving the situation to wherever we may desire.

Let us now briefly state two more of the most effective tried and tested ways of creating harmony at home as well as your workplace.

Be appreciative. Get into the habit of acknowledging the efforts of those around you. An occasional phrase of praise can work wonders. And let’s admit, we all love being appreciated especially when it is done for the most menial of deeds. It sends the signal that the person appreciating us cares enough to notice the little details as well. Receiving gratitude for our service naturally pushes us to do better.

And don’t just appreciate for the sake of appreciating or with the intent of manipulating others. Actually mean what you say. When someone does something for you, seek how you can match their generosity. Developing the virtue of gratitude promotes the secretion of a neurotransmitter called serotonin, which has been proven to promote a sense of satisfaction and regulate our moods, and can single-handedly improve our mental health in an unimaginably short span of time.

Provide unsolicited help. Practice offering help without the other person having to ask for it. When you know a person is going through a rough patch and could use some support, strive to be that support. In fact, we suggest making this a mandatory practice at your home at least. We never forget the hand that gave us shelter on a rainy day. The idea is to do unto others as you would have others do unto you. If you want the other person to be there for you in your time of need, you will have to earn it by being there for them first. This is the way of life.

Once you get into the habit of providing unsolicited help for no personal gain whatsoever, life will become much more meaningful for you. Why? Because none of us actually live for ourselves. We all live for our parents, spouses, children, siblings, and friends. We work hard everyday so that we can take care of our loved ones. Sadly, it’s a fact that we all need to be reminded of again and again. Hence, it makes all the difference in the world when we pay attention to the things that apparently don’t matter, or when we do something for someone when he or she least expects it. It actually helps us get closer to fulfilling our desire of creating a better life for those we love, and in the process, improves our mental health and wellbeing.

Choose your suffering (Willingness)

We make our own bed. This saying is applicable to those who have a poor judgement of what is beneficial and what is detrimental for them, as well as to those who have a pretty good idea as to what they have to do in order to get out of the mess they’re almost perpetually stuck in, but lack the motivation to actually work on it. Our inactions are just as responsible for the difficult situations and the unfavorable conditions we face as our unhelpful and uninformed actions. When we refrain from taking the necessary steps for creating better lives for ourselves, lives filled with peace, calm and passion, we are in fact choosing to stay in that place of negativity.

What it essentially means is this: when you know a particular habit has been keeping you from achieving your greatest goals, do something to change it. Albert Einstein said “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. Mental health issues are here to stay, largely because of the prevailing unhealthy lifestyles, eating disorders, cut-throat competition, and many other factors. This is why cultivating habits that can help us improve our mental health has now become of utmost importance. We can either allow ourselves to get frustrated and stressed out and eventually learn to live with all of it, although unhappily, or we can learn to find a way around the completely inessential mental atrocities that we force our beautiful minds to face on a daily basis.

If you think an activity is going to result in a lot of unnecessary stress in the future, avoid it. Stay away from it unless required otherwise. Get acquainted with the habit of imposing restrictions and strict dos and don’ts on yourself. Also, when you do decide to accept a challenge that is bound to give you headaches, be prepared to endure it, learn from it, and finally overcome it, because then it becomes the suffering you choose and not the suffering you bear. This is what’s popularly known as the concept of ‘willingness’.

Willingness allows you to channel your stress and anxiety in a direction that’s constructive and not destructive. It is a skill that grants its practitioner dominance and control over his or her state of mind. In this, the practitioner recognizes the fact that stress and anxiety are nothing more than indicators that a particular situation feels uncomfortable and he or she needs to do something to get out of it. Once the practitioner gains clarity of thought, it enables him or her to look at the situation objectively and decide upon a plan of action accordingly. Instead of feeling like the victim, one begins to feel like the commander-in-chief for solving the problem at hand. Willingness is a simple yet powerful tool to master, and can be learned with little but consistent practice.

Find your purpose in life

Life is too short to be wasted away in doing things we don’t feel inspired to do. One of the major consequences of leading a life wrapped around chores we dislike is poor mental health. The sheer lack of ambition and initiative coupled with a constant sense of worthlessness imparts an enormous amount of burden on our already weakened shoulders. It sucks the life out of our souls, and we end up living in a never ending cycle of eat, sleep, suffer, repeat.

When you spend time working on things that hold your attention, first of all you get rid of the idea that it’s work indeed. Second, if you find a way to monetize your hobby, you find the universal key to unlocking eternal joy. You automatically begin carving out ways for becoming the master of your skill. You develop a completely new and rejuvenated outlook towards life filled with energy and awe. And most importantly, you find your purpose in life. Everything else loses significance because then you become enchanted and mesmerized by the ocean of possibilities that lies ahead of you.

Working towards finding your purpose in life is the shortest route to achieving a lifetime of optimal mental health and wellbeing. Yes, there are going to be struggles. You may have to work in areas that don’t interest you just to gain a head start with your financials. But the trick lies in never losing sight of the higher vision. When you have a well defined purpose in life, you don’t have to spend time finding ways for improving your mental health. It comes naturally as a consequence of living your dream. At the same time, we will also admit that this path isn’t free from challenges and risks. In fact, it could very well be that laboring towards pursuing a life of passion may leave you with an even greater number of scars (or trophies, depending upon how you wish to see it).

So look inside your heart. Try to identify what stirs you up. Practice. Practice. Practice. Explore the various ways in which you can monetize the same. You may have to work on multiple side hustles to bring in investments for your main venture. Or you could find investors who are willing to provide you with the required capital. Never lose sight of your highest vision. Work tirelessly, and endlessly to achieve your goals. Repeat.

Seek professional help

If none of the above points work for you, you can always find masters of the art who’ll be more than willing to help you. Many a time, we fail to recognize the actual cause behind our stress and anxiety. We tend to focus on the symptoms instead of the underlying problem and direct our efforts towards treating the symptoms instead of solving the problem. This is where professional psychologists come in. They see what we fail to see and tend to work with a target-specific approach.

Marriage counselling proves especially useful when two partners find it difficult to get on the same page. A third person’s point of view, followed by proper guidance can help reverse the accumulated damage to a great extent. Marriage counselling essentially focuses on the strengths of any given relationship, and helps uncover certain helpful truths for both partners. It also helps establish how the two partners can complement each other and develop a well synchronized relationship with a little understanding and openness. Sometimes a neutral mediator, well versed with the dynamics of the human mind, its nature, and its connections, is all that is required to eliminate the non-essential misunderstandings. As our relationships at home improve, so does our mental health and wellbeing.

Now a days, many corporations are also conducting on-site counselling and therapy sessions because they too realize the importance of a sound state of mind. They understand the destructive impact of prolonged stress and worry on our brain function and mental abilities and hence look forward to providing their employees with all the help that they can. If your company also features such a program, we recommend giving it a shot. After all, what have you got to lose? You’re already in a bad place. Perhaps, a different perspective might help you gain better insight as to how you should approach that problem you’ve been struggling with for the past few weeks.

Often our childhood trauma tends to cast a shadow on our current instincts and thought processes. Unravelling certain facts from stories about what exactly has been going on in that space between your ears can effectively reduce stress and improve your mental health because the truth, dear friend, can be extremely liberating. Understanding how our early childhood interactions tend to shape our present realities can help us make peace with a lot of issues. All of this can be easily achieved by seeking the guidance of a professional.

However, there is this prevailing dogma amongst adults, teenagers, and children alike that seeing a psychologist is somehow problematic, embarrassing, and completely out of the question. We never refrain from consulting a doctor of the body when we know our physical health has been deteriorating. Then why the strong discrimination against doctors of the mind? Where does this belief even stem from? On this note, we strongly urge you to ask for help when you need it, and not give in to such unreasonable societal taboos, because they are just that. You are the only person responsible for improving your mental health. No one else is going to help you unless you learn to help yourself.

Conclusion

There are many different steps that you can take in order to boost the wellbeing of your mind. But you’ve got to put in the required effort. You will have to take certain tough decisions, set strict guidelines for yourself, and leave that comfort zone if need be. The initiative will have to come from within because at the end, if you don’t wish to change, no one can make you. At the same time, you don’t have to implement all the aforementioned techniques right away. Move at your own pace. Do what feels right. And always prefer baby steps over big leaps. All the enlisted techniques work differently for different people. The idea is to keep pushing until you pull through.

Share this article if you think there’s someone in your circle of impact who can benefit from reading this. Also, do remember to check out the resources provided below. Tap on the enclosed link if you wish to purchase the related item.

Resources

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Study Psychology

Finis – The End