I’ve never been one to simplify mental and emotional health down to “hacks”. It’s a complex world, with so many nuances that it can be very difficult to navigate. Please do not take this piece and consider it a comprehensive list of how to be healthy, or expect these things to cure a mental illness—even if you do them all!
And do not forget the role that privilege plays in our lives. Different people have different access to life-saving resources. It’s not okay to look at someone who is struggling and judge them for not being able to dig themselves out of that hole, just because you think that you could do it if you were them.
That being said, there are a couple of things that many of us could implement if we were disciplined, that would end up having a very positive effect on us. These are the habits that I’ve found can really make a difference in my mental and emotional state.
1. Get some sleep
It’s an ongoing debate, is sleep really that important? I’m going with yes. Sleep is the body’s way of repairing itself. While you dream, your mind processes your memories and analyzes details of your life putting together new ideas and conclusions through abstract and direct thought.
Did you know that people who consistently get a good nights’ sleep have better brain function, more even-keeled emotional responses to life stressors, and even lower risk for things like heart disease and Alzheimer’s? In fact, studies even suggest that getting in a midday nap on the regular might be a good, healthy move that helps you live longer.
So how can you go about making sure you catch enough z’s? Well, firstly, try to establish some pre-bedtime habits that are relaxing for you like reading or self-care. Also try to avoid eating or screen time just before going to sleep, and reserve your bed for actual sleeping instead of just chill time, so that when you get there your body knows what you’re trying to do.
Finally, always prioritize your sleep schedule. Make it important to not only get enough sleep, but to get to bed at a reasonable and consistent time each night. This helps your body set into its natural rhythm that will get you performing better during the day and falling asleep more easily at night.
2. Double your vegetable intake
Okay, so I actually don’t know how many vegetables you’re eating. Do you? If the answer is no, then you likely need a lot more than you’re getting in order to be healthy.
Vegetables, cooked or raw, are one of the healthiest things you can eat. They have lots of micronutrients and relatively few calories. They are made up of fiber which most people in western countries are not getting enough of, and believe it or not they can really elevate the taste of your meals when cooked right and paired in certain combinations.
I think a lot of us started off disliking vegetables as kids for a whole host of reasons. (Lets be fair, they’re not as yummy as cupcakes.) But now that we’re adults, it’s time to take personal responsibility over our own health. Vegetables are very good for us.
Getting started with eating and cooking vegetables can be very overwhelming. You may not know which ones you’ll like or what to put them with or how to make them. When starting off, I recommend a balanced approach of reaching for old faithful and being brave.
Chances are, you’ve tried a few vegetable that aren’t horrible, like maybe you like carrot sticks or pea soup. Start with the things you know and like, and try putting them into your diet more often. Then, as you get more comfortable, try testing out one new vegetable at a time, and find recipes to prepare it a couple of different ways.
This approach will get you learning about how to prepare vegetables, what to eat them with, and most importantly, your personal tastes. I’ve heard it said by many health professionals, the best vegetables for you are the ones that you’ll actually eat, and luckily, many vegetables are really tasty when made right! Just have fun with it. Try making your plates really colorful and exciting and experiment with dishes from other cultures you may not have heard of before. This can get you excited about achieving this goal, and will bring you better health.
3. Stay hydrated
One of the simplest things we can do for our health is to keep drinking enough water. Our hydration levels can influence our appetite, skin health, brain and body performance, and pretty much every aspect of our physical lives. And yet, many of us are walking around chronically dehydrated!
There are a lot of things that can dehydrate you. Working out, having a physical job, hot weather, drinking too much alcohol or even certain strategies of weight loss can dwindle our body’s water supply lower than is healthy, and in top of that, if you’re not frequently re-hydrating, you’re going to be de-hydrating. Like how you will always need more food if you go long enough without, water isn’t something you can set and forget.
Different people have different needs when it comes to how much water to drink. In general, if you’re feeling thirsty, you already need to be drinking more water. Sickness and humid weather will mean an increase in your hydration needs as well as exercise, and in my opinion a glass of water in the morning is a lovely way to wake up your body and mind.
4. Keep your home neat
I’ve spoken on this blog before about my journey from being a slob to a relatively neat person. This journey was about one part cleanliness and two parts minimalism. That being said, I do not consider myself a minimalist.
It’s important to keep your home nice and neat and relatively organized. You want to have the things that bring you joy and happy memories out on display for you to see multiple times a day. And in being organized you’ll find that you cut down on a lot of grief and anxiety you get from not being able to find what you need.
Your home is your space and it greatly influences your state of mind. The state of cleanliness or disarray that you keep it in has a major potential for influencing your day, week, month, year, and altogether, your life. Living in filth can easily bring you to the depths of despair. It robs you of literally seeing the beauty around you, and also subconsciously can give you the idea that you are not worthy of very basic things in life like joy and comfort and the feeling of belonging in your own space.
Living in a clean home is not a panacea, but it gives you a little boost in terms of mood and confidence that compounds over time. You may find yourself entertaining more, or even using your space for things you never would have considered before due to new ideas and more open space to work with. Being a neat person isn’t easy. It takes dedication and effort, but it is immensely freeing.
5. Meditate
Mental mastery. Stress-busting. New ideas. Meditation is a seriously undersold habit, because on the surface, it really just seems like you’re sitting and doing nothing. Incredibly lazy, right?
Wrong. Meditation is an amazing tool, when put into practice consistently and taken seriously. We can learn so much about ourselves through silence and gentle introspection. So why don’t we?
Well, as a culture, it’s not normal. We try to push out any moments of silence that we possibly can. It’s uncomfortable, starting off trying to embrace silence. We have a tendency to mentally interject instead of just letting things be as they are, even for a single moment.
Meditation helps you learn mental fortitude. The truth will stay the truth regardless of your opinions and thoughts about it, and sometimes it is healthy and important to embrace the solid, silent nature of existence. When you learn to do this instead of trying to project your thoughts and opinions into the silence, you will find yourself a changed person. (You can learn how to start a meditation practice by clicking here.)
6. Put effort into your appearance
Just as you want to keep your house and your mind neat and tidy, so too goes for your appearance if you want to cultivate a lifestyle of self care, personal pride and accountability. I’m not talking about being shallow here, people.
The truth is, we all feel better after a good shower and a shave. It’s satisfying and confidence-building to know that you look your best and are putting the right foot forward.
I’ve heard it said by some that you should dress every day as if you’re going to be meeting the love of your life for the first time, and to be honest, I’ve always thought that was a little weird. I mean, I would hope that the love of your life wouldn’t care what you look like. That being said, we all know that other people do judge us on looks to some extent, and it never hurts to give a good first impression.
But most of all, I think it comes down to ourselves and our brains. We know when we are taking the easy way out, and it’s hard to be proud of that. Now, this includes what we do with our hygiene and grooming habits. When we know we’ve put the extra effort in and we look good, we feel good about ourselves and that is the side of us that we want to show to the world, both physically and emotionally.
So invest in that really good smelling body wash and put on some makeup or nice clothes if you want. And at the very least, try to keep yourself clean and take care of your body. You will feel better about your looks and your character too, and this will be reflected to other people who meet you for the first time or even the five-hundredth time.
7. Read a book
We’ve come to a time where it is really normal to spend our days in front of a screen. And people in their regular daily life really don’t read that much, unless they are a student or an academic type. I’m not trying to say that social media and TV are going to rot your brain. They definitely have their benefits. But we’ve lost something, and that’s reading.
Reading for information, reading for pleasure, reading to pass time, most people just aren’t reading like they used to. In a world where there’s so many options for how you choose to spend your time, money and entertainment on, what makes reading so special?
And the habit of reading is certainly understated, I’ll give you that. It’s not flashy and it’s not what the cool kids do. But it does have some benefits.
Forming the habit of reading fortifies the mind in a way that watching your entertainment doesn’t. You are a lot more mentally involved, you may be learning new words and you are definitely asked to keep your attention fixed. Compare that with social media’s short little funny clips that don’t feed the mind and actually shorten our attention spans, and you can see why reading might be superior in some ways. And not to mention the fact that screens before going to bed make it hard to fall asleep, physiologically. Books, luckily, don’t have that effect on us.
You can also read with the explicit purpose of learning, which, when done as a hobby can turn your brain into a sort of national treasure of facts and theories. You can learn how to solve problems you wouldn’t have otherwise known that anyone else has. Reading can be both a tool to deal with your life, and when you need one, an escape from it. Let’s just be sure we’re reading responsibly, folks. (Wink)
8. Stretch
Sometimes when times get tough, it’s easy to get all stuck in your own head. This is a shame because not only do we miss out on a lot that goes on around us this way, it isn’t healthy and doesn’t help us solve our problems.
What you need is a state-changer. Now what do I mean by that? Well, when we start to get stressed, our body has the tendency to store it up in various areas. We may start hunching over or get tension in our backs, our maybe you get a headache or a stomachache. At any rate, the mind-body connection is strong. Sometimes it works to backtrack on the issue and resolve it in reverse order.
This is why stretching is great. When you find yourself getting stressed out, go stretch out your whole body. It breaks your train of thought first of all, which is necessary when you’re spinning out of control. It also changed how your body is expressing itself physically which produces some stress-busting chemicals in your mind.
It’s not a cure-all, or even a solution for anything, but getting up and giving your body a stretch can be a lovely way to ease yourself into a better mindset when you’re struggling.
9. Commit to an exercise regime
There are some real benefits to being fit, that’s true. You look better, your physical abilities are increased, and you burn more calories just by existing. So I guess all that’s a goal to work towards.
But I’m not talking about some nebulous term that involves an end goal. Exercise can be a great form of self-care. When you exercise regularly, you get all sorts of benefits from a boost in mood, to better sleep, more energy and more confidence.
You don’t have to push yourself hard. You don’t have to try and get ripped or anything like that. Engaging in regular, low to moderate intensity physical activity is great for both your physical and mental health. If you haven’t started to get a little movement in your days, try it out in a way that makes you feel comfortable, and see the results for yourself!
10. Make time to practice your religion
Everyone has their own beliefs, and that is beautiful. Some people aren’t spiritual or religious, and for those people I think it’s fair to just breeze past this point. However, for those who do have spiritual or religious inclinations, it is very important to keep up with them and make a point to feed your soul periodically throughout your daily life.
There are little things you can do like singing, praying, chanting, or reading a religious text for just a little bit each day that can help keep you feeling connected to something greater than yourself. Make these things a priority for you to revisit as often as you find necessary.
When you make your own beliefs an important part of your life, it leads you to have a deeper spiritual life, and a more refreshing and fulfilling daily life as well. You don’t have to convince others of your beliefs to practice them and feel connected on a deeper level, and when that connection is turned on, you’re on fire!
11. Plan ahead
Maybe this is mostly me, but as an anxious person I have found that planning avoiding procrastination is some real-deal stress fighting stuff. Any serial procrastinator will tell you that the adrenaline rush towards the end of a project is something to be reckoned with, yet some people think they “work best under pressure”. This may be true for you, you may find that it takes you less time to complete the same task when you’ve got a lot on the line to finish it up RIGHT NOW. But have you ever given yourself the chance to work…not under pressure?
Hear me out, I know that saving the boring stuff for last seems like the easy way out. But for most of us, I don’t think it’s worth the stress. When you attack a problem head on instead of squirming and avoiding it, there is a lot better feeling both about the situation but also about yourself too. There’s no, “oh my god it’s not done yet” or “why do I always do this to myself?!” You feel…on top of things, comfortable, proud, capable. It fosters respect and self-kindness.
And you know, if you really love deadlines so much, you can always give yourself periodical deadlines for smaller bits of whatever project you’re working on. Deciding on micro-deadlines for yourself can give you both the structure and the “pressure” that you’re looking for, without having to do a last minute push or rushed self-loathing session.
12. Prioritize your inspiration
I saved this one for last because there isn’t a real standard way to practice this from one person to the next. That’s because everyone has really different dreams. But the thing is, too many of us just go through life “one day at a time”, almost on constant autopilot, just trying to push through. This can be a really useful strategy when you’re having extenuating circumstances that can’t be avoided, helped or mitigated. You wake up, cope the best you can, go to sleep and do it all again the next day, waiting for this to be over.
The issue is that not all of life should be this way, and many of us use this approach chronically. And yet, time stops for no one. If you live your life just trying to get through, it’s likely that that’s all you’ll do—get through it. I’m here to tell you that for you, that may not be enough. Don’t you want to get to the end of your days thinking, “well, that’s it. I’ve lived a full life. I did everything I wanted to do. Maybe I made some mistakes or had some failures but I’m not wondering ‘what if?’” I know that’s what I want.
The key to achieving this is to stay inspired. How you do that is up to you, but I do have a rough outline to guide you. You want to get a clear vision of what you want out of your life or maybe even just this next week. What would really excite you and feed your soul? Focus on anything like that. Write them down, big and small. Remind yourself of them often and make real plans to do them.
When you have a larger, longer term dream, make time to fantasize about it often, commit to breaking it down into smaller steps and actually take action. Think about your vision all the time, both in the details and the broader strokes. Remember that you are what makes your dream real, not its’ “success” or reality status. As long as you are pouring your life into something, your life will be worth something to you.
So let yourself dream big, give yourself pep talks in the morning. Believe in yourself and your extreme individuality. Know that you are truly special, and try to embody the best version of yourself in order to stay happy, healthy and inspired. Take life on, full force, for real. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.
I hope you do decide to try some of these things in your life, because each one of them has helped me so much. If you’ve started any habit in your life that has helped you a lot, let us all know in the comments so we can all share in your victory and improve together!
Lots of good information here! 🙂