When stress affects every aspect of your life, strained mental health becomes inevitable.
The past few years after the pandemic have accentuated how important it is to look after your physical and mental health.
Our mental well-being is accountable for how we think, take action, and handle situations. It also impacts our physical health immensely. And your daily workload, life events, and other stressors put a great deal of burden on you.
So, keeping it unharmed with everyday wellness moves should be in your daily self-care rituals.
What Are Everyday Wellness Moves?
In your regular self-care routine, to look after yourself, you include measures like exercise, brushing and bathing for your hygiene, and even praying for your spiritual self.
Just like your physical, social, and emotional health, looking after your mental health every day is significant.
Everyday wellness moves are the efforts you take every day to prioritize your mental wellness. With these moves, well-being is rooted in your being thoroughly, which helps you thrive in every way.
Why Should People Prioritize Their Mental Health Every Day?
Mental health is a concept everyone is aware of, but the measures that are taken for it are few and far between.
When we are going through a life-altering event, our mental health is impacted every time, either positively or negatively. And oftentimes, our mental wellness is ignored till it becomes almost necessary to tend to it.
But why leave your health to the situation’s conclusion?
Like your physical health and hygiene, looking after your mental health should be your everyday priority, not just now and then concern.
As per the American Institute of Stress, 73 percent of people’s mental health is impacted by stress daily. 48 percent of people have difficulty sleeping, and 83 percent of employees have mental health issues due to stress at work.
With the graph of mental health issues and stress getting higher, measures to look after your health should be your everyday interest.
9 Everyday Wellness Moves for Thriving Mental Health
1. Have a Proactive Start to Your Day
photo by marissa grootes on unsplash
When every morning your alarm goes off, which thought engulfs your mind?
Maybe completing your to-do list, checking emails, or getting your kids ready for school. This is the reactive routine that everyone seems to follow.
Every day, you are in a rate race of completing all the tasks being thrown at you. A reactive morning routine is a lot more draining on your mental health.
Starting a morning routine with a proactive mindset allows you to be in control of your day. You decide which task to give priority, when to start, and most important, prioritize yourself.
When you approach your day with the right intention, your day seems to flow. It reduces mental strain and task burden, which helps reframe your whole day efficiently.
2. Quit Criticism
We often find ourselves in a place where we are criticizing something by finding fault and giving negative responses.
Instead of giving honest opinions and rectifying the mistake, people often lash out at each other in anger or sometimes just to set their dominance.
But, what people don’t realize is that criticizing comments that leave a person’s mouth leave a negative impression on their mind.
Negative emotions like being judgmental, criticizing, angry, and guilty often take its toll on your mental health. If you leave such feelings behind, wellness can be achieved every day.
3. Initiate Mindfulness Moves
A mindful moment is an act of initiating mindfulness into what you are doing every day.
Simply put, it is about adding mindfulness to your day-to-day task.
Your daily routine comprises many tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, exercise, self-hygiene, etc.
As mindfulness is a process of being aware of the present moment, with every move of your day, you can ground yourself in a daily mindful routine.
For instance, while cooking, pay attention to the bright colors of produce when cutting them. Notice how food smells and changes from raw to tender or how the texture of the veggies is.
When your daily mundane chores get the touch of mindfulness, it becomes a form of meditation that only reverberates your mental wellness.
4. Take a Breather
When you are buried under a pile of work, stealing a few moments for yourself might sound too much to someone.
People often prefer finishing all their work sooner and without taking breaks in between so they can relax at the end. But in haste to lessen their workload their mental health is being compromised.
When work feels overwhelming, taking a brief pause is like an outlet to relax and manage the pressure better.
After taking a break, you can tackle your work better with renewed energy.
5. Digital Distancing
During Covid-19 pandemic, people were left on their own devices.
Ever since the line between work and personal space has been blurred more than ever.
The usage of smartphones and social media has become fatiguing. People are constantly immersed in their digital devices.
While a little scroll to cure boredom or to check up on a few posts on social media can be gratifying, recurring checking of your phone leads to restlessness, which is just like the addiction to cigarettes and alcohol.
The constant compulsion to use a smartphone can make a person anxious. Along with having a negative impact on your mental health, it can also lead to digital eye strain.
Initiating the everyday wellness move of finding a few moments to digital detox will target optimum mental health and well-being every day.
6. Tackle One Thing at a Time
You might consider multitasking a great way to complete many tasks at once, but it is not so great for your mental wellness.
Research has shown that it takes more time to complete the task than done individually because of the time lag added while switching between them.
Tackling too many tasks at a time divides your attention and increases the stress of accomplishing them, making you more insufficient and irritating.
So, next time you feel like multitasking to save time, think about your mental health first.
7. Make Sleep Your Priority
photo by valeria-nikitina on unsplash
Have you ever found yourself lacking attention during tasks or just not being your best self?
If yes, you might not be getting enough sleep then.
As per the national institute of health, 1 in every 3 people in the United State is not getting adequate sleep every day. And around 45 percent of people have noticed they feel more stressed if they don’t get enough sleep at night.
When you sleep, your body is in the most relaxed state. During that time, your body releases a growth hormone that helps your body to repair itself.
Any lack or disruption in sleep makes you more prone to stress, mood swing, reduced focus, and even daytime fatigue.
Having a proper hour of sleep every day is a wellness move that helps you manage your everyday wellness and mental health duly.
8. Laugh More
When it comes to relieving stress, laughter is considered the best medicine.
There is a reason why scientists believe in laughter therapy and why it can be the best everyday wellness move for your mental health.
A good lighthearted joke does more than just crack you up. When you laugh, the level of stress-making Harmon found in your blood declines, which reduces any stress effects.
Laughing also makes your body intake more oxygen, so your heart pumps more blood in your body, and your other body organs are also stimulated.
Along with good mental health, good humor has many physical health benefits like an increased immune system, better gut health, pain relief, and better heart health.
9. Find Something to Let Off Steam
In our daily life, we are always dealing with stressful situations. And often, we keep all the emotions related to stress to ourselves. Whether it’s a job-related tension or strain in the relationship.
Your endurance to tackle stress is like a string. It can only be pulled to a certain extent till it snaps.
Bottling up all the emotions inside affects your mental health as well as your physical self. Finding some activity to blow off steam will release all the pent up energy inside you. So your mental health can thrive every day.
To Sum It Up
Every day your mind goes through many strains and pressures. It sometimes over works to comprehend many emotions at once, endures work burden, and also handles your string of negative thoughts.
When all this stress is being thrown on you daily, you should prioritize your mental health daily as well. Looking after your mental health is your responsibility.
When you incorporate everyday wellness moves into your routine, it gives you fuel to deal with everything. You have a sense of purpose, become more adaptable, and build resiliency, which is necessary for thriving mental health.
