Hello and welcome back to the third and the last segment in the series dedicated to the WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY, 10th October. You can read Segment 1: On What Is Mental Health here, and Segment 2: Mental Health Challenges and Myths here.
This segment focuses on the TIPS, RECOMMENDATIONS, and SOLUTIONS with regard to Mental Health.
As we understood from the first two segments, that mental health is achieving optimum usage of our psychological capacities with a handle on stress. Since we all feel stressful in social, professional, personal, and academic circles, the knack, the will power, and the sense to De-stress and unwind so as to be modestly competent is what mental health is all about.
Tips To Cope Stress
These tips or pointers are to help you maintain psychological equilibrium. The underlying premise behind these solutions is to cope with stress. Because, lets face it, we cannot just ignore or get rid of these maladies at a flick of a switch.
- Techniques to meditate and relax: To reduce stress, it is advisable to construct habits to practice breathing exercises and relaxation techniques
- Take time for yourself: There is a wonderful feeling when you just deviate from the daily routine, for however brief moment. There is no stress in sitting on a park bench or taking a long walk or listening to music or books. This helps you relax. Do take some minutes off between daily chores, this helps you regain your energy
- Physical movements: Our brains, believe it or not, work 24/7, so this organ gets its MOVEMENTS. But, what about our bodies? Walking, running, lending a helping hand to move things about, all these actions releases Endorphin (feel happy hormones). Regular exercising provides a channel to release a lot of stress. You need not go hit the GYM everyday, twice a week is a good start
- Reading: Now, this is another technique to steer your mind away from the routine. Getting yourself immersed or lost in stories is a beautiful way of relaxing your mind. If you read variety of books, especially Fiction and Science Fiction. Such narratives help you develop new ideas and broaden your thinking capacities too
- Friends: Don’t we look forward for that awful weekend, so that we could meet friends and have an honest pint, with useful and useless talks? Friends are a major part of our physical and mental health. Talking to each other is a wonderful way to release mental stress
- Humor: Ah! humor. I bet we have been in situations when we just walk past a bus stop and see someone slip and fall. Chances are that we feel sorry, and may help the person get up. However, won’t you laugh at a similar outcome if it was on TV? That’s the difference, we feel sorry most of the time and never laugh. Someone said that to find humor in a situation, our mind has to be anesthetized from sympathy for a brief moment. That is when humor is born. Now, do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting you to laugh at the man who fell into the gutter. But, the point is to laugh. Laugh at yourself, this is the best remedy for De-stressing and it is a humbling experience to laugh at oneself
- Spirituality: When we believe in a higher order or power, research has shown that most of us relive a lot of stress in doing so. Prayers have had a telling effect on peoples mental health, positively
- Dogs: Pets are magnificent creatures. They look at you like you are the center of their universe. May be it is the undivided and uncontrolled loving attention is what makes us love our pets, especially dogs. I have my doubts on cats, they are majestic creatures, but it always looks like they are plotting something. Pets have such a calming effect on us, just by talking to them and playing with them. Have you noticed the reasons why we find dogs cute and funny? It is because Dogs are stupid, profoundly, positively moronic. They don’t work logically. This is the beauty of the creature. If we can learn anything from our pets, it should be to let life’s baloney go and laugh and be stupid once in a while
- Adequate Sleep: Get some well deserved sleep will you? Listen to some soothing music and fall asleep like there is no tomorrow. You can always wake up the next day and tackle the chores. Our brains require rest to recuperate and rewind
- Nutrition: Eating smart, consuming food which will infuse ideal amounts of proteins, mineral and other essential ingredients helps to keep your body fit and healthy. This way, we can get the most of our energies to work at the optimum level
Actionable Tips To Be Better
Besides ways to cope with everyday stress, we can also cultivate certain dispositions to help us feel better and stay calm. Here are 5 tips:
- Develop confidence: Be humble in identifying weaknesses and chart a plan to work on them methodically. The satisfaction of just trying to fix weaknesses is an act of stress relief
- Make time for family and friends: Like a plant pot, relationships need nurturing. Share your highs and lows with your loved ones, and also lend your ears and presence for theirs
- Offer help: To help someone, be it in a very small manner, boosts our confidence. Get someone a cup of coffee, smile, help someone to sit, chivalry has become a lost act of behavior. Practice it
- Handle you money: It is terribly well known that most of our worries and stress take root from money. Plan a simple budget and stick to it for a month, and then make it a routine. There is a saying, TAKE CARE OF YOUR MONEY, AND THE MONEY WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU
- Solitude: I am not asking you to run away into the wilderness, no. You have to practice to be at peace with yourself. Because, when you step back and analyze who you are, many aspects of life’s puzzles fall into place. Ponder and pontificate, these are good for your being
So, What Does All This Mean?
All in all, today, talking and caring about our own MENTAL HEALTH has become a tedious process. We associate mental health with esoteric concepts and stay stoic convincing ourselves that we do not need guidance or help, so lets carry on doing things the way we are comfortable with.
If we are living in a capitalistic and a materialistic world, then it causes no harm in scrutinizing ourselves in a material kind of way. For example, like how your car needs a thorough check up and care often, to perform at the top level, the same way your body and mind need such meticulous attention and care.
To conclude the three series for WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY, we have an expert Psychotherapist to answer the very basic yet profound questions about:
- Our perception of MENTAL HEALTH
- Our grapple with the concept as a society, and;
- Tips and suggestions to become healthy, mentally healthy!
I thank you for staying with us mentally, so far through the series. I hope that you can draw a sliver of positivity from the series and become more informed and healthy than you already are.