Easy, everyday ways to improve your mental health

Doing these can boost your mental health | Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

How has January been treating you? For some, it feels like it has already been a long month. If you’re one of them, perhaps it’s time to take a quick pause and think about how we’ve been living the first few weeks of the year so far.

January is also Mental Wellness Month, which makes it the perfect time to re-evaluate how our current habits are shaping and affecting our mental health.

Taking care of our mind matters because our mental well-being is connected to other aspects of our life, too. Good mental well-being enables us to function well at work or in school, and also positively impacts the way we relate with others.

Of course, pressing concerns will be best addressed by mental health experts. But if you need just a bit of help in this area right now, or you just want to make sure you’re keeping your mental health in top shape, here are easy tips you can follow.

Pick up a physical activity

Science has already proven that exercise helps naturally produce “happy hormones”—or the natural chemicals in our body that regulate our mood.

Trying out and committing to a regular activity, like walking, running, and even dancing, can be an easy and fun way to keep both mind and body healthy, too.

Other activities like yoga can also help, as it doubles as a way to meditate and regulate breathing, which helps ease anxiety.

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Re-evaluate your relationship with social media

We love how social media keeps us connected to others and the rest of the world, but we must admit that it can also get too overwhelming. If you’re seeing your screen time numbers going up, it may be time to put down the phone and look away for a while.

Important questions we can ask ourselves when rethinking our social media use could be, how much time do we spend on it? Are we doom scrolling? Who do we follow? Do these people or accounts help us, or do their content make us more anxious, dissatisfied, and restless?

Consider cleaning up your following lists, or putting a limit to your social media scrolling time. You can also try resetting or clearing your algorithm if it feels like it’s not helping your headspace. (To do that, you can try clearing your search history or, if you see a type of post you no longer want to see, click the option for the app to “show less posts” or that you’re “not interested in this post.”)

Time to shift FOMO to JOMO (joy of missing out). Log out of your social media once in a while, turn off notifications, or rearrange your phone’s home screen so you don’t see your social media apps often | Photo by dole777 on Unsplash

Schedule “me” time—literally

If you find your days packed to the brim with work tasks and other responsibilities, it might be beneficial to literally block off time for yourself. During this blocked-off hour, focus entirely on yourself and what you need.

No doom scrolling, no catching up with emails, and no allowing anyone to disturb you. Think of it as an important alignment meeting—with yourself.

You can also use this time to rest. (Remember that rest doesn’t just mean sleeping or sitting down, too! There are various types of rest, and these can all be productive.)

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Improve your sleep

The quality of our sleep also affects much of our waking life. Poor sleep negatively impacts our activity and brain function, and may also make us more susceptible to disease.

One of the most popular ways to improve sleep is to reduce blue light exposure. That’s why it is always recommended to lessen gadget use and television before bed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recommends avoiding large meals, caffeine, and alcohol before going to sleep as well as going to bed and waking up consistently at the same time, every day.

Get good sleep like this cat | Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash

Pick up a new hobby

Learning a new hobby or activity (that does not involve your phone) helps keep the brain processes sharp, and also provides opportunities to have fun and connect with others, especially if the hobby is a communal one.

Practice mindful breathing

One of the easiest ways to calm your mind, whether you’re going through an anxiety attack, feeling overwhelmed, or easing feelings of anger, is to take deep breaths. It sounds simple, but it works.

There are different breathing techniques that could work for different situations. The basic principle is that following these breathing exercises brings your focus to your breath instead of what is making you anxious or angry.

My personal go-to is called square breathing, which basically involves inhaling for four counts, holding the breath for four counts, exhaling for four counts, and then holding the breath again for another four counts.