If you’re focusing on improving your overall mental health this year, you can start by focusing on these 4 things:
Your Physical Health
Supporting your physical health looks like focusing on taking care of your physical needs. That means caring for your nutrition needs, ensuring you get proper rest & sleep, and engaging in regular movement and exercise.
Examples of action-steps that care for your physical health include going to bed on time, eating a nourishing breakfast each day, and going on a walk. Ignoring our physical health needs can drain our mental health, but caring for our physical health can do wonders for our mental health.
Your Emotional Health
Honoring your emotional includes things such as allowing your emotions to be acknowledge, validated, and accepted.
You can do this through naming your feelings (instead of ignoring them), journaling, and practicing self-acceptance and self-love. Spiritual practices like prayer and meditation also support your emotional health. As you can guess, our emotional health is closely linked to our overall mental health. The more we care for our emotional needs, the more improvements we’ll see in our mental health.
Your Mental/Mind Health
Nurturing your brain’s needs for mental stimulation, engaging mental activities, and mental rest are very important items to focus on to improve your mental health.
More specific ideas about how to care for your mind include reading, practicing your favorite hobbies, doing a puzzle, or learning a new skill. But our minds also needs rest, so don’t forget that mental breaks like stopping work on time or watching a show or movie also count as helpful activities. Ensuring your mind has been well cared for will positively impact your overall mental health.
Your Social Health
Your social health needs include connection, belonging, and engaging in relationships. Don’t forget that boundaries and your need for solitude are social needs, too!
Some examples of activities that support your social health are calling a friend, social plans and activities, and taking time for yourself.
Time to Take Action
If you’re ready to focus on these four areas to improve your mental health, I have a free tool for you. I’ve created a daily mental health checklist that you can use to plan, implement, and track how you care for these for domains of your life. You can get the worksheet here. For other amazing resources, be sure to check out my resource page.