3 Daily Practices to Boost Your Mental Well-Being
Your desire to feel good is not selfish or unimportant. It is as essential to your well-being as having a healthy body! Just as you can train your body to be stronger, you can train your mind to be less stressed, anxious, and reactive.
We all crave more calm and peace in our lives. For too long, society has not been placing enough importance on the role mental health plays in our overall well-being. As a result, there is an epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, and depression in the world. Yet as scientific research clearly shows, mental health and physical health are two sides of the same coin.
When you understand how your own happiness affects your health, you will be much better equipped to take care of it. We’ll give you a few simple practices you can do every day to help!
THE LINK BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND HEALTH
There is a tight connection between the mind and the body that science can no longer deny. As human beings, we come with it all. From the waves of emotion to the physical sensations of pleasure and pain, this is how we experience our aliveness. Underestimating the power of our feelings and emotions means denying part of our natural humanity.
If your body doesn’t show any symptoms of disease but you struggle with stress, anxiety, depression, or loneliness, would you consider yourself healthy? You may know some people who seem to take great care of their body but are still unhappy and always complaining. Our quality of life is diminished if we’re mentally unable to enjoy the physical health we do have.
Mental ailments often precede physical disease. Depression and chronic illness have a reciprocal relationship. According to the Institute of Psychiatry in London, depression causes higher rates of illness and illness causes higher rates of depression. Need more reasons for why you should attend to your happiness as much as you attend to your nutrition and exercise routines? Let’s take a quick look at what negative emotions do to your body.
HOW YOUR EMOTIONS IMPACT YOUR HEALTH
Negative mental states such as chronic anxiety and stress cause your brain to release neurochemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. These help you if you are trying to run away from imminent danger – like a tiger jumping out from behind the bushes. Your body starts the fight-or-flight response that prepares you for action. Your heart beats faster, your blood pressure rises, your muscles tense up, and your breathing quickens.
The more these neurochemicals flow through your bloodstream as a result of unexpected danger, the greater the risk of heart attack or stroke. Proper digestion, sleep, or the healing of wounds is important – but facing an immediate threat is even more important! At least that’s how the brain perceives things.
In times of stress, your body has to redirect its energy away from other important tasks like repair and maintenance. This is part of the reason that stress lowers immunity, causes weight gain, or makes it hard to fall asleep. The problem is that much of the stress we feel is not caused by life-threatening situations.
Even while we have a roof over our head and access to clean water and food, many of us feel as if our lives are constantly in danger. Our minds are so used to worrying about the future that we often forget to notice that – right in this moment – we are alive. Life is happening even while we are worried about tomorrow. Fortunately there are many simple ways to counter the stress response.
PRACTICING THE ART OF WELL-BEING AND CALM
You become what you practice most. This applies not only in how you treat your body, but also how you treat your mind. Your personality, attitude, and ability to respond to life are all shaped by your mental habits.
Think about it like working out a muscle group. When you use a muscle often, that muscle gets stronger. When you don’t use it, it gets weaker. It’s the same with the neural pathways in your brain. The way you most frequently respond to life’s stressors strengthens those pathways. Do you shut down and disconnect when things get tough? Do you lash out in anger and blame? Or do you pause, analyze, and then take action?
When you react to difficulties from a place of fear, you strengthen the pathways of stress. When you’re not used to pausing and responding consciously, the pathways of calm get weak. A consistent workout routine makes your body stronger. A consistent practice of befriending your mind strengthens your muscles of happiness. Spending even a few minutes a day doing things that are good for your mental well-being can make a large difference over time!
3 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR MENTAL WELL-BEING
While some of these tips may seem simple, there is a reason they are so often emphasized in mental health. They work! You just have to do them on a consistent basis. Like a workout, you can’t just do it for a few weeks and hope for an immediate six-pack. You have to integrate mental health into your routine on a daily basis.
1) MEDITATE
Meditation helps you notice how your mind works when you’re not looking. It allows you to observe which neural pathways you’re strengthening on a daily basis. By learning to sit quietly, you start noticing your mental habits. This opens up a space from which you can change them.
When you realize that you can change the conversation inside your head, you discover a tool that can be used to transform your whole life – the power to consciously direct your attention.
2) KEEP A GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Gratitude has been shown to positively affect well-being. In one study, participants who wrote letters of gratitude for three weeks reported significantly better mental health 4 and 12 weeks after their writing exercise than those who didn’t write at all or wrote about negative experiences.
So how exactly does gratitude improve your mental well-being? It takes your brain’s attention away from the “potential threat” that your mind is so stressed about and places it on what is already good in your life. This relieves stress and creates a space from which you can see things in a new way.
If you don’t feel like keeping a physical gratitude journal, consider downloading a gratitude app.
3) CONNECT WITH OTHERS
Research shows that social connection improves our ability to recover from illness and increases life expectancy. The opposite is also true. Isolation and loneliness put us at a greater risk for early disease than smoking!
Connecting with others helps us know that whatever we’re going through, we’re not alone. As soon as our mind recognizes that there is hope of going beyond the current “problem,” it feels relief. This relaxation helps flush out some of the neurochemicals of stress.
Interacting with others can also help us see our problems from fresh angles. We may be able to uncover a solution to a problem that we ourselves would have never thought of. We are wired to help one another heal – not just physically, but also mentally.
Integrating at least one of these practices into your life on a consistent basis can help boost your well-being as your stress levels go down.
Want an easy way to integrate at least two of these practices into your daily routine? Join us for our offering below:
Hi, I'm Kelly. Your Empowerment Coach and Mindfulness Mentor. I am an experienced wellness leader, a former 18-year veteran of a successful commercial real estate career, a wife, a mom of 2 teens, a certified meditation teacher, a breathwork facilitator, and an energy healer.
I help high achievers manage the complexity of their minds and cultivate more joy and ease. If you'd like to explore whether my private program, Anchor Yourself Accelerator, is right for you let's connect. I combine empowerment coaching and mindfulness practices to help you create a life you love.
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