5 Steps to Mental Wellbeing

In these times of high stress, constant changes and alienation in human relationships, everyone can lose their emotional and mental balance from time to time. There is a lot of talk of maintaining good physical health, but mental health has been a taboo even though it is equally important. If you are experiencing strong symptoms of anxiety or depression for more than two weeks at a time, you might want to seek professional help. However, there are many things you can do to help yourself achieve better mental wellbeing and here are a few.

1. Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness means bringing your full attention to the present moment and following what is going on, in your internal world, and in your external world. There are many ways to do it, but you can simply focus on your breath and follow it with your attention for as long as you can. You can do the same with your senses – notice the things you can hear, see or smell. Let thoughts come and go without following them. Just be in the moment and observe.

2. Manage your thoughts

We don’t know where thoughts come from, but we know we can manage them. The first step is recognizing our thoughts, noticing what we are thinking and noticing how they are making us feel. Thoughts produce emotions. Once we can manage our thoughts, we manage our emotions. If some thoughts are causing us to feel fear, we need to change the thinking pattern and replace it with a more suitable one that will not cause us fear and anxiety. This is the field of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy branch of psychology) and it has proven to be highly effective. You can learn more by attending their workshops or rehabilitation courses at local colleges.

3. Meditate

Meditation is beneficial to mental and emotional health as it deals with thoughts and emotions at their very source – the human brain and the nervous system. It calms us down and relaxes the nerves, but strengthens our concentration, willpower and spirit and develops our sense of inner self. It also makes our brain function better and actually increases its mass. Benefits of meditation are many and there is no other activity that produces the same positive effects on our mental wellbeing.

4. Develop acceptance

Life is simply unpredictable and there are no guarantees for anything. We just cannot go on stressing about all the things that might go wrong - most of the things we worry about never come to pass. Even if something bad happens, we will eventually have to accept it, which means, be at peace with it. Or we can suffer. Learning to accept situations, people and circumstances will greatly increase our sense of peace and satisfaction. We might not be happy about them, but we don’t need suffer either.

5. Be grateful

No matter how hard our particular situation seems to us, we can always change our perspective. For example, there are whole villages in Haiti that survive eating only dirt. Thousands don’t have food, shelter, water, let alone telephones. Find things to be grateful for, imagine what your life would be like if you didn’t have them in your life, and then feel gratitude. You can write them down to remind yourself.

It is important to know it is normal to feel off sometimes and that it is perfectly ok to help yourself by reading self help books, getting emotional support from friends or online in discussion forums, or even by seeking professional help. It doesn’t means you are crazy, we can all use someone to help us put our puzzle together.