Looking for mental health tips that can help you feel your best in 2023?
While a lot of people focus their new year’s resolutions on physical improvements such as diet and exercise, a new year is a great time to make a fresh start on taking care of your mental and emotional wellbeing, too. Fortunately, even just a few simple changes can have a big impact on your overall mental health.
Mental self-care is all about prioritizing your mental health needs and adopting tools that can help you better handle whatever stressors the year sends your way. Below, we’ve shared five of our best tips to get you started, with simple steps you can take right now to honor your mental health and put yourself on the path to true wellness.
How to Boost Your Mental Wellness This Year
When it comes to how to improve emotional health, there’s no single solution that works for all people. There are, however, a number of proven ways to handle common mental struggles and enjoy a boost to your mental health and wellbeing. Here are some of the big ones.
1. Practice Being in the Moment
Mindfulness is a meditative skill that teaches you to live in the present moment rather than the unchangeable past or unknowable future. The more you practice it, the easier it will become to lock yourself into a state of awareness that allows you to calmly and rationally approach whatever comes your way.
There are plenty of things you can do to tap into mindfulness as part of your mental self-care, even if you are a non-meditator. For example, if you start to get stressed, bring yourself back to the present by focusing on your five senses and describing what you’re smelling, seeing, tasting, hearing, and touching. Other ways to practice mindfulness include tuning into and regulating your breathing, getting outside, and using targeted mental health apps.
2. Get More Sleep
It’s hard to overstate just how essential good sleep is for your mental health. Sleeping well helps your brain detox from the day and process emotional information. Meanwhile, a lack of sleep is associated with all sorts of negative mental health effects, such as depression, anxiety, and impaired cognitive functions.
Clearly sleep is a must, and if you’re not getting enough of it, there’s no better time than right now to change your habits. Avoid caffeine, sugar, and alcohol in the hours leading up to bed, and create a soothing bedtime routine that you can actually look forward to every night. While you’re at it, try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, since this can help you set your circadian rhythm and get more productive rest.
3. Keep a Journal
You don’t need to consider yourself a writer in order to enjoy the mental health benefits of journaling. Keeping a regular journal is an excellent tool for dealing with negativity and actively working out your stressors and worries and what you might be able to do about them. It can also help you set mental wellness goals and stay accountable to them while learning how to identify triggers that set you back.
Whether you type your thoughts or write them out, make a point of journaling at least a couple of times a week. If you’re not sure what to write about, look up mental health journaling prompts and do your best to answer them without internal judgment.
4. Maintain Your Support System
Your support system is made up of friends and family members who you can reliably turn to when you need to talk. It may be one person, or it may be several, but what’s most important is that your support allows you to speak openly and honestly, offering emotional support in moments both good and bad.
Maintaining a support system can be integral to managing stress and anxiety – and it’s at least partially up to you to keep it going. Communicate with your support persons regularly, and be sure to show up when they need you, too.
5. Do Things That Make You Happy
No matter how busy you are, it’s incredibly important to do what brings you joy. Things like engaging in fun hobbies and listening to your favorite songs can actually improve your brain health, providing you with a steady flow of endorphins to help you hold up against stress and anxiety. Figure out what you really, truly enjoy doing, then book it into your schedule so you can make sure there’s time for it.
Taking regular self-care steps and setting your intentions for each day can have a major impact on mental wellness. Learn more about managing your emotions and boosting happy chemicals in your brain, and please get in touch for information on Ketamine Infusion Therapy for treating depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders.
