Why Mental Health is important

Mental Health affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress,relate to others, and make healthy choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.

6 Ways of Keeping Mental Health

Physical Health

  1. Stay physically fit. When you are more physically active, you tend to be mentally fitter.
  2. Try to eat healthy and eat well.
  3. Try to do some yoga, it helps to still your busy mind when anxious and also great physical practice.

Find Inner Peace

  1. Have some quite time in reflection or prayer.
  2. Meditation can help you to strengthen your mental power, and it is a great way to clear the busy thoughts, and get some brain space and put things in perspective. It can be done just walking through the trees, it doesn’t have to be sitting cross-legged chanting.

Get Mentally Organized

  1. Spend 10-15 mins at the start of your day, and make a mini Kanban board, that contains to-do, doing and done list to check-in with yourself, your weekly tasks and capacity. Ticking things off your list and having something to refer to the next morning provide great gamification.
  2. Prepare multiple lists going on to keep track of thoughts and things you need to do or want to achieve.
  3. If you are thinking about doing something that will take you less than 3 mins, then just do it straight away without any doubt. Accomplishing these small achievable tasks will help your brain secrets more dopamine.

Get Socialised

  1. Trying to find yourself thinking about someone else who might be going through a tough time, and reaching out to that person. A problem shared is a problem halved.
  2. Try to do some social activity, e.g. bike riding and BBQ with friends are also the best stuff to clear head.

Switch to Different Context

  1. Getting outside of your normally area, especially for a run or a walk, and it’s such a good mood boost.
  2. Having a go-to physical space that you reserve for relaxing or fun activities, it can be a cafe that you might go to read a book, a favourite walk, or a room in the house that you keep free of work and chores. Creating that association with a place being somewhere to chill out, and focus on yourself really helps as de-stresssor and reset.
  3. Take sometime to knit, something therapeutic about knit one purl one
  4. Try to do some creative activity, e.g. painting, colouring, crafting or putting up a puzzle. It can produce a meditative state where you just focus on the activity and find calm and peace in doing it and thus, releasing any stress and anxiety.
  5. Try to do some cooking.
  6. Try some DIY.
  7. Try roller skating.

Stay Closer with Flora and Fauna

  1. Take your pet for a walk will always make you feel good.
  2. Try to do some gardening.
  3. Try to take your camera and have short photowalks from your home to office and vice versa. This will shift to creative mindset and slow pace is a good way for relaxing.

Support Others with Good Mental Health

Simple rule of thumb, remember that you never what is going on in their lives and behind the façade of normality. You cannot tell how someone is on the inside based on how they look on the outside.

Firstly, there are some simple things we can do. Be kind and assume good intent always. Remember that old chestnut, “if you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” :slightly_smiling_face: Another lens on that is to ask why you are giving helpful feedback to someone. Do you have their best interests at heart or are you just venting and unloading.

Secondly, try and make yourself available to your friends and colleagues for real conversations. And check in on them properly, a superficial good morning is OK some of the time, but make sure that on occasion you take the time and check-in properly.

Counter intuitively, one of the ways to make yourself available to others is to make yourself vulnerable and ask for help yourself. That then makes it OK for others to ask the same of you. And look for signs that things are ‘off’ with someone else. If things dont seem quite right, then gently and respectfully check-in.

Lastly, if you are feeling off or need support, please reach out. We are in a supportive environment here and there are layers of help available, from coffees with colleagues, to our leadership, to HR to Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) and more. Please use what is available.

EAP also has some great guidance on building your resilience and mental health before there is a problem. I would suggest that you treat your mental health at least as well as your physical health, if not better.