Mental Health Awareness Month 2018

Treating yourself is one of the examples of self-care, which is crucial for our well-being. How about writing down a list of activities that you enjoy or helps you to de-stress?

It could be simple activities like taking a walk around the park or journaling about your day. Whether it is taking a break or developing good habits, this list can help you balance out and recenter your life, so you come back recharged.

Often we neglect our needs in order to fulfil tasks or meet outside expectations, so the key here is to practise self-compassion – hearing ourselves out, creating boundaries, or doing something just for ourselves to recharge our energy.

Ask yourself honestly what you consider helpful to your mental well-being, and create a list that will serve as a useful cross reference when you’re feeling low.

It’s easy to get swept up in life, reacting to situations without looking under the surface to realise why.

Creating a mood tracker helps us to recognise patterns in our days, as well as how they match up with specific happenings. From there, we can pinpoint what prompted us to feel a certain way so that we can refine our mental health checklist.

We don’t have to negate the difficult experiences we go through in order to savour the good ones – but it can be more of a challenge to remember our positive experiences.

Creating a gratitude list serves as a tangible reminder of the things we’re thankful for so we can look through them during times when nothing seems to be going right.