These days, people, including myself, have been underestimating how important mental health is. Speaking from my own experience, taking care of mental health leads to positive effects on daily life, productivity, social life, eating habits, and so much more. I lost my father six months ago and that incident affected my mental health drastically. Losing someone who has always been by your side for your entire life was hard. It has been affecting me even academically and socially since my mind has been wandering and I haven’t been able to live in the moment. I was trying to figure out how to get back on track, and thought to myself maybe I’m not working as hard as I used to, I should try harder… and I came to the conclusion that my mind has not been in the same state as it used to be. That is when I started seeing a counselor for help, looking for some sources online and how to confront my feelings of grief. I’m not in a perfect state mentally yet, but I have been feeling a little bit better.
Negative effects on your mental health don’t always come from a big change in your life, like in my case. One of my friends started feeling suicidal and I have been trying to help her as a friend, but it’s really hard to think of what to say since I haven’t been in her shoes and I don’t want to say anything that will affect her negatively. A study shows that more than 700,000 lives have been taken away due to suicide every year, which a lot of them are affected by their mental health. This is why I got myself interested in the field of psychology to help people with their mental health. I would like to share a list of what you should do to be in a positive state of your mental health to live your life to the fullest. (This might sound stupid but if you do these on regular basis you will see some difference):
1. Find the Right Mindset
2. Get Real with Yourself
3. Conduct Self-Reflection
4. Seek Appropriate Help
5. Know Your Capacity
6. Find Your Balance
7. Discover a New Purpose
8. Build Your Knowledge
9. Pre-empt Future Problems
10. Manage Your Time
Self reflection: It is always important to self-reflect to find where you stand. You think you know yourself well enough, but if you try to actually spend time and see what’s on your mind, you will find something new about yourself. This is a really important step in order to find out what kind of help you need and what is missing in your life.
Know your capacity: In particular, students these days tend to overwhelm themselves with the amount of work that they cannot even handle in a day. It is important to plan ahead and not to give yourself too much stress all at once. This can be hard, especially when you are a student, but it is important to plan some time to take care of yourself as well.
Seek the help that you need: Like you found a missing piece in your life by doing self-reflection, now you need to find what kind of help is available out there to improve your mental health. There are a variety of things you can do, from finding some helpful sources online or simply talking about your feelings to whoever you feel comfortable talking to. That can be your counselor, a family member or even one of your friends.
Find self-care that works for you: It would be effective to find a self care routine to constantly de-stress yourself. For myself, I would like to cook, workout, call my friends, go to the beach, watch some shows on Netflix, etc. You might think self-care is meaningless and a waste of your time, but in the long run, if you don’t take care of yourself, you will burn out, so let yourself have some kind of reward.
I believe that you can finally live your life to the fullest by taking care of yourself by studying, sleeping, and dieting well. Please take care of the things I have listed up, and you will see the difference.
