Mental & Emotional Health

1. Say No

Life is too short to try to please everyone. Sometimes it’s best to say no if you’re feeling overburdened. If it’s a friend, they will probably understand and if they don’t you might want to consider whether to continue the friendship if it seems to be based on what they can get out of you.

2. Have a Sense of Humor

The ability to laugh at life and its strange turns is invaluable. When you take things too seriously and dwell on what horrible experiences you had it can lead to high stress, ulcers and other health problems. While you won’t look back at all hard times fondly, they often do build character.

3. Exercise

Pick an exercise you can live with and work it into your schedule. Many people join fancy gyms in the New Year but it’s not everyone’s thing. Maybe you would rather walk, play tennis, dance, jog, swim or canoe. Pick something you will enjoy so that you can stick with it. Exercise releases endorphins so is a natural and effective antidepressant for many people.

4. Have a Plan and Take Action

Use a daily planner and include what can be realistically accomplished in one day. If you add too many things to your schedule, it encourages procrastination because you may not be able to finish the tasks. This can then cause you to be stressed and overwhelmed.

While planning is important, action is more important. Even when you make mistakes, you learn and can fine tune your plan by persisting and making it better. If you don’t even try, you lose the opportunity to practice, learn and grow.

5. Think Positive

This might take practice and include methods such as thought stopping. You can do this by canceling out negative thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts. There are various methods but two of the most popular are simply saying stop to yourself or snapping an elastic band on your wrist to interrupt the negative thought.

6. Avoid Drugs and Alcohol

Using substances to cope with stress is a crutch that temporarily masks pain but makes you feel worse in the end.

7. Eat right

What you put into your body makes an enormous difference in how you feel physically and mentally. Your body can’t function well for long running on coffee and donuts so will eventually crash and burn.

8. Have Patience

Having patience helps avoid a heap of trouble and stress. It enables you think before you speak and slow down and enjoy the time that you have with loved ones. Sometimes patience gives you the opportunity to make new friends in unexpected places. When you’re in a long shopping line for example rather than grumble at the person ahead of you, you could strike up a conversation with a stranger or acknowledge to the cashier how busy he or she is. You could also take that time as an opportunity to catch up on some reading.

9. Rest and Relaxation

Try to make sure you get enough rest. Having a nighttime ritual helps rest come easier so if you read, have a bath and go to bed at the same time every night it becomes a relaxing routine.

Taking breaks throughout your day helps decrease stress as well and often you can think better if you step away from a task for 15 or 20 minutes. You could use this time for visualization, walking or just enjoying nature.

10. Prioritize

Consider whether it’s really that important to press the point of a silly argument and let the little things go. Put what’s important to you first and concentrate on those things such as your family, friends and love. What does it matter how successful you seem in the eyes of acquaintances if you have no time for your family.