Given the hustle and bustle of the day’s activities it’s quite normal for the stress to take a toll on your mental health. You might sense your mental health is declining? Or you may not feel as cheery or motivated as you once were? Well, guess what? You’ve come to the right place. Here are four valuable tips to help you improve your mental health and make it be the best it can be. We’re in this together and it can get better with these mental health improvement tips. 

• Make yourself a priority

Are you often too busy or tired to relax and do something you actually enjoy? You may be studying or working too hard and perhaps you don’t stop and take notice of what your body needs. Have you had a calm moment to simply breathe and wind down? Did you eat too little today? Did you get enough water? These are questions we must ask ourselves each day. Our body needs the appropriate fuel in order to maintain homeostasis and facilitate the day’s activities to optimum level. You may not care about yourself enough to get a good eight glasses a day but we here at Clarksonsblog, we care about you😚. Neglecting self care is detrimental to our mental health. Research has shown that what we eat affects not only our mood, but how we think as well. If you don’t eat enough, odds are you aren’t going to feel great. Exercise and enough sleep are also vital components for our health. So if you’re reading this late at night on your phone, hear these tips and then call it a night. Your mental health will thank you tomorrow, I promise. 

• Create positive thoughts

Are you aware of your thoughts? You may say of course I know what I’m thinking yet hardly do we actually stop to consider what it is we’re thinking, what we’re saying to ourselves, and if it’s something we’d say to others? Think about it. Are your thoughts positive or negative? According to a new 2020 psychology study published in the Journal of Nature Communications, the average human has around 6200 thoughts per day. In another study published in the National Science Foundation it was found that of the 1000s of thoughts each individual has per day, 80% were negative and 95% are the exact same repetitive thoughts as the previous day. So we repeat a lot of negative thoughts. But this next study will really put things into perspective for you. In another study from Cornell University scientists found that 85% of what we worry about never happens.

Not only that, 79% of the subjects found that either they could handle the difficulty better than they thought or that the difficulty taught them a lesson they felt was worth it. So this is my advice to you: stop, breathe, and pay particular attention to your thoughts. Is it positive? Is it healthy? More importantly, is it something you would say to a friend who is worried too, and looking for comfort? It’s always best to treat ourselves like our best friend. Be there to comfort yourself with positive thoughts and when in doubt with a worry try to ask yourself if this worry is productive? Am I making this more difficult than it has to be? 

• Say what you feel

Imma key you into a little psychology secret; expressing how you feel makes you feel better. 

Verbalising our feelings makes our sadness, anger and pain less intense. When we see a photograph of a fearful or angry face, we have increased activity in a region of our brain called the amygdala (The amygdala is a mass of grey matter inside each cerebral hemisphere, involved with the experiencing of emotions). This serves as a warning of danger in our brain. There is decreased activity in the amygdala when we express our emotions which overall makes us feel better meaning if you put your feelings into words you feel better.

So if you want to better your mental health, try talking to a friend or psychologist about your feelings, or write them in a journal. Just the act of writing in words about how you feel can have positive and powerful effects. 

• Be compassionate to others

A little compassion can go a long way and that’s precisely our mandate here at Clarksonsblog. I’m pretty sure when you treat someone with kindness or do someone a favour you often feel a little bit better to. Don’t you? 

Well, there’s research to support this. According to research from psychologists, Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, altruism can lead to improved mental and physical health, as well as speed up recovery from disease. A brain imaging research at UCLA also found that providing support for others may have unique positive effects on key brain areas involved in stress and reward responses. So if research shows that a little compassion and support can predict decreased stress response in the brain and improve mental health, what are you waiting for? Odds are you’ve been considering helping others in some way. Now is your chance. Reach out to a family member or old friend who could use some support, donate to a charity or volunteer with an organisation you care about. I’m sure they’d love to support as much as you. After all, what better way to lift yourself up than to lift someone else’s spirit up in the process. 

I hope you found these tips helpful and I hope you make it a point to express your feelings into words down in the comment section below or a journal. We are here to listen because we care about you and want to hear you out. After all your mental health may just thank you. If you find it hard to manage your life and suspect you might be suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness, we encourage you to seek professional help. 

If you’d want me to write on a topic please reach out to me using any of my social media buttons. Also I’d love to know your thoughts on this article and where you might agree or disagree in the comment section below. All entries are exclusively between myself and you, thank you and be safe

HAPPY NEW YEAR!🥳❤️ This would be an amazing year for y’all, believe it!🤗