Robin Schindelka Mental health is important, just as important as your physical health. However, we tend to neglect our mind in going about our busy lives and thus carry the consequences with us when we start to experience stress, anxiety, depressive emotions and feel stuck in ourselves.
Here are 5 very effective, important things you should do if you struggle with any kind of mental health issue, or just wish to experience more inner peace and happiness in life:
- Be Mindful with your time
Your actions have a big impact on your emotions, so how you structure your day with actions plays a big role in how you feel and how your mental health develops over time. We often think that bad mental health comes from some 1 big thing that happens to us, but often it is the combination and stacking of little things that turn into something bigger over time.
Being mindful with your time means being aware of which actions you take and how you use your time to feel better. Knowing that your actions impact your feelings, you can now use time to do things that make you feel better. If you keep taking the same action, you’re not suddenly going to get a different result.
Examples of being mindful with your time:
- Using an alarm clock in stead of your phone in the morning so you spend the first moments of your day not scrolling through your phone
- Limiting your screen time by putting your phone away and not taking it with you when you don’t need it
- In stead of watching netflix all evening, taking some time to read a non-fiction book, take a course, meditate, …
- Moments that you’re in traffic, in stead of cursing and feeling sorry for yourself, putting on a good podcast, calling a friend you haven’t talked to in while, being present in that moment and situation.
2. Prioritizing Peace over Joy/Happiness
A very big reason why we struggle with our mental/emotional health is because we resist the emotions we feel. When we feel sad, we resist the sadness. When we feel afraid, we run away from the fear. When we’re angry, we hate the fact that we’re angry and we wish that things were different. We strive for that feeling of happiness and joy so much, that we take pills and drink alcohol to push our feelings away and feel different that we do.
A better way to get to feeling good (fast), is by making peace your priority, not happiness. The quickest way to get to peace is to accept the emotions and situations we have, exactly as they come. By practicing non-judgement, we can stop fighting our emotions and start to accept them as they come. In this way, they disappear much quicker as they’re no longer being fed, and we don’t even feel AS bad when we experience sadness, anger, fear, …
The worse part of feeling bad, is that we resist that we feel bad and create our own suffering with that.
3. Take time for silence
A very important tip for better mental health is to take time to be silent. Our mental suffering comes from our mind-chatter, and so it’s important to turn that noise down every once in a while to take time to process everything we’ve taken in throughout the day and give our mind some rest.
Things you can do for silence:
- Meditation: sitting in silence and non-judgement for 12 minutes
- Taking a walk without music, podcasts, or calls. Just focusing on the movement of your body and walking in silence
- Doing something with complete presence in silence such as cooking, cleaning, …
4. Connecting through nature & selfless service
We feel bad because we feel isolated. We feel alone, and we fail to see our connection to the bigger picture. However, we’re so much more than just the ‘I’. We are a WE too, and it’s in this connection that we feel a sense of purpose, meaning and joy.
The 2 ways to find that connection, is through:
- Nature: Spending time in nature, seeing the intelligence of life and being present with the energy that is in nature (and in us). Just taking time out of your day to be in nature and pay attention to it is enough to put you back in connection.
- Selfless service: Doing something with the sole purpose of serving someone else. NOT asking the question of: “what’s in it for me?”, but simply doing something with the benefit of making someone else happy, is INCREDIBLY powerful. It places you in direct connection with others and life itself, and makes you realize how meaningful and important you actually are. We’re afraid to give as we believe we don’t have enough ourselves, but it’s through the act of giving that we become rich.
5. Move your body
A more down to earth way to feel better in your mind is to make sure your body is healthy. Exercise makes you feel better in your own skin and releases chemicals that literally make you feel good. Get outside and move your body daily, and do some kind of exercise that gets your heart rate up at least 3 times a week. Great forms of exercise are:
- Dancing
- Running/cycling/swimming for cardio
- Strength training with weights
- Yoga
- …
6. Last but not least, LEARN how to control your mind and make it your friend.
Even though it doesn’t feel like it, you are in full charge of your own mind and emotions. You can change your mind, emotional state and life yourself, and you’re not a victim of what happens to you in life. Training your mind takes time and effort, but is completely worth it once you’ve learned how to do it, as you can use your mind to create the emotions, thoughts and life that you want.
To help you with this last step, I’ve created an online mind training to teach you how to gain full control over your emotions and achieve deep inner peace and happiness by going within. The course teaches you easy, practical tools to hack your own mind and coach yourself towards any place you want to be. You can find the course in the link bellow. For any questions regarding, don’t hesitate to message me through the whatsapp Icon in the left corner.
So here it was, 6 ways to improve your mental health and emotional wellbeing. For more content and tips, be sure to check out my YouTube channel and Instagram (Robin Schindelka), and feel free to take a look around the rest of the blog to read more stories and tips on finding happiness within.
Much love,
Robin.
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