Habits to improve mental Health and physical wellbeing

It’s the end of the month, the end of May, and June is just around the corner. Mental and physical wellbeing is a regular topic of discussion on various platforms as well as something which has become a key area of discussion for my coaching clients.

I wanted to look at what you can do to help your mental and physical wellbeing. This blog post is aimed at people who know they must do something or are starting to feel the stresses of life and work become heavier to carry around each day. The idea is to see what you can commit to doing over the next 4 weeks.

If you already have some habits and routines which help you re-energise your mental and physical wellbeing, then that’s a good place to be. The exercise I am going to discuss below will be useful as a checkpoint to see if there is anything else you can do.

So, let’s get started.

Find The Activities Which Will Work For you

You will read on my blogs, or hear me say it on my podcast repeatedly, we are all different. This means there is no single action or activity which will guarantee a shift or change in your wellbeing.

There are some fundamentals in biology, neuroscience, and chemistry which have an impact on every one of us, but above the biology and chemicals we must find what works for us. Because an approach or an activity worked for one person it doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for the next person, for you, or me.

With this in mind the exercise is designed to find out what you believe your options are and what you feel will work for you, and more importantly what you feel you are prepared to commit to.

First thing to do is give yourself some space and time. Fix a time to do the exercise; you’ll need about 15-20 minutes, a blank sheet of paper and a pen (or pencil!).

If you place the sheet of paper on landscape, draw a line down the centre so you two equal sections.

On one section write all the things you think you can do to help improve your physical wellbeing. You can create a list or a mind map – whichever works for you. Keep coming up with ideas, write as many as come to mind. My list would include:

• Go for a short walk – 10 to 15 minutes.
• Go for a long walk – 30 minutes or more.
• Go for a job/run – 15 minutes.
• Resistance exercise – sit ups, press ups, squats, etc.
• Stretching exercises
• Cycle ride – 30 minutes or more but only once or twice in a week
• Swimming
• Karate lessons – or practise at home for 20 minutes
• 5-a-side football
• Badminton game
• Etc…

Consider everything you have done in the past, currently manage to do, and even things you may want to take up, write it all down. As you will have noticed, in my list there is no ‘go to the gym’!

It’s not my thing, even though it has plenty benefits and I have used gyms as part of work out in the past. However, I would rather attend 1 or 2 karate classes each week, and a couple of resistance training sessions rather than work out at the gym.

Although, there are times when you will have to do something you don’t like. For me it’s the gym, with ‘going for a run’ a close second.

Add as many options as possible to the list and then take a short break. You can practise a bit of meditation for a minute!

Now, refocus your attention to the other section of the paper and do the same but this time think about the things you can do to help calm your mind.

For now, I want you to think about what you feel will help you to calm your mind, calm the thoughts and ideas, which swim around in your head.

As I said physical and mental wellbeing are linked and you will find some of the activities you wrote down in the first list will help with calming you mind, as well some of the neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, released through exercise have a calming effect to your mind.

On my second list for calming my mind, I would have:

• Meditation – possibly 2 or 3 times a day for 5 minutes
• Journaling – write down my thoughts.
• Listen to calming music.
• Listen to sounds of nature.
• Yoga session
• Neck and shoulder stretching I can do at my desk.
• Breaks away from my work.
• Speak to family and close friends about
• Watch a movie.
• Read
• Go to a steam room /sauna.
• Breathing exercises
• Play an instrument.
• Sing – even though I’m tone deaf!
• Etc…

As before, make the list as long as you can, add anything and everything you can think of. There are a couple of physical exercises in my list, but I class these as slow and gentle which help to calm the mind as well as relaxing the body rather than working it.

When you have made both lists, you will see you have plenty of options. Hopefully, most if not all the activities on your list will be things you will want to do. Now comes the tough part.

Time to Focus

Pick one thing from each list which you are prepared and committed to doing over the next month (and longer). Which two will you find useful and easy to get started with? Go for the easy ones if some of the others make you feel you won’t be able to maintain them.

For me I would go for:

• Go for a short walk – 10 to 15 minutes.
• Meditation – possibly 2 or 3 times a day for 5 minutes

These would be easy to do, not take too much time, and easy to fit into my day.

Often, we are told to dramatically change things and do difficult and hard things. Occasionally, this may be necessary. However, when you start doing activities which we have never done before or find it a challenge to add them into our schedule, then the chance of making them a permanent part of your day drops dramatically.

It’s much easy to start with small changes, and more effective in turning them into habits and routines, at which point we can then work another activity or change.  Once I have got used to taking a short walk each day and meditating for 5 minutes a couple of times a day, I could change the walk to a short 10 min jog perhaps.

Or add the neck and shoulder exercise to the two activities. You will find over time; you naturally want to up the pace and taking on the next challenge up becomes easier.

It’s not too dissimilar to New Year resolutions. When you try to make wholesale changes to your life by having half a dozen resolutions, usually by mid-February most of them fall by the wayside and you are back into the way you led your life in December.

If you focus on just one change for a few months which is followed by another change, you are more likely to make both changes stick.

Summary

Keep your two lists, pick one activity from each side and work on making them until they become part of your daily routine. It will probably take longer than the next month, but once they have become part of your routine you can pick another activity from the list and get started on it. You can keep doing this until you feel you have created a balance to your mental and physical wellbeing.

Small steps, small actions, will turn into big changes over time.

Stick with it!