Mental Health and Self-Care

Have you given yourself and your mental health the attention it deserves lately?

Let's take a moment to reflect together.

You may be one of those people who actually does focus on self-care and keeping your mental health in a top notch state, but if you’re like most of us, you probably WANT to do this, but get caught up in the busyness of life and forget . . . until one day something happens and you realise just how important it is.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the daily grind that is a busy life, but your mental health is just as important, if not more than anything else.

Today, I wanted to reach out and remind you that we’re all on this journey to connect with ourselves and nurture our mind, body and soul, but we sometimes get sidetracked or deviate from course – and that’s OK.

What’s not OK is to neglect or ignore it altogether, because that means we’ll only notice it when we fall over, or we experience a drastic event.

No one is happy all of the time and we must have our “downs” to experience the “ups” – that’s the universal law of polarity. You can’t have happy without sad, night without day, mountains without valleys - you get it, right?

What I’m trying to say is that we all have down times and we’ve all struggled with mental health at some point – when was the last time you felt overwhelmed, fatigued, stressed, anxious etc?

Now, I’m just like most of you when it comes to self-care and putting my mental health first, however over the last couple of years, I have made it a priority, a focus and something that I’ve prioritized and put as a not negotiable.

And the good news is, it doesn’t take that much time to exercise good mental health and self-care every day.

The most important thing is to find a routine that works for you that allows you to create space for you to rest and reset. Find something that takes you away from the day to day grind and allows you to switch.

Here’s some things I’ve found helpful – especially if you can build something in each and every day – if not make time a couple of times a week for you to do something that you can relate to to help you reset.

1. Realising that this is such an important part of your life – more than anything else, taking care of yourself is needed and a must, so work through any feelings of shame or guilt that might pop up in the beginning – after all, you can’t look after or lead others if you’re not looking after yourself.

2.Take a few moments every day to do something for you – this may be just going for a short 5–10-minute walk, doing a quick meditation or exercise routine, reading, singing, playing music, whatever it might be – it can be 10 minutes or 2 hours – just do something that you enjoy. Start small and build up to a regular routine that works for you. I do meditation every morning and if for some reason I don’t (eg: if I’m travelling), I can feel how different my day is.

3.Be grateful for what you DO have, instead of focusing on what you don’t. Each night as I lay down in bed, I think of 3 things that I’m grateful for. Thismight be the bed you’re lying in, something your partner or kids did, the cat or dog welcoming you as you come through the front door or something else – focus on the good things you have going on in your life

4.Ask for help – humans are not meant to be alone and we’re not meant to be able to do everything by ourselves. Sometimes just having someone listen to you is enough, other times you might need their help, or you may need support from a therapist – either way is fine. When you’re struggling with something internally, reach out and ask for help, a friend, family member, mentor, coach or therapist – they’re all there to help.

I regularly reach out to other coaches for help and we support each.

I wanted to share this with you to remind you that you’re not alone and to help you see that we all struggle from time to time and that’s OK. Hopefully these tips help you create a self-care routine that works for you.

If you prioritise you, then you’ll be in your best shape to give to those around you too.

Make taking care of yourself a priority so that you can live your best life.

If you’d like to know more about coaching and how we could work together, book in for a free discovery session now.