This is a series of blog posts on the small steps you can take to build a life you love. Read Part 1 on ‘Good-Work Life Balance’ here.
This week we continue to explore simple steps we can take to craft a life that we love. We’re going to dive into one of my favourite things to talk about these days, mental health and well-being.
This may come as a surprise to you but I haven’t always loved talking about mental health. Yes, that seems crazy when it’s my job (I’m a child psychiatrist) and I do talk about it at work all the time. However, I think I had always seen it as ‘work’ and had not actively practised any of the strategies I preached, until I experienced burnout in 2021. I realised that I needed to be intentional about building my mental and emotional resilience.
‘MENTAL RESILIENCE AND WELL-BEING’
What do I mean by good mental health? It is a state of well-being in which we feel good (or positive) about ourselves and others, we are able to cope with life stresses, we function productively and contribute to our community or society. It is not an absence of bad days, negative events or life disappointments. However, having good mental health helps us bounce back more quickly from these adversities.
One of tools of positive psychology I have found particularly effective is the ‘power of shifting perspective’: the ability to shape our reality by changing the thoughts and emotions we have (or the actions we take) about a particular circumstance.
To give an example, I am a lover of sunny, blue-skied days. Indeed, most of us are. However I would actively feel down, low in energy and lacking motivation whenever I experienced bad weather. I hated grey, overcast days with a passion and often felt negative on those days (which no doubt had an impact on those around me).
By shifting my perspective, I have learned to appreciate the opportunities that overcast days bring. Waking up to an overcast day no longer fills me with dread, instead I am grateful for the opportunity to go for a run and not get so hot and sweaty; or grateful to have a day to potter around at home and not feel pressured to make the most of the sunshine (a pressure everyone who lives in the UK feels!). It’s made me feel happier and more positive even when the weather is sub-optimal.
‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes’
Marcel Proust
Gratitude, mindfulness, and therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) are some examples of perspective changing practises. Three practices that I have incorporated into my daily life are:
- Gratitude
- Intention setting
- Affirmation
Before you turn up your nose at these practices (like I used to), there is good scientific evidence that people who have an attitude of gratitude enjoy higher levels of well-being and happiness, have fewer physical health symptoms and have increased mental strength and resilience.1 I use a 5-minute journal as a prompt to engage in the above practices daily. Here’s how you can use these practices to improve your mental resilience and well-being.
- Engage in a daily gratitude exercise
Spend a couple of minutes each day making a note of things that you are truly grateful for. It may be small things like your partner making you a cup of coffee every morning or big things like having a roof over your head. This boosts the release of dopamine and serotonin (neurotransmitters in our brains) and makes us feel ‘good’. A regular gratitude practice will strengthen these neural pathways and retrain your brain to have a more positive outlook. It will make you more resilient, and increase your levels of satisfaction in life.
- Set your intention for the day (and follow through with it)
My daily journal asks, ‘What would make today great?’. I use it as an opportunity to set out my intention/goals for the day. Sometimes they are isolated intentions like, ‘Clean my house’ or actions that feed into a life goal like ‘Call friend X’ (which feeds into my overarching goal to develop stronger connections with friends and family). I find that setting my intentions at the start of the day keeps these goals at the forefront of my mind and means I am more likely to follow through and complete those actions.
At bedtime, my ‘Highlights of the day’ section serves as my accountability partner. It gives me an opportunity to reflect on which of those goals I have achieved. I get a huge dopamine boost every time I follow through with my intentions, which makes me more inclined to fulfil future intentions. Evidence of the little actions I am taking to fulfil bigger life goals gives me a sense of achievement, boosts my self esteem and contributes to a sense of purpose in life.
By setting our intentions for the day, we give purpose and meaning to each day which improves our mental well-being and levels of personal and professional success.
Me
- Use Affirmations to Lead to Behaviour change
I have to confess that this section of the daily journal always flummoxed me. When I think of affirmations, I think of people standing in front of mirrors telling themselves they are beautiful. No offence to them, but that does absolutely nothing for me. However, it is true that the stories we tell ourselves or assumptions that we make about ourselves have a huge impact on our behaviour.
I used to be a loud and proud procrastinator. It is a running joke in my family that we get the procrastinating gene from our mother. In fact, I always believed that I did my best work last minute – cue years of late nights and mad dashes to complete projects. I decided to challenge that assumption using my daily affirmation. I started writing ‘I am a doer, I do not procrastinate’.
This led to a state of cognitive dissonance (when you hold two conflicting beliefs, values or attitudes).This internal inconsistency or conflict results in feelings of discomfort and unease; and you are motivated to find ways to ease this discomfort.
I could not say ‘I am a doer, I do not procrastinate’ while continuing to engage in procrastinating behaviours in my day to day life. I had to ease that cognitive dissonance in some way. It could not be through changing my affirmation, because that was a belief about myself that I wanted to cultivate. Therefore I had to change my procrastinating behaviours. I started with little things – like opening letters as soon as I received them, rather than keeping a pile of them for weeks on end, and it snowballed into bigger things, like speaking to a financial advisor and setting clear financial goals for myself (something I had been procrastinating for a couple years). It has had a hugely positive effect on my productivity and increased my sense of well-being.
Using positive affirmation with intentional behavioural changes can boost your mental well-being.
Take Home Message
There are many practices and behaviours we can engage in to improve our mental health. We all know the importance of a good diet, regular exercise, getting enough sleep etc. Well, there are also good mental habits that we can add to our repertoire.
These three simple perspective changing exercises that I now practise daily have improved my mental resilience and well-being and (honestly) changed my life. And they might do the same for you, if you give them a try.
Do you practise gratitude exercises like journaling or praying? Are there other good mental habits I have missed? I would love to hear your views.
References
- Morin, A. (2014, November 23). 7 scientifically proven benefits of gratitude that will motivate you to give thanks year-round. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amymorin/2014/11/23/7-scientifically-proven-benefits-of-gratitude-that-will-motivate-you-to-give-thanks-year-round/#5173c7f5183c.