On this blog we talk a lot about how to keep your body healthy, but not much about how to stay mentally healthy.
Our brain is one of our most important organs. It keeps us functioning, and being happy keeps us and our beautiful minds functioning too!
Why do we need to be happy and have relationships?:
In the stone age, people were are a lot less developed and evolved like we are today, but the social imperatives were fairly simple: food, water, shelter and reproduction. This was vital to the survival and population of the species. So the inescapable thing to do; don't get killed. The best way to stay alive was to belong to a group. The modern need can be traced right back to this. If we were loved, we would stay as a group and if we didn't belong, we would die.
Now fast forward to modern day and we have little danger compared to our stone age days. We aren't prey, and our environment is safer to inhabit, so what dangers do we have now? Well, things have become more psychological and less physical. The wiring for avoiding the physical threat, however, is what remains in place and drives our reaction to being "left out".
So our minds are now taking the damage, with self critical thoughts stemming from society standards and pressures. This social instinct to fit in, to be in a group and to be loved.
Other stress causing factors can make us unhappy. Like money, work, children (haha) and other issues you face on the daily. They can eat away at us if we don't look after ourselves.
“People talk about how healthy they are but they don’t talk about how mentally healthy they are. Yet mental health affects everything,” Mark Williamson, director of Action for Happiness.
Here's how to stay happy:
• Find something that gives you that good feeling and do it. Some call it a purpose, I just call it something that makes me happy. A job you that you get out of bed looking forward to is a job that will keep you feeling great.
• Put people before things. Spend time with your children and other family members. Socializing in general is great for mental well being.
• Keep learning.
• Volunteer - Studies have shown links between volunteering and positive mental well being.
• Never measure success by what possessions you have or how much money you make, because you could be a millionaire and have a lonely, sad life. You could also be a homeless man sleeping at the subway station, and be happy and content with life.
• Celebrate when good things happen. Party, dance and let your hair down (if that's your thing).
• Understand that sometimes you mess up and that's cool. No one ever got better at anything by doing it right every time.
• Stop, breathe and clear your head.
•Make peace with yourself and others.
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