What Habits Do You Recommend for Better Mental Health?
Psychologist Brief
What Habits Do You Recommend for Better Mental Health?
In the pursuit of enhanced mental health, we've gathered insights from seven wellness professionals, including psychotherapists and habit coaches. They share seven habit they encourage their clients to adopt, ranging from practicing the STOP Method to integrating pleasure into daily life. Discover these expert-backed strategies to elevate your mental well-being.
- Practice the STOP Method
- Prioritize Quality Sleep
- Align Actions with Values
- Exercise for Emotional Well-being
- Establish a Morning Routine
- Incorporate Daily Meditation
- Integrate Pleasure into Daily Life
Practice the STOP Method
One habit I encourage my clients to adopt for better mental health is the STOP method: Stop for a moment, Take a deep breath, Observe how you feel, and then Proceed with intention. This practice can be especially helpful during moments of stress, like before a difficult conversation or when feeling overwhelmed at work. By using STOP, you activate the vagus nerve, which reduces stress and brings immediate calm.
For example, if you're caught in traffic and feel frustration rising, taking a moment to STOP can shift your mindset, allowing you to approach the situation with greater patience and clarity. This habit not only improves mental clarity and calmness but also fosters a deeper connection with yourself and the world around you.
Prioritize Quality Sleep
As a therapist, I tend to listen more than I speak and shy away from giving advice. My goal is to empower clients to discover their own insights. That said, the one habit I always recommend for better mental health is prioritizing quality sleep. I encourage clients to make sleep a priority, aiming for 7-9 hours each night. This habit can significantly improve mood, reduce stress, and enhance mental clarity. By valuing sleep, clients can unlock a more resilient and balanced mental state. It's a small change with a profound impact.
Align Actions with Values
As a professional mental-health counselor, I often encourage members to become very aware of their values and priorities so that on a regular basis they can make choices and take committed action toward those pursuits and behaviors that support a values-based life, rather than one hindered by fear and lack of motivation. Often, this first entails becoming really conscious of how their life up to now has shaped their views based on personal experience. It requires doing a review of life lessons they want to keep, and others that might need to be re-examined and processed, such as unhelpful conclusions and beliefs resulting from trauma.
It also includes factoring in their spirituality and its teachings in which they are strongly invested. Once the background picture is complete, they can more confidently identify the values they can strongly stand for. At that point, they have to make a conscious decision if they are willing to allow themselves to be agents led by these values in their life in a committed, ongoing way, rather than be pushed around by fears and insecurities. Unfailingly, all people I've worked with will commit to their values.
Exercise for Emotional Well-being
Research shows us that regular exercise is crucial to physical and emotional well-being. Twenty minutes of moderate exercise improves attention for three hours. Regular exercise over months can be as effective as antidepressants in reducing anxiety and depression. I highly encourage clients of all ages to engage in regular moderate exercise to reap these benefits and potentially avoid or reduce the need for medication management.
Establish a Morning Routine
Starting off your day with a morning routine can be beneficial. A morning routine gives you something to anchor your day to. It doesn't matter if your routine is 10 minutes or 2 hours long. Your morning routine can be anything you want, whether it is showering and shaving or meditation and a workout. Habits and routines should be customized to fit your unique tastes and style.
The value of a morning routine can hardly be understated. You get a small win to start your day. Over time, your body adjusts to know that upon completion of the routine, your day begins. It gives you an exciting reason to get out of bed that isn't just another day of work. I encourage my clients to start their day with a routine that is customized to their taste and to make sure that it is simple enough to do every day.
Incorporate Daily Meditation
A habit that I always recommend is meditation as a way to improve mindfulness. By taking a few minutes each day to sit in stillness and clear your mind, you'll be better equipped to manage stress and better control your emotions.
While most people think they're 'doing meditation wrong,' there are many free apps available that can help you get started. Insight Timer, Calm, and Headspace are a few options to consider.
Instead of thinking you need to sit cross-legged for an hour chanting, take 5-10 minutes to sit and take several deep breaths. Box breathing, or 4x4, is a simple way to do this. Breathe in for four counts, hold for four, breathe out for four, and pause for four counts. Do this several times to help keep you grounded and focused.
Meditation has been shown to dramatically help with overall mental health and well-being.
Integrate Pleasure into Daily Life
This may sound unconventional, but the principle I teach my clients for better mental health is the idea of integrating more pleasure into everyday living. This is by no means a way of bypassing emotions, but used as a tool to reclaim our own empowerment. Often, we block feeling good, and instead, when we actively focus on pleasure and what lights us up, our mental health can bloom tremendously. The question I have my clients ask themselves regularly is: “How can I make this moment more pleasurable?”
As an example, if you were strained and stressed while working, maybe we could slowly roll our shoulders back, put on a nice song, and slowly infuse a little bit more joy into that crunchy situation. Everyday pleasure can be a deeply meditative practice as it is found in the five senses, and it allows us to be present in the moment. When people struggle to access pleasure, I invite them to lean into their senses; that could look like taking a deep breath, enjoying and savoring your cup of tea, smelling that delicious pumpkin candle, listening deeply to the different instruments in your music, feeling the texture of the clothes on your skin, creating a space in your home that feels good and is beautiful to look at, and more.
If some of your senses are not accessible to you, that’s okay! You can play with what is available to you. Living from pleasure can drastically improve our quality of life; it reinforces positivity and often has us guided to healthy habits that build and complement strong mental health.
