8 Things to Do Every Day to Enhance Mental Health

Eight things you can do every day to help the physical aspects of the brain and body as well as thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

1. Take 10 slow, deep breaths. (Or blow bubbles) Repeat throughout the day.
2. March or jog in place. Do jumping jacks. Or pushups. Just move to stimulate both your body and brain.
3. Create a daily goal, and list little steps you need to take to accomplish it.
4. Embark on a stroll, inside or outside, and intentionally notice positive things around you.
5. Acknowledge the awful things you're dealing with and take note of how you're surviving. What can you do more of to keep getting through the tough stuff?
6. Practice noticing your thoughts. Identify, challenge, and replace the unhealthy ones. Repeat, because doing this takes practice.
7. Color or draw.
8. Do at least one thing you love every day.

Emotion

You cannot have a feeling (emotion) without first having experienced a thought. Take away your brain and your ability to “feel” is wiped out. A feeling is a physical reaction to a thought. If you cry, or blush, or increase your heartbeat, or any of an interminable list of potential emotional reactions, you have first had a signal from your thinking center. Once your thinking center is damaged or short-circuited, you cannot experience emotional reactions. Every feeling that you have was preceded by a thought, and without a brain you can have no feelings. Your conclusion is also inescapable. If you control your thoughts, and your feelings come from your thoughts, then you are capable of controlling your own feelings. And you control your feelings by working on the thoughts that preceded them. Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy because of the thoughts that you have about the people or things in your life. Becoming a free and healthy person involves learning to think differently. Once you can change your thoughts, your new feelings will begin to emerge, and you will have taken the first step on the road to your personal freedom.

Feeling

Feelings are not just emotions that happen to you. Feelings are reactions you choose to have. If you are in charge of your own emotions, you don’t have to choose self-defeating reactions. Once you learn that you can feel what you choose to feel, you will be on the road to “intelligence”—a road where there are no bypaths that lead to N.B.D.’s. This road will be new because you’ll see a given emotion as a choice rather than as a condition of life. This is the very heart and soul of personal freedom.

If you control your thoughts, and your feelings come from your thoughts, then you are capable of controlling your own feelings. And you control your feelings by working on the thoughts that preceded them. Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy because of the thoughts that you have about the people or things in your life. Becoming a free and healthy person involves learning to think differently. Once you can change your thoughts, your new feelings will begin to emerge, and you will have taken the first step on the road to your personal freedom.

Be the Awareness Behind Your Thoughts

Our mind

What Meditation Does to You

Meditation is not about thinking about nothing, or trying to quiet the mind so that there are absolutely no thoughts. Rather, meditation is about training the mind to focus, it’s about gaining awareness about the thoughts, and creating some distance between you and your thoughts. When you can observe your thoughts, and observe the reactions you have to your thoughts, you are getting to the point.

Meditation and mindfulness bring a certain level of calmness into your life, and give you space to reflect on what is happening around you, instead of reacting continuously to every single stimulus that might pass you by (including your own thoughts). You are in better control of your thoughts, your emotions and your reactions, which makes you better able to navigate in life with a purpose, instead of just drifting from one sensation to the next.