Resource: Managing Mental Health
Photo by Praveen kumar Mathivanan on Unsplash
Heads Up Guys mental health website at https://headsupguys.org/creating-daily-habits-and-routines-to-manage-your-mental-health/ offers tips, useful to anyone, on creating daily habits and routines to manage your mental health.
The article starts with advice on setting yourself up for success, narrowing your focus, and creating specific, measurable and realistic goals, then moves on to the following tips, based on the example of setting up a jogging routine, to “help ensure the sustainability of new habits and wrest control of our lives back from depression”.
The article offers expanded background on the reasoning behind each of the items progressing tips, but in summary:
Start (really) small, e.g. by starting a new jogging habit by running for 5 minutes per day and then gradually increasing the time as the routine settles in and aerobic fitness starts to improve.
Try habit stacking, e.g. by saying “when I get home from work and change out of my work clothes, I will immediately change into my exercise clothes and go for a jog”.
Make it easy and convenient, e.g. by planning the jogging routes in advance, leaving fresh running clothes out the night before, and keeping our running shoes in a place where we can easily see them and slip them on.
Make it fun, e.g. by opting to run at a nearby park instead of the local running track, and/or listen to a favourite podcast or playlist while we jog.
Make it social:
By doing it with others, e.g. by meeting up to jog with a friend or by joining a local running group.
By letting others know, e.g. by posting about our runs on a social media app.
Reward yourself, e.g. by having a healthy smoothie after the fun, or by buying new running shoes as a reward for reaching a specific goal
Be consistent, e.g. by planning to jog at the same time every day as soon as we get home from work
Foster flexibility, e.g. having a rainy day back up plan to hit the gym and jog on a treadmill, or trading out a walk instead of a jog when our body is under stress. “…consistency and flexibility actually go hand in hand. Being consistent is helpful because once a habit becomes a routine, it requires less energy to complete. But life will inevitably get in the way at times and we will eventually need to change plans or miss a day.”
Track your progress, e.g. by using anything from apps to spreadsheet to an old-fashioned to-do list on the wall. A further link to tracking progress is available in another Heads Up Guys article Long-term Strategies to Keep Up with Healthy Habits and Fight Depression