10 Ways to Improve Your Mental Health

1. Change Your Sleeping Habits

Sleep is one of the most important factors when it comes to enhancing your mental wellbeing. Sleep deprivation can have a drastic effect on your mood and even lead to anxiety and depression. What’s more, many people don’t get enough hours of sleep each night for their bodies and minds to properly recover.

Changing your sleeping habits is one of the best natural ways to improve your mental health. A good night of uninterrupted sleep can result in you waking up feeling happy, healthy, and motivated to take on the day. With that said, improving the quality of your sleep requires a few important steps.

It helps to cut out any distractions at least an hour before bedtime, and you should also avoid drinking coffee in the evening. You might also want to invest in a good mattress and comfortable pillows – these can help improve your sleep significantly. Most importantly, try to stick to a regular sleep schedule as this will make it much easier to get 8 hours of sleep or more each night.

2. Alter Your Diet

Your diet can also affect your mental health in many ways. Eating too much can leave you feeling drowsy and lethargic, especially if you’re eating too many simple carbs. Eating too little can also negatively impact your mood. It helps to use a calorie counting app to ensure you’re eating a healthy amount each day.

However, it’s not just about eating the right amount of calories. The types of foods you eat can also affect your mood. Too much sugar or caffeine can lead to anxiety, and too much salt can leave you feeling dehydrated. That doesn’t mean you need to cut junk food out completely, but you should moderate your intake to ensure it isn’t impacting your mental and physical health.

The best approach is to find some healthy foods that make you feel good – especially if they also help you work towards your body goals. Fortunately, you can find tons of healthy recipes online or even use recipe apps to help yourself out. But remember to treat yourself to comfort foods occasionally – eating the things you love can also improve your mood.

3. Check Your Vitamin D Levels

Sometimes even if you feel like you’re doing everything right your mental health can suffer due to nutritional deficiencies. Vitamin D deficiencies are particularly common – especially during fall and winter when days are shorter and many people don’t get enough sunlight.

You might want to have a physician check your vitamin D levels. They can also check for any other nutritional deficiencies that might be affecting your physical and mental health. Even if you aren’t suffering from a vitamin D deficiency, it can still help to ensure you’re getting plenty of vitamin D each day.

Getting a good amount of sunlight each day can ensure your body absorbs more vitamin D. Foods and drinks such as fatty fish, egg yolks, and fortified orange juice can also help. Taking a daily vitamin D supplement is also a great idea to ensure your levels remain consistently high, especially as vitamin D contributes to healthy bones, teeth, and muscles as well as your mental health.

4. Find Relaxing Hobbies

Sometimes the activities you choose to spend your free time on can impact your mental health. For instance, if you spend your free time constantly studying or stressing about work the next day, your mood will suffer. One of the best ways to improve your overall mental wellbeing is to find hobbies that help you relax and unwind.

Certain hobbies such as reading, yoga, knitting, and painting are known for being particularly soothing. However, you should choose the activities that are the most relaxing for you. For instance, you might find listening to music exceptionally relaxing, or maybe playing video games helps you unwind after a long day.

Set aside a little time each day to focus on your hobbies. You’ll often find that having this time to do the things you enjoy helps increase your overall happiness and mental focus. What’s more, many of these hobbies can be productive and rewarding, resulting in a satisfying mental boost when you partake in them regularly.

5. Reach Out to Friends More Often

Another one of the simplest yet most effective ways to improve your mental health is to reach out to your friends more often. Isolation and lack of social contact can make you feel more depressed and anxious, whereas hanging out with the people you love can have a huge positive effect.

As such, you might want to arrange social gatherings more frequently or even just meet friends one-on-one for coffee or lunch. Talking to your friends more often can enhance your day and make you feel better.

Even if you don’t see your friends in person as often, messaging them regularly can help you counteract feeling isolated, especially if you’re in lockdown or quarantine. You might even want to find online games you can play with friends or make a group chat with your closest buddies.

6. Practice Meditation

Meditating helps you clear your mind and reach a sense of inner peace, making it one of the greatest natural remedies for mental health issues. Whether you’re anxious about an upcoming event or simply dealing with stress, meditating can help you feel more relaxed and positive.

Many studies have found that meditation can be incredibly beneficial for your health. A 2013 study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that mindfulness meditation helped significantly reduce anxiety and stress. A 2018 study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine even found that it helped reduce blood pressure in hypertensive patients.

Many online guides and YouTube videos can help you get started with meditation. You could also attend a local mindfulness meditation class. You might even want to download a free meditation app such as Insight Timer or Smiling Mind to guide you through the process.

7. Cut Out Causes Of Stress

If you’re constantly feeling stressed or anxious, you can do wonders for your mental health by figuring out the things that are impacting your mental health negatively. By identifying common stressors and eliminating them, you can improve your quality of life significantly.

For instance, if commuting to work each day is stressing you out, you might want to try cycling or even walking to work. If your debt is stressing you out, creating a plan to manage it better can help curb your financial stress.

You might need to make some tough decisions. For instance, cutting out toxic friends or changing jobs due to excessive stress can feel like a risky decision, but it often pays off for your mental wellbeing.

8. Do Something Physical

It’s no secret that physical activity can do wonders for your physical and mental health. Not only does exercise release endorphins that make you feel happy, but it’s an excellent way to relieve stress and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression.

With that said, going for long runs or hitting the gym isn’t the best approach for everyone. It’s important to find a physical activity that you enjoy. For instance, you might want to join a dance class, start a martial art, play sports with your friends, or try yoga.

Even simple physical activities like going for daily walks can help you improve your mental wellbeing while simultaneously enhancing your mental health. Just make sure you’re doing something active each day to keep your body and mind in check.

9. Take Regular Breaks

Working non-stop might help you make more money and pay the bills, but eventually, you’ll be too mentally exhausted to keep it up. No matter what you do for a living, it’s important to take regular breaks to remain mentally healthy.

While you should avoid procrastinating too much, taking short breaks throughout your workday can help reduce burnout and even enhance your mental focus. Of course, relaxing on your lunch break will also help.

You should also take holidays regularly. Going on vacation is an excellent way to reward yourself for your hard work and allows you to relax your body and rejuvenate your mind. As such, don’t be afraid to use your holiday time however you want.

10. Try New Things

Sometimes depression can be caused simply by monotony. If you’re doing the same things all the time, you might feel trapped or bored with your life. That’s why it’s extremely important to get out of your comfort zone and try new things.

Even something as simple as taking a walk to work instead of driving can help you improve your mood. However, you should also push yourself to try new activities, such as a new sport, class, or hobby. Not only will this help you feel more excited in your life, but it can also be very rewarding.

You can even take things further by taking trips to new destinations or even changing your entire life by moving or becoming a digital nomad. Whichever way, finding ways to spice up your life can help you prevent tedium and also help you avoid mental health problems.