Whenever one mentions mental health, what comes to mind is mostly the bad stuff. So this is what we shall focus in this post but hopefully, I can put a positive spin on it. Rather than seeing it as just gloom and doom with no chance of getting out of the pit, we can view it as improvement needed. We will take small steps to tackle the change one step at a time.
Start with Small Steps
In my previous post on improving our diet, I talked about starting off with just changing the breakfast loaf from white to wholewheat or adding an apple a day. Then as we feel that we can change more stuff after seeing the small improvement, we make another small change and so on. For mental health, we shall attempt to do the same and make it into a project that is specific and attainable.
Preventive Action – Take a short Pause
Before going into problem solving, perhaps a more important task is preventing the issue from happening in the first place. I suspect that many of us have been in that place where we make the comment, “How I wish I did not do that….” Impulsive behavior is not easy to handle, especially since it may be related to our personality. We do it at the spur of the moment, when we are driving and someone cuts into our lane, when we are talking and someone suddenly interrupts us, when we are focusing on an activity and a person suddenly disrupts our concentration. It get worse if we have been thru a long day and our brains are just roasted.
Frankly, there is no good way to go about doing this except to acknowledge that these disruptions exist and is perfectly normal. Start with admitting that these things will happen, and the person doing it to us is doing it unintentionally and bears no malice to anybody. One way is to take a deep breath and perhaps count 1 to 10 before making any sudden moves. Sounds simple but taking action is another thing. Just need to remember that the few seconds pause will help make difference between “just another normal day” and something that we will regret for the rest of our lives.
Next post: a major contributors to the bad – Stress
