Taking Care Of Your Whole Self.

Our mental health is the health of our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Just like the health of your body it can effect how you think, feel and act. It can also determine how we cope, interact with others and how we make choices in life. One in five Australians experience mental illness in any one year and almost half Australians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime.

Some early warnings signs can be

• Sleeping a lot or a little
• Withdrawing from social activities
• Having no energy
• Feeling low or like nothing matters
• Feelings of helpless or hopelessness
• Sever mood swings
• Hearing voices
• Inability to perform normal everyday tasks
• Thinking or harming yourself or others

Unfortunately, in the past our society has focused too much on our physical self and not enough on our emotional self. We all know that staying physically fit and well is extremely important for our health, but unfortunately not enough emphasis has been put on our mental health, which is crazy because you can’t be physically fit and well if you are mentally unwell and vise versa.  It’s time to bring both our physical and our emotional self together, and start looking at it as our whole self. Our whole self needs to be well, in order to live life to its full potential.

To help celebrate QLD Mental Health week we have put together some great ways to stay both physically and emotionally healthy.

• Eat good food! Wholesome, natural, delicious foods and regularly.
• Keep moving! Whatever it is you love, yoga, pilates, bootcamp, dancing, walking, tennis, swimming, bike riding. Whatever brings you joy in movement, do that!
• Sleep, good quality, delightful sleep
• Value yourself and know your worth. Even on the bad days .
• Surround yourself with good, kind, caring people.
• Develop gratitude and thankfulness in your day to day. It can be the smallest thing and again, even on the bad days.
• Quieten your mind. Meditate, lay in the sunshine, watch the tree rustle in the wind, listen to music. Whatever helps you zone out and allow the mind to be still.
• For some people, being involved in spiritual or religious practices can improve wellbeing. This can include belonging to a faith community, meditation, prayer, mindfulness or practices such as yoga and Tai Chi.
• Set goals. There is nothing more satisfying than writing a list and checking it off. Start small and build from there. Remember, its the small sometimes insignificant things that we do each and every day that get us to the top of the mountain.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Help can be in the form of doctors, counsellors, coaches, family, friends, colleagues and help lines.

The last thing I want to share with you is this TED talk from Brene Brown on Shame. Remember, you are not your thoughts or emotions. You have them and you can master them.