Look after your mental health

This week is health week and we already talked about exercise and eating habits so today I think it’s important for us to also focus on mental health. So many people, especially on this side of the world, neglect their mental wellbeing.

As a person who’s minored in Psychology and studied at a university where mental health is highly emphasized, I think it’s just as important for us to focus on our mental wellbeing as well as our physical wellbeing.

As Arabs, we are raised to always focus on our education, careers, families, and all other responsibilities. But all these responsibilities come with a lot of stress. We also get problems from conflicts that arise every day and sometimes it all keeps piling up on us.

Sometimes all we want to do is throw everything away, forget about the world and just sit and do nothing. We need some time off to relax, to take a break, to breathe a little. But there’s no time for that. If we do that, we start to feel guilty about “abandoning” our responsibilities.

But why do we see it that way? We should start to see it from a different perspective. We do have responsibilities but one of our responsibilities should include ourselves. We are responsible for making sure that we are okay too.

If there’s so much going on with our lives and we dedicate no time for relaxing and practicing some mindfulness, then we will see that everything will start to fall apart. If we don’t give ourselves the break that we deserve, then we will lose control of everything around us.

There are so many ways that we can practice mindfulness and look after our mental health. We could just relax and do and think about nothing for a good 10 minutes a day. We could keep some time out for ourselves every once in a while to do something random that keeps our mind busy from work. For example, we could color, watch a YouTube video, meditate or practice deep breathing. These are just a few examples of so much that could be done.

Don’t forget to look after your mental health as well as your physical health. Let me know what you do when you want to take a break from all your responsibilities. 

Photo Credit: Wokandapix