You want to try out a simple mental health technique to build healthy habits, but don’t know how. Don’t worry! Everyone that’s experienced really bad mental health issues has gone through this at some point.
It’s like going to the gym for the first time and trying to figure out what to do.
So many options and so little time. Maybe you have an idea on what mental health technique you want to try. If not, it’s okay. I’m going to go over some common mental health techniques for you to try and show you how to maintain this level of activity.
I don’t want you to quit because it’s too hard or you feel like it’s not going to help you. The truth is: it’s not hard and it definitely can help you. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!
Start off “Very Slowly”
The easiest way to establish healthy mental health habits is to start things off very slow. I’m going to use journaling and meditation for my examples.
For journaling, you would write whatever comes to mind. It’s best to start with writing at least one or two sentences at the end of the day and one or two sentences when you wake up in the morning.
I know it’s going to feel weird and awkward but I want you to be comfortable dealing with the uncomfortable. Try this for about a week or two just so you get into the rhythm of things.
After that, slowly increase the activity by one or two more sentences. If you ever feel like writing more that day, you can but I highly recommend that you don’t.
The reason I say this is because when you go above your expectations with something, that is your new standard. You will eventually be disappointed with yourself if you don’t complete that standard that you had for yourself. After all of that, your mental health is going to go down and you’ll eventually quit.
That is not what we want for you. That’s why I recommend you to start very slow, so you can meet your expectations and feel good about yourself.
For meditation, you would start off just by simply closing your eyes and breathing. This could be for 30 seconds or for a minute, whichever one works for you.
While you do this, it is important to focus strictly on your breathing. When you do this, you notice things that you generally wouldn’t notice like your heartbeat and your fingers tingling.
Try this for about a few days or a week. Just enough time for you to feel comfortable doing it. After this, you would move on to the next step in establishing healthy mental health habits.
Keeping Consistency
The next step is being consistent. This is the most important step when it comes to establishing healthy mental health habits.
Without any form of consistency, your habits are gonna go back to being negative and bad again. We don’t want any of that happening.
If you feel like going at a faster pace or speeding up the process at this point, DONT!
Like I said before, you are gonna go above your expectations and lose that consistency. It might push you to do more for a week or two, but after that, you will plateau and quit shortly after.
Journaling
For journaling, you write one or two sentences every night before bed and when you wake up. Do this for a week.
After that week is over, you begin to write a paragraph every night and when you wake up. You do this for a week as well.
The pattern would continue to write a page and so on. The reason why I’m focusing on the length of writing instead of time is that I want you to actually sit down and think about everything that happened to you during the day. What frustrated you and what made you smile throughout the day?
Another way to keep consistency is to make the activity or habit more exciting. For example, if you decide to do journaling find three questions for you to answer every day. Examples of this would be:
- What is the most exciting thing that you think will happen to you today?
- What’s one thing that you experienced today that you did not like?
- What is something that you’re looking forward to tomorrow?
Doing this will make you feel engaged in whatever it is that you’re trying to do. The activity changes every time, so there’s less of a chance of you being bored.
Meditation
For meditation, you would start by closing your eyes and breathing for 30 seconds or a minute. You would do that for a week, so you will start to feel comfortable.
Then you would start meditating for 3 minutes instead of 1. Doing so will allow you to focus more on your breathing and give you time to relax.
After that week, you would increase it to 5 minutes and so on. For this habit, it’s best to increase the time length because that’s pretty much the only thing being measured here.
The most time you can spend meditation should be no more than 30 minutes. I personally recommend 15 minutes for maximum benefits. The best time to do this would be in the morning as well.
Incorporate Your Own Style
The last and final step in establishing healthy mental health habits is to incorporate your own style into your new habit. This is the shortest, but the most fun part of building new habits.
You’re finally comfortable with your new habit. Now is the time to make changes if you want to. Maybe you want to change the way you do this habit? Go right ahead! If you want to speed up the process and go at a faster pace, go right ahead.
If you do this, it is important that you remember the initial process. When you get caught up or feel like you’re going too fast, revert back to the original process.
Summary
To summarize everything I’ve said.
- The three steps to establish healthy mental health habits is to start off very slowly, keep consistency, and incorporate your own style into your new habit.
- It’s important to start off with a routine every week and build up from that.
- Do not go above your standards too much or else you lose consistency with your habit.
- Have fun with your new habit. By making it fun, you’ll want to do it more.
- Incorporate your own style to reduce boredom and increase excitement.
This is the end of the article. You may still be confused about what to do for your particular habit you want to try out. Don’t worry, I’m going to leave examples of many different habits down below.
Examples of Healthy Habits
For reading a book:
- Find a book that you want to read.
- Start off by reading 5 pages per day for a week. (I prefer the number of pages instead of the amount of time reading)
- After that, increase the pages from 5 to 10 and read for the whole week
- The maximum you should go to would be 20 pages or a chapter if you’d like.
- You can write a summary every day about what you read if you want as well (creative)
For exercising (cardio):
- Start off by walking instead of taking the elevator (if you have elevators).
- If not, then start off with walking for 15 minutes or running for 5 minutes.
- Do that every day for the whole week. (When the time increases, so does the amount of days.)
- The next week, try to walk for 30 minutes or run for 10 minutes (about a mile). If you want to, you can reduce the number of days to 4-5 days a week.
- You can go to the gym for cardio or go hiking as a form if your exercise (creative)
For exercising (weightlifting):
- Start off with 5 main exercises and do one set of each exercise for 45 seconds each. (I’m not a fan of reps because most of the time you can breeze through them).
- Do that for about 3 days a week to allow your muscles to rest.
- The best thing about this habit is that you have two things you need to focus on instead of one. You have to focus on the exercise and the weights.
- On your second week, try 2 sets of each exercise for 45 seconds. Again for 3 days a week.
- On the third week, I suggest you go add about 5 pounds (dumbbells) and 10-15 pounds (barbell). This week you are still doing 2 sets of each for 45 seconds.
- Every week you increase the sets you do (max: 5) besides the week where you increase the weight.
- You can go to the gym or do home workouts if you’d like (creative)
For healthy eating:
- Start off the first week by tracking what kind of food do you eat.
- The next week will consist of you substituting one bad food that you ate with something healthy (banana, apple, yogurt, etc.)
- You can choose whatever healthy food you want. Make sure that you’re also eating around the same calorie range as you were before (if you are in a good range to start.)
- The next week would consist of you substituting one bad food again with something healthy.
- You will keep going until you have a nice balance between healthy foods and unhealthy foods.
- You can also look up recipes of healthy foods and decide to make some of them (creative).
If you want more awesome ideas for healthy habits, check out this article!
