How to Maintain Mental Health: A Personal Guide

In recent years, mental health in India has gained greater public attention, but it remains a critical public health concern facing significant challenges.

It is clear that one has to prioritise the Mental Health and focus on mental well being. Easy to say but difficult to practice. I am neither a psychologist nor a doctor but I can share few tips based on my experiences.

My recipe for Mental Health

In spite of witnessing so many transitions and adaptations, our generation has been able to live happily. How did we manage to keep our mental health strong. Let me share the highlights of the strategy I adopted for myself

1. Exercise like Meditation and Pranayama should be part of your daily routine. Only physical exercise doesn’t help the soul. You need to give special attention towards your mind to be healthy.
2. Develop Let Go attitude so that you don’t carry baggage of guilt or regrets. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent so don’t give this permission to anyone to make you feel bad. Take charge of your own life.
3. Practice Spirituality. Keep away from ill thoughts about someone even if he ill treats you. Simply because more you think bad about someone, you only harm yourself.
4. Never compare yourself with others. Every person is unique and special. Comparison is the basic root cause of stress.
5. Life is beyond career, office or the job. When you leave all this behind you start living the life in real sense. I mean develop some life outside this periphery, I guarantee you will love those connections and the moments spent with that group. In my opinion, your connections with groups of varying interests, breaks the monotony in life which gives the required relief.
6. Mind your own business. Don’t poke your nose in neighbours house. I have seen people with huge curiosity about other’s life. I have never understood this kind of need to know about others life happenings.
7. Life is too short to be serious, enjoy every moment to the fullest. Find joy in little things in life. If you cannot avoid certain situations, enjoy them. Don’t keep cribbing about the issue.
8. Be Internal Anchor of yourself. Understand your needs and expectations and drive your life forward. Here , I am referring to emotional needs. These are extremely important for your mental health.
9. No casual approach. If you want to try or achieve something, put your heart into it. Never act casually. Casual approach is dangerous for the success. My rule is clear, if you want to attempt something do it sincerely else don’t attempt it.
10. Make meaningful people connections. Be kind and treat them like human beings. This is most important factor for mental health. You should have someone in your life whom you can talk with open heart. Such connections are solace during the stressful times.
11. Stress in relationships. This is the most delicate area and needs special care. Simply put, logic ceases to exist here. As such it is very difficult to write a universal formula for the issues. Honesty and trust are very important factors in relationships. Take care of your loved ones. Human beings like to be loved and they also like to love someone.
12. Learn to look at your relationship issues with third eye perspective. It is difficult but manageable with some practice. It is a powerful technique to identify the exact issue and resolve it. I will explain further with examples.
13. Understand the difference between worry and concern. It is alright to have concerns about your loved ones but not healthy to worry about them. Having concern allows you to act in the right direction but worry kills your ability to deal with the situation.
14. Health is wealth. Enjoy your exercise routine as a fun filled activity. Connect with supreme power through Nature or music or any other art form.

Having said that the points listed above are very important for mental peace and well being, let us see how I practiced them. I will share few of the life experiences.

In the initial years of our marriage, me and my wife used to fight, which is normal in any relationship. But we talked to each other and decided certain ground rules. Like no other person including our parents can be cause of our misunderstanding. It is our relationship and we will not allow any other person to spoil our peace of mind. I will explain the incident.

The fight broke when we were discussing about taking care of my second daughter. Our parents were old enough and could not rush or join us for baby sitting. Both of us were working, so it was necessary to find the solution. This was the reason of fight. Usual arguments like why your mother cannot come and why my mother has to come always. At this moment I said , it is our decision to expand the family and so it is our responsibility to take care of them. Why should we blame each other and fight. Then the peaceful solution was found out and implemented. That time the idea of crèche was not so common. But we could find one and managed. After that incident, the relationship was quite easy and enjoyable with minor fights off course 😅

At the same time, my hobbies of Trekking and Photography helped me immensely to combat stress in the career.

I followed the simple principle of Live and Let live. Do not judge or label others.

Most important is , be kind to yourself. Don’t be too harsh with yourself. It is okay sometimes to loose or achieve less. Find beauty in imperfection. Trying to be perfect or always achieve 100% is not a good idea. You will only invite stress and health problems.

Sorry for such a long post. I am on a flight mode and did not realise the length of the post.

What do you follow for mental health, Share your opinion in the comments

Be happy and enjoy every moment 😊

Thank you my dear readers for stopping by