5 Crucial Mental Health Boosting Secrets

In these ever more financially trying times it’s become harder and harder to maintain a balanced peace of mind. You’ve really got to work on yourself to keep the even-keeled outlook at all within reach and/or present. With that being said, various folks from the Reddit community hopped on a positivity-themed, uplifting AskReddit thread to share their best kept (until now) secrets when it comes to both maintaining or boosting their mental health. With winter around the corner and the days falling shorter and the cold creeping in from the outside, these couldn’t come at a better time.

1. Let yourself experience your emotions without judgment.

This is huge. Many folks have been conditioned from a young age, due to various factors like harsh parenting, to repress and outright deny difficult waves of emotions when they seem to overtake one’s entire psychological state of being. Instead, aiming to work with, sit with, listen to the emotions when they arise can work wonders in ultimately being done with them when they’ve fully lost their “charge.”

2. Identify what you do have control over, and act from there.

You could spin your busied mind in circles till the wheels literally fall off when it comes to obsessing over the hypothetical outcomes of an upcoming day’s events. Isn’t it just the best when said mental circles seem to gain the most momentum sometime right after you turn the lights off to go to sleep, or earlier in the morning when you could’ve really used the extra couple of hours of sleep? Instead of falling prey to this vicious circle, try taking up a practice like journaling before turning in for the evening to deposit any and every thought that pops up in your mind carousel, noting what you can control, and just see if you feel but a bit more calmly mentally cleansed afterwards.

3. It is what it is (to a healthy degree).

We aren’t out here advocating that you take up a universal “it is what it is” approach to everything in your life, as there will inevitably be curveballs tossed your way by life that require you to act, and preferably act from a centered place of calm, not panic. However, just taking a pause and assessing whether your stressing will actually impact the event or unfolding of events as you see them can be hugely helpful in navigating the more anxiety-inducing times. It’s remarkable how much energy you can reclaim when you stop sweating the stuff that you can’t change.

4. Apologize when/if you discover you were in the wrong.

We get it. Apologizing can be excruciatingly tough during the times that you were completely passionately sure that you were in the right in the heat of an inspired argument with a friend/loved one. However, backtracking, getting real with what was said, and slowing things down enough to assess the situation from an objective standpoint can work wonders when it comes to repairing rough patches with the very support system that you need.

5. Find a few things you’re grateful for each day.

You by no means have to get deeply poetic with it, but making a conscious effort (the mornings are great for this) to identify a few things that you’re grateful for and not cursing the existence of in your life each day can be an absolute game-changer when it comes to reconfiguring your routine outlook on what you might expect to happen on a given day. You can almost semi-frequently, begin moving through life with a growing sense of seemingly unrealistic — not magical thinking — optimism. With that being a potential side effect of practicing gratitude journaling, it would seem to be a practice that’s worth taking a shot at.