6- May is Mental Health Awareness Month
Let’s talk about mental health.
I live a fast pace life and it may seem like I never really stop. The truth is that sometimes, I stay busy to keep myself from thinking about my real problems. I tend to put on a mask and hideaway by stacking my to-do list. But over the years, I’ve learned that this is not healthy and that in order to heal, I need to let myself feel… everything. By being aware of this, I’ve made efforts to figure out what healing looks like for me. In honor of mental health awareness month, I want to share three key strategies that I apply every single day to help me feel better about myself so that I can achieve my goals.
1. Stay Hydrated
2. Make my bed every morning
3. Write my gratitude
Stay Hydrated
My cousins and I love running. We’ve finished many half-marathons together and our mantra has always been “stay hydrated.” Little did I know, this was a key factor in helping me reach every finish line, even when I thought I couldn’t take another step. My cousin, Kimmy, always reminds us to drink water, so much that it has been ingrained into my life and has changed the way I live.
For me, drinking water is the first step in reaching your goals. I recently finished reading “Girl, Stop Apologizing!” by Rachel Hollis and that book is EVERYTHING. In one of the chapters, she highlights the importance of drinking water. “Hydration is one of those foundational elements for success.” It’s true. When you’re dehydrated, you don’t have energy to work towards your dreams and your goals, so you give up. You are a plant that needs water and sunlight!
“Every time someone wants to start a new plan, I have them start with that small step. Just drink your water. And once you tackle that and make it your habit, you’ll feel ready to move on to bigger things.”
Drinking water is also symbolic of fulfillment in life. I used to see life as “glass half empty” until I came across a quote (I love my quotes) to encourage people to see life as “glass half full.”
Rachel Hollis also makes an analogy, comparing your life to a flower vase. We fill our vase with water, and even before it’s full, we want to keep tipping it over so it can water the things around us. We want to give and give and help others — our family, friends, co-workers, significant others, pets, strangers — while we are still learning to fill up our own vase. But that doesn’t work because eventually, you tip over and the vase breaks. What we should do is fill up our vase and let the water flow over onto the things around us. It is only when we are full are we able to give our best to others and help others see the best in themselves.
I was an avid coffee drinker. I was one of those people who had to have my cup of coffee every morning. Then I switched to tea, and now, it’s solely water. I remind myself that when I’m hydrated, I have the power to make my dreams become reality.
Make My Bed Every Morning
I’m sure many of you have seen the speech by William McRaven, a U.S. Navy Admiral who gave a commencement speech at the University of Texas Austin about the importance of making your bed each morning. “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” Even before I saw this speech, I was already doing this task because I was forced to as a child. I never realized how instrumental it would be to my adulthood.
I’m a dreamer. I have big dreams and big goals but I always struggled with the journey of getting there because I am also extremely impatient. I can also be unrealistically ambitious. I always take on too much, try to do it all and end up being burnt out. I want to run before I can walk. A recent example is learning how to code. I’ve always wanted to learn how to code to build websites and apps but have no background or knowledge about it. When I was looking into this, I searched how long it would take me to learn enough to build a website or an app. I wanted to know how many hours I needed to allocate to learning and practicing. I found a million answers and it all varied! This was really frustrating because I wanted immediate results. I wanted to know that I can dedicate 50 hours to learning, and then be able to build an app in one month. This is not happening. Having dreams and goals are important, but it’s just as important to create milestones in reaching those goals.
The most important thing in accomplishing your bigger goals is tackling the simplest tasks that sets you up for success. Often times, this means breaking things down, building small steps so you can reach the end goal and eventually, go beyond.
In my job, this is called scaffolding. You can’t do step 10 without finishing steps 1–3. I tell my students this all the time. Sometimes, you just can’t skip steps. And maybe it’s not about the steps, maybe it’s about the feeling of accomplishing each step. For many of my students, I have to break down lessons and tasks in various ways. Each student is different; they learn differently at a different pace. I have students who get frustrated and give up easily and this may manifest in behavioral issues. The problem is not that that student is a “bad kid” (I hate when people say this), it’s that the student never experienced the feeling of success, feeling good about something they accomplished. When you start to have small wins, you feel good about yourself, you feel ready to take on the next big thing.
I like to start out my day by making my bed because if all else fails, that is my one win that day. And sometimes, it’s showering. On those really dark days, I force myself to shower because that adds to my accomplishments. Those of you who’ve had such low days that you’re just curled up in bed with the curtains drawn, laying in the dark, sinking into your own thoughts, you know what I’m talking about.
“A made bed will give you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”
Trust me, make your bed every day and you’ll feel better about yourself and your life.
Write My Gratitude
I saved the best for last. I can’t emphasize how important this is and how life changing this has been for me. It literally saved my life.
People have asked me how I was able to manage or get better from my depression and anxiety. This is how. I learned about conscious manifestation and started to fully believe in the universe and all its powers. I also started reading a lot about self-development. There is one major, common denominator across all of these ideas — having gratitude.
When I decided that I wanted to control my depression and anxiety instead of letting it control me, I started thinking and learning more about conscious manifestation, and the most important thing about manifestation is gratitude. I started to think about things that I was grateful for, and I promise you, there is a lot to be grateful for. I’ll admit, it took me quite some time before I actually started doing it. It’s hard. For those of you who know what depression feels like, it’s extremely hard to think about gratitude. It’s hard to think about anything positive. You just feel hopeless all the time. However, once I started doing it, my mind made a shift. I used to have an “I Am Thankful” wall in my apartment where every single day, I would come home from work and write down something I’m grateful for no matter how shitty my day was. I did this until it became a habit. Now that I’ve moved, I no longer have a wall, but I do keep a gratitude journal, and every day, I write down three things that I’m grateful for. Bonus points if that gratitude is relevant to what has happened that day. I tell myself that even if I have a shitty day, I must find one good thing in that day to be grateful for. You might not see the results right away, but over time, you’ll notice how beautiful your life has become simply because your perspective about negativity has changed. Things don’t always happen for a reason, but you can find meaning in everything that happens.
These strategies may seem simple, but it’s actually really tough, especially on those days when I feel really insecure and unsure of myself. But forcing your mind to think in a different way, forcing your mind to see from a different perspective changes how you feel about your life. The mind is insanely powerful. I have yet to access all of its potential, but each of these strategies have helped me put one foot in front of the other, and slowly but surely, I am getting to where I want to be. I am becoming who I have dreamt of my whole life.
