Let's Talk Mental Health Habits! Are you prioritizing your mental health, and do your habits reflect that?

These are the 8 Life-Enhancing Mental Health Habits Every Woman Needs to Know About! 

you can start forming habits that change the trajectory of your mental wellness journey, so that you can have the best year yet!

One place that will most affect your mental wellness is in the area of your Mental Health Habits! What are you doing to change or shift your mind and better your chances to slow anxiety before it starts controlling you? If your answer is "I don't know," then this article is for you!

Being intentional is critical in every area of life but ESPECIALLY in your mental health!

This article is all about the 8 Most Life-Changing Mental Health Habits you can start to develop in your life!

Top Mental Health Habits

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #1

Talk to Yourself

One of the mental health habits that I find most helpful is talking positively to myself and about myself. No one can convince you of your worth if you have convinced yourself that you are worthless. Author, Speaker, and Global Anti Sex-Trafficking advocate, Christine Caine says, " I am only ever really one thought away from going back to how I used to think."

Our minds are extremely powerful. We hear this from motivational speakers and researchers all over the globe. Fighting anxiety and winning is difficult, but it becomes impossible if we are the ones burying ourselves with the thoughts and words we allow to define us.

Often, the things that make us most anxious are things we cannot control. Our self-talk is something we can work on daily. Having the mental health habit of not allowing negative self-talk can increase your quality of success on your mental wellness journey!

Here are some positive affirmations you can speak over yourself daily, in a printable pdf form that is downloadable and from canva.com!

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #2

Prioritize Sleep

Studies show that the average adult needs 7-8 hours of rest per night. Yet, if you are anything like me, you struggle to get 7, and 8 is nearly impossible. One of the Mental Health habits I started recently forming is prioritizing sleep, not making it an afterthought, but actually putting a value on it! 

Here are a few ways I've done that could help you too! 

• I got a watch that monitors my sleep. You could also get a ring that does the same thing, it's a little more pricey, but I've heard it works great! I'll link both here. 

The exact band I have (more affordable option): Amazfit Band 5 Fitness Tracker

The Oura Ring: Oura Ring Generation 3 (more expensive, but also more accurate and has excellent reviews!)

• Created a bedtime for myself. It's slightly flexible, but I have a range I follow each night! 
• I started using relaxing essential oils. I'll link my favorites here!

RutaVaLa Roll-On

Valor Roll-On

Peace & Calming Roll-On

• Set the alarm to wake up at a specific time and follow it. If I know I HAVE to wake up at a particular time, it helps me put my phone down and go to sleep! 
• Decide how much time I will sit on social media before bed, if any. (Spoiler Alert: this is the hardest one, LOL!)

Rest is essential! 

Pope Francis once said, "Rest is so necessary for the health of our minds and bodies, and often so difficult to achieve due to the many demands placed on us. But Rest is also essential for our spiritual health, so that we can hear God's voice and understand what he asks of us." 

Whatever you decide to do, make it a goal to start to form the mental health habit of good sleep! You won't regret it! 

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #3

Exercise regularly

Yes, exercising regularly is on my list of mental health habits every woman needs because exercise can reduce stress. Excess stress causes excess anxiety!

Find something that works for you! Cardio is highly beneficial to your mental health. I'll link some studies below!

For me, it's getting on my spin bike every morning for 25-30 minutes. For you, it could be running, getting on the elliptical, or even pilates!

Articles on mental health habits of exercise:

The Top Six Mental Health Benefits Of Exercise

Depression and anxiety: Exercise eases symptoms

8 Science-backed Mental Health Benefits of Exercise

Great Spin Bike Option:

JOROTO Indoor Cycling Bike Exercise Bike

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #4

Schedule Chats with Friends

If you aren't new here, you already know that I LOVE a good schedule to help with mental health! Scheduling time to talk with friends is a MUST for us ladies!

No one can give you the comfort and confidence you need like a good friend, especially another girlfriend or fellow mom! Women are almost 50% more likely to deal with anxiety than men! We need each other! We've got to stick together.

With life being as busy as it is for most of us, talking to every friend every week might not be possible, but talking to your friends regularly, once or twice a month, could be a game-changer for your mental health.

I know it is for me! My friends and I try to chat at least once a month. We carve out several hours when our kids are asleep or on our days off! We vent, pray, laugh, and cry, and at the end of the convo, we feel so blessed and happy. My friends and I will often text each other later and talk about how we enjoyed our talk.

Trust me; this is such an excellent mental health habit to start. It's life-giving and refreshing! Prioritize your friendships! As Mark Twain once said, "To change your life, you need to change your priorities."

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #5

Stay consistent

I am convinced that the biggest flex you can have in life is consistency in whatever you want to accomplish. Have you ever looked at a person online and thought, "what on earth made THEM popular?" Maybe they aren't the most outgoing, most attractive, and really they aren't the "most" of anything, and it makes you ask yourself, "I wonder what they did right to get to this place of success?"

As Christian Author and Pastor Craig Groeschel says, "To have ongoing success you don't go viral, you don't get lucky, you have to be faithful."

In my mental wellness journey, this couldn't have been more true. Remaining faithful or consistent to the everyday tasks that keep me in a good mental space has been critical for me! Following all of these mental health habits, week-in and week-out has genuinely been the most life-enhancing thing because it applies an action to the idea of using these habits. It demands action from me.

People are successful in any place in life, especially in a mental health and wellness journey, because of their consistency. Just as if you show up to the gym and work out every day, you'll eventually have muscles. If you show up every day and work on your mental health, things will get better, and it's guaranteed!

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #6

Create a Social Media Allowance 

No one says it better than well-known comedian, author, and tv personality Steve Harvey when he says, "Your reality is yours. Stop wasting time looking at someone else's reality while doing nothing about yours." 

Over the last five years, I've begun to notice the negative effects that social media has had on my mental health. The more I'm on it, the more dissatisfied I feel with my own life. One of the most significant mental health habits you can form in this area is to limit your social media time.

Here are a few suggestions based on what has worked for me!

• I use the social media timer option on my iPhone to limit my use. (I don't do this all the time, but when I find myself being excessive, I turn it on!) 

• I unfollow people who make me feel inadequate. I'll follow them back once I regain the confidence I need to enjoy their content. 

• When doing my calendar-blocking schedule, I schedule out specific times that I allow myself on social media sites. Maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour at a time. 

• If you are a person who needs outward accountability, you could also commit to sharing your screen-time with a friend, communicating your goals with them to hold you accountable.

If you are constantly under so much pressure and anxiety and feel like you are behind the eight-ball on what you need to get done, this is something you should attempt to implement for your mental health's sake. It has worked wonders for me!

Other related articles:

5 Benefits of Limiting Social Media Usage

Cutting back on Facebook or Snapchat will make you less depressed, a study says

HERE ARE SOME RELATED RESOURCEs TO MENTAL HEALTH HABITS ON GOODBYE ANXIOUS!

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #7

Make a "later list"

Ahhh, here we go again with the planning/list/organize theme! The truth of this is quite simple: when we are more organized on paper, our minds are less chaotic, and when our minds are less cluttered, we are less anxious!

The "later list" concept is simple. When you are working or starting your day before work, and something comes up in your mind, you write it down on your later list. The tasks may be as different as "write a book," to "take the dog to the vet for shots." This list isn't categorized or perfect. It's a reminder of tasks you need to put on a different list later!

I've created a free printable pdf of the later list! I hope it helps you!

MENTAL HEALTH HABIT #8

Have Intentional Quiet/Prayer Time 

Though one of the easiest mental health habits to form, it becomes the most difficult to sustain because quiet, calm, and prayer are rarely priorities in a generation of quick fixes and simple solutions. It takes time that we all do not have. 

If we begin to value the calm, the quiet, prayer, and conversation with our Creator, we will start to reap the benefits of it. As Author Stephen Covey says, "The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities." 

If you need a little convincing that this is worth your time...

Here are a few of the benefits that prayer has had on my mental health:

• Connecting with God daily helps me to realize that this world and the life I'm living are much bigger than myself. Getting outside of my world and realizing that life is a vapor helps put anxieties in perspective.
• It creates a sense of inner calm as I give my anxious thoughts to the ONE who can move on my behalf. 
• It gives me better mental clarity and focus throughout the day. 
• I have an outlet for releasing anger, grief, disappointment, stress, and fear. 
• Forgiveness comes easier to me in this space. 
• I can receive peace for the day in abundance. 

Whether it's 5 minutes or 30 in the morning before you start each day, taking time to pray and have quiet moments of reflection to yourself is essential for your overall mental wellness. 

If you do nothing else on this list, give this one a try! Even if you aren't religious, you can start the reflection by praying a prayer like, "God if you are real, hear me and see me in this moment, show me that you are there." Connecting to your Creator can help ground you on your mental wellness journey in a way that few other things can do!

THESE WERE THE 8 MOST LIFE-ENHANCING MENTAL HEALTH HABITS ANY WOMAN CAN FORM TO HELP HER ON HER MENTAL WELLNESS JOURNEY!

LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW HOW THESE HELPED YOU!

Saying Goodbye to Anxious,

Kristina G.