How to Take An Effective Mental Health Day

Make It Meaningful!

Mental health is becoming more and more of a centerpiece of our lives and our happiness! In the past, there seemed to be a stigma against mental illness and mental health in general. It’s amazing to see the focus of mental health today! More and more people are realizing that our mental health affects our physical health and they work in synergy together with each other to provide our healthy or unhealthy overall outcome! If we are not mentally healthy, I would bet we also have some physical ailments as well! So, what does it take to be mentally healthy? This could be a variety of things which may include therapy, self-care and boundaries! We all have needs which we work to fulfill but we often tend to forget about our own mental well-being. Taking a self-care day is essential to every one of us! A self-care day or series of days will help us to de-stress and to reflect on all of our big or small changes that have happened. If we ignore our need to self-reflect, recover and readjust ourselves, the weight of our lives will likely cause a sinking feeling which tends to cause burn out. Feeling as though we are sinking in all of our daily interactions will tend to cause negative mood, high sensitivity to others and negative feelings. This does not only affect ourselves but affects everyone in our lives. Our mood affects others in our lives whether or not we mean to do this. Think about this…if we are having a bad day and someone smiles at us, what will our reaction be to that? I would venture to guess that we would smile back at them and this would increase our mood! Smiling is contagious and if we all made small changes such as smiling at those we interact with in our lives, it will increase our mood and other people’s moods! If we choose to not take our own mental health day to reflect and gather our thoughts, we will be choosing to let everything build up inside of us and affecting our mood and others around us. So, tell yourself that today, you choose you and give yourself a break!