Mental health is important! The older I get, the more focus I put towards keeping my body and mind in harmony. My husband and I both work purposefully to ensure that we maintain a healthy diet, that we get in regular exercise, and that we are also getting enough positive social interaction, quality professional experience, and restful sleep. But is this enough? Probably not in a post Covid-19 world. The onus of maintaining healthy psychological health weighs heavily on us all after a year of social & professional isolation and general existential uncertainty. So, in keeping a happy headspace, it is on us to do the work needed to establish and support an overall happy disposition.

In an attempt to do just this, I perform frequent wellness checks on myself. I check my energy levels in regards to motivation, extroversion, and curiosity. I try to step back and look at myself outside of my internal perspective. I aim to peek a glimpse into how I am honestly interacting with my daily tasks. I want to check in and hopefully see how I come across to others while I engage with the world around me. It can be easy for us to only see the world through our own daily perspective and internal narrative based on our individual experiences. It is another important level of awareness to ensure that our (hopefully positive) internal disposition is matching our (hopefully pleasant) external behavior and actions. If we notice that either are askew, then we need to do the work to achieve a more favorable realignment.

Obviously, this is not a perfect nor clinical practice as we are all bias toward our own perspective and experiences. But if I am feeling “any kind of way” toward anything or any social experience in particular, I seek to understand what is that I am feeling. I want to acknowledge what it is, why it is, and also acknowledge that I can find means to improve it. Then I think of and seek out new ways in how I can improve the emotion, motivation, or experience. I take note to check-in on myself in a week or so. I also communicate this to a loved one, usually my husband. Talking-it-out always seems to speed up the process and quality of achieving resolve and feeling 100 again.

If you do not already, I would like to encourage you to check-in on your mental health, regularly, too. Are you eating and sleeping too much or too little? Are you having an issue with feeling low energy or high apathy? Are you feeling socially numb or thinking little matters? Are you feeling generally helpless or hopeless? If any of these questions incites an earnest internal dialogue, please seek a healthy way to improve your disposition or circumstance. Mental health matters. It is important to be happy being you while you experience the world around you!