Mental Health Bite Size Tips For Managing Stress
Ross McWilliam is a freelance speaker and author on mindsets. He has over 30 years educational experience and has worked with over 500,000 children, young adults, and senior professionals. Ross has had, and is having, his own physical and emotional health challenges. As an adolescent, he suffered lifetime face and body scarring. In his twenties, he had a severe knee trauma that required revolutionary reconstructive surgery, that now aged 57, sadly requires multi joint replacement surgery. He has also suffered from depression, stress and associated panic attacks. Through his professional work and personal experiences, he is in a unique position to share some simple mental health bite size tips that may raise personal awareness and aid individual recovery and development.
Exercise Monday
Everyone knows exercise is good for us. If this exercise can be something we enjoy, rather than endure, it can surely become a regular activity, even a daily activity. The initial secret to enjoying exercise is to understand that it can really help all aspects of health, but it has been particularly effective in combatting mental health issues. It can also act as an effective antidote to developing these issues. Numerous medical studies have cited its importance for all round well-being, but as we gain greater insights into molecular and functional mental health, the benefits of exercise for protecting against mental health issues is taking on greater importance.
The earlier we introduce exercise into our lives, the greater the protective benefits. However, exercise at any age can have an immediate protective effect. If like myself, you have mobility issues, this need not rule out exercise. I swim/do aqua aerobic exercises at least once a week, and I cycle when the pain allows me. Light weight training coupled with any form of stretching also gives me a sense of well-being whilst relieving pain. The simplest exercise is walking, which I can’t do, but for many, this is a great way to relieve stress and helps protect against mental health issues.
Goal Setting Tuesday
I believe that setting short, medium and more longer-term goals is essential for emotional health. It gives our life structure and purpose. Sometimes people shy away from making goals as they feel a sense of failure if they don’t achieve their goals, and this may fuel a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe the issue is not in setting the goals, but more in unrealistic goals and a search for 100% success at all costs. Even when goals have not been fully achieved, there is still plenty of progress to be pleased with that helps us on life’s journey. Being able to distil the good parts of a goal or challenge, even though we may not have fully achieved the goal is still good reason to be positive as we can use this to build for the next goal.
Sometimes goals change as we are trying to achieve them and this is also ok – it can even be a positive thing. A simple analogy might be a plane journey from England to Spain, where the pilot has to detour off a more direct route because of poor weather, but that journey could also be helped by thermal winds that accelerate progress towards the destination.
So, make goals, enjoy achieving them, but don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t quite manage 100% success.
Say Goodbye to Stress 