Take a Day off, Your Mental Health Really Needs It – 7 Things That Will Help You

Let’s face it. We live in a hectic world. Whether it all boils down to your work environment, school or even your family or friends, we have to stay alert to so many things daily and do our best to succeed. We all want stability, be it financial, emotional or social. Yet working yourself until you are incredibly tired does you more harm than good.

Take a couple of days off, disconnect and take some time to relax, to take a breath of fresh air and get yourself back on track. When you are tired, moody and irritable you are hurting yourself and those around you with your behavior.

So, you managed to get a day off or have a couple of hours just to yourself. What is there to do when you just want to lie down and sleep until the next century finally rolls around?

From personal experience, taking care of your mental health means treating yourself, doing something to help you relax to the best of your abilities. Here are a few ideas that you can do quite easily, the small changes adding up to help clear your mind and making you calm and focused:

• Get some air

While this may sound incredibly silly, I found out over the course of the past years that it completely changes the feel of my room. Here is what I do. First thing in the morning, I get up and go to open my bedroom window for a couple of minutes, just enough to change the air in the room. This small thing changes the feel of the whole room for the entire day. I feel refreshed since my bedroom feels refreshed and since I do most of my work there, I feel more energized and ready to complete all of the task that I set out that day.

This is one of the things that I highly recommend.

• Take a bath

We live such rushed lives that even taking some time to clean ourselves starts to seem like too much. Yes, I shower every day but every once in a while I decide to take the time and run a bubbly bath. It feels so amazing to let your muscles relax, breathe in the nice scents around you and bask in the warmth. Not only is it self-care but it is also the best way to take one or even two hours of your time and let yourself relax, drift off and enjoy the hot steamy water surrounding you. You’ll get out of there feeling refreshed and recharged.

• Make your bed

Yes, it is early in the morning and you are getting ready to go to work. In all that rush you may think to let making up your bed for when you get back. However, that is really bad advice and you should not follow it. When I keep not making my bed all I want to do is stay in it and laze around the whole day. I feel unmotivated, tired, and sleepy. However, if I push myself to make the bed after I get up in the morning, I see myself change. It may only be due to the fact that I closed the easy exit of crashing back under the blankets, but it helps set my mood. My room looks cleaner with the bed made and much more organized.

• Make a do to list

Personally, I find that laying out the tasks that I need to complete during the day helps me feel more organized and less panicky. I can then look at the list and decide how much time I have to spend on each one and even have the order that I am going to go through them already set in my head.

To top it all off, what else is better than the accomplished feeling that you get once you cross one task off the list? For me, that feels even better than getting it done.

• Change your sheets

This is pretty self-explanatory. Washing and changing your bed sheets regularly is not only recommended but the clean smell can help you doze off and sleep better.

• Take your makeup off

Every girl has probably been guilty of this at one point during her life. We’ve all fallen asleep with our makeup on. Waking up with yesterday's makeup can make you feel anything but refreshed and ready to take on the new day in front of you. So, a simple solution to all of that is to take just 5 minutes before going to bed and wash your face until your make up is off. Trust me, future you will thank you for this.

• Eat

Running from point A to point B leaves you little room to eat healthy meals regularly on a daily basis. We either eat too much or too little and most of us eat too little, too little food to sustain ourselves. So take some time to eat something healthy and your body and your general health will thank you later.

In the end, taking care of the small things, letting ourselves get some air, take some time to relax and eat the right things has so any effects over our mental health. It is small things like these that will ultimately help change your mood and generally make you feel like a better version of yourself.