How to take care of your health: Physical health and mental health

The most important thing to make sure the aspects of health and wellness are in order is to take responsibility for your own actions. Both the good ones, but also the bad ones. You can’t take care of your body if you don’t take ownership of your decisions.

• Physical health

  The first area of wellness is our physical health.

  We know that exercising is one of the best ways to maintain, or regain our physical health.

  BOTH resistance training like weightlifting or doing body weighted exercises AND cardiovascular training like walking, jogging, and swimming contribute greatly to our physical wellbeing.

  Exercising in general has multiple health benefits like injury prevention, improved mental health due to the dopamine that’s being released when we exercise which makes us feel better, and losing fat. Working out can even cure, or at least improve your depression.

  Cardiovascular exercising is vital for a multitude of health reasons.

  

  Firstly, it helps our mental health due to clearing/distracting the mind, which in turn reduces stress. Especially when the physical exercises are performed in nature.

  It is good for the health of your organs like your heart and lungs. But it also reduces the chance of other physical health issues such as diabetes and hypertension. In short, everyone should work out!

  Research has shown that resistance training like weightlifting for example has a variety of health benefits.

  It makes your muscles, tendons, and bones stronger, making injuries less likely to happen. It also allows you to lift heavy objects during your everyday life without hurting your back in the process. In short, it aids our physical and mental state.

  The quote: “A healthy mind in a healthy body” is appropriate here. And I couldn’t agree more.

  To me, physical health and mental health are interconnected, as health is multifaceted.
  

• Mental health

  

  So how do you take care of your mental health? Well, we must first realize that a lot of dimensions of health contribute to our mental state as a whole.

  Human beings need meaningful interactions with friends and family members to feel fulfilled. Fun fact: Both introverts and extroverts have a need for social interaction, they just differ in how much social stimulation they want, among many other differences.

  These relationships give us a sense of belonging to people, and to the world itself, if you will. If we don’t get our required amount of socializing, then our mood and mental health will start to deteriorate.

  Being socially deprived brings along tension. And if this keeps going for a prolonged period of time, your mind might dwell off to dark places, thus leading to a deterioration in mental health.

  This can cause depression or have a negative impact on your overall health. If you are, or happen to get depressed in the future, then do not despair. It is treatable, and even fixable!

  

  Try to reduce mental strain and anxiety to a minimum by doing relaxing activities like gardening, exercising, and even by practicing mindfulness. Basically everything that calms, eases, or distract the mind.

  Remember that we all need to blow off some steam from time to time. We’re only humans, and not machines after all.

  Voluntarily challenging and facing the things that cause you anxiety and uneasy sensations is the key to reducing those negative feelings.

  That’s because you get braver as you challenge those feelings, and not because those sensations will magically disappear, contrary to popular belief.

  You will start to notice that you are capable of controlling your fears. As a result, you’ll start feeling more in control of your life. This will reduce anxiety and stress.

  You can attempt to avoid negative feelings for a while, but eventually you will have to face them, or they will become and remain an obstacle in your entire life.

  Even avoiding negative feelings and things that give you anxiety won’t make you feel good about it in the moment. It’s likely that it’ll even stress you out because you know that you are avoiding the very things you need to challenge and fix in order to overcome them!

• Spirituality

  

  Take note that spirituality is not necessarily related to religion. Although religion can be a part of a person’s spirituality.

  Spirituality is basically what makes you, well, you. Your own individual identity, or personality let’s say. Spirituality in this context is not the same as faith.

  It is one of the most important facets to develop in life. It includes your own value system, beliefs, in addition to your principles.

  These values start developing from the moment you are self-conscious as a child, till the moment you cease to exist.

  Those principles will be influenced by the people you hold dear, and who are meaningful to you. This is by the way why it’s critical to have good role models early on in life! 

  

  But, other people can’t do all the work for you. You will have to develop and integrate the values you find significant on your own.

  Having a goal is the most indispensable thing in existence. Without a goal in life, nothing really matters.

  The advantage of not having a goal is that nothing matters (nihilism). The disadvantage of not having a goal, and it’s a big one, is that you are suffering meaninglessly. Seeing as nothing matters from that point of view.

  That’s why I recommend people to search for, and to set goals. It has to be something that’s important for you.

  It can be something as trivial as cleaning your room every day, so there’s less chaos and more structure in your life. But it can go much further more complicated, like getting a degree for a job you would like to practice. Or getting your family life in order, for instance.

  Remember to think your ends through well! As, the goal has to be influential and of value to you. This way, you’ll get to create the best you, and live your life to the fullest!

• Healthy diet

  

  The last of the areas of health and wellness is eating a healthy diet.

  There’s an ancient quote that says: “You are what you eat.” And there’s a lot of truth and wisdom to be found in this sentence.

  It ranges from eating solid foods and drinking liquids, to drugs we put into our bodies. As we all know, drugs, which includes alcohol and especially alcohol by the way, are addictive in addition to destructive.
  

  In the short term, those drugs might not show their immediate detrimental effects except making you addicted, which we often don’t realize until it’s too late.

  But in the long term, they WILL be detrimental to your overall health. Your physical health, mental health, social and work life will be negatively impacted over time.

  In the food and drinks department, it’s quite simple. Try to eat organic foods and drinking liquids which are naturally occurring in nature. Preferably meat free from hormones and vegetables that are not sprayed with pesticides.

  This means unprocessed foods, and water instead of soda.

  Oh, and no smoking either! However, society as a whole has already made huge strides regarding smoking, and the negative health effects are generally well known and documented.