Devotee Health

Practical Strategies

We know through longitudinal studies that mental health is interactive and intricately intertwined with our ability to maintain social relationships. Therefore, skills in interpersonal communication, distress tolerance and emotional regulation are incredibly valuable to acquire in order to maintain a better equilibrium.

So how can we maintain mental health? Well, that is the question, with the keyword being 'maintain'. As previously mentioned, physical beings face many challenges in preserving mental health through its constant ebb and flow. This journey is very individual, yet there are universal principles that may assist us in attaining this goal.

Therefore, developing strong and regular practices to help us in this challenging field of human experience could be argued to be an essential step in achieving this goal. What works for many people may not work for others. Although very clichéd, this is also very true because we are individuals, and therefore our hopes and desires need to be considered when answering the question of how to achieve balance in our mental health.

Commitment to attaining skills, and practising maintenance through regularly repeating skills that help us to balance ourselves regardless of how we feel, is important. Essentially, this involves using our intelligence to overcome our fluctuating emotional states of mind encountered in our constantly changing lives.

We also know that engaging in strong social relationships is a key point in protecting this aspect of our health. These relationships are what sustain us when we are unable to fully sustain ourselves. The importance of upholding strong relationships has been shown to be one of, and arguably the most important, ways to improve our mental health.

So, what does this mean in a practical sense? Obviously, with mental health being such an individual area of health, it is important to keep things simple when generalising about how to maintain this particularly changeable aspect of our lives. It has been shown that mental health can be very positively influenced by simply walking for 30 minutes a day, three times a week.

Evidence presented by multiple researchers highlights the benefits of investing energy in healthy relationships. Initiating positive exchanges between human beings, even when we are not feeling positive within ourselves, is a valuable investment in our mental health.

Practising kindness has also been shown to strengthen our ability to build our mental health. In short, it is nice to be nice. Research has also been conducted into the positive effects on mental health of volunteering and serving others, and these are therefore valid ways to explore increasing and encouraging beneficial mental wellbeing in our own lives.

In conclusion, mental health is, and always has been, a complex area of the human experience. For most people, sustaining it requires conscious effort and gratitude for what we have. Researchers have shown that people who practise gratitude are much more likely to achieve their goals in life. Maintaining and enhancing relationships through positive social interaction, and being compassionate and empathetic towards ourselves and others, can be valuable ways of creatively cultivating and nurturing our mental health.

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