The demands put on us can often make people feel overwhelmed at times. Work days are spent hustling through tasks while home life is a balancing act of sleep and attending to personal and family needs. This can have an impact on your mental well-being, which only makes the demands feel even greater.
There are methods available that can help you to better cope with the pressure that you might feel and to better balance your work and home life.
The Importance of Good Mental Health
Just because a person may be free of anxiety, depression, or other psychological issues does not necessarily mean you are in good mental health. Living in the middle ground between feeling bad and feeling good will eventually wear you down to feeling bad unless you do something about it now. Your mental health is in trouble unless you can agree with the following:
All of these characteristics are essential to a positive outlook on life, and ultimately, healthy mental health. The absence of one or more can be caused by an unhealthy balance at work and home and can have negative consequences for both.
Take Care of Yourself First and the Rest Will Follow
Taking care of your physical needs is the first step towards a healthy balance in your life. This goes above and beyond a quick salad in the kitchen or a cat nap on the sofa while your toddler watches Dora. Start making a conscious effort to improve your mental health by first focusing on the physical:
When You Do Feel A Funk Coming On
If you do start to feel down, make some quick changes to turn that around. Volunteer to help someone else to build your own self-esteem or make a point to learn something new. Choose any activity that you know to typically help bring your spirits up. This may seem like a selfish act to some people, but the only way to be able to function at work and home effectively is to first take care of yourself. Whether that be in a bathtub with a “do not disturb” sign on your door or by taking a sick day and spending it at the beach.
What is important is to find ways to experience joy every single day. This will be different for everyone, and no one way is better over any other. Your sense of self may improve after a quiet session of yoga, while another person may need the excitement of an intense bike ride. When working to improve on your mental health, the fulfillment you feel at the end should be able to justify the means of getting there.
If you do feel like the toll of working is creating mental health issues that you can’t resolve, seek the advice of a professional counselor or therapist. Anxiety and depression are often side effects of a crazy life, where you feel stripped of any time to yourself. A professional will be able to help you identify stressors in your life and teach you methods of coping with them so that your mental health is restored, along with your ability to balance work with your personal life.