Mental health is a lot like physical health, if you want to be physically strong you need to go to the gym and lift the weight, but if you want to see results you will also have to give up eating junk foods. Mental strength is the same if you want to be mentally strong, you need good habits like practicing gratitude, acceptance of other’s success, etc. but you must give up bad habits such as feel bitter about somebody else’s success, no matter what happens it will keep you away from mental peace and can cause depression.
To get rid of depression or unhealthy mental condition we need to evaluate our bad mental habits, here I will discuss some common bad habits.
COMPARING YOURSELF WITH OTHERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Maybe you scroll through your Facebook feed and think, so what if I roll my eyes? , it’s just few seconds of my time how can it be spoiling me? But have you ever looked at your friend’s profile and started thinking that why do they have all luck? How are they more successful than I am? Why can’t I achieve things in my life as they do? That way of thinking seems small at the moment but that’s just one of the traps that our minds can set for us and you become patient of depression These random thoughts eat away your mental peace. Researches show that envying your friends on Facebook leads to depression.
UNHEALTHY BELIEFS ABOUT OURSELVES:
We tend to feel sorry about ourselves. While it is okay to be sad when something bad happens self-pity goes beyond that. It’s when you start to magnify your misfortune. When you start thinking things like ‘why do these things always happen to me?”, “I should not have to deal with it. That way of thinking keeps you stuck, and keeps you focused on the problem rather than finding the solution. And even if you can’t create a solution, you can always take steps to make your life or somebody’s life better, but you can’t do that when you remain busy feeling unlucky or feel depressed.
UNHEALTHY BELIEFS ABOUT OTHERS
We think that other people can control us and we give away our power. When you say “my boss makes me crazy” you give him your power. Maybe he is not the nicest person on earth, but it is up to you how you respond to him because you are in control. It depends on you that either you focus on his bad behavior or you keep focus on the solution to avoid his filthiness. Nothing in this world happens according to our wishes but we need to learn how we can survive in uneven circumstances and find better opportunities for us or how can we fight with depression
UNHEALTHY BELIEFS ABOUT THE WORLD
We sometimes blames the world for our failure. We think if I work hard, then I deserve success. We measure our rate of success according to our own will. For example, if we keep trying to find a flower in the desert, you will only face disappointment because you worked hard for the wrong thing. But expecting success to fall in your lap will only lead to disappointment. To be successful we need to work hard for right things at right time.
PROCRASTINATION
Are you getting surprised that how procrastination is related to mental illness or depression? If you keep delaying your work you will end up being distracted by so many tasks to be performed at the same time. You, for the time being, will face failure and ultimately you will get depressed and unable to perform any task effectively.
MULTI-TASKING:
No one in this world has the potential to perform multiple tasks at the same time. If you try so you will end up doing nothing and become hopeless or may face depression because every task needs a different level of specialties and attention. If you try to do multi-tasking you can’t perform a single task efficiently and will face failure, and ultimately get depressed.
SELF DOUBT:
People with self-doubt believe that every problem in their life is because of their inability or can’t do anything effective in their lives. This belief keeps them away from success and they become insecure about others’ success, as a result, their lives become stuck and it creates depression, hopelessness, pessimism, and mental illness ultimately.
TIPS FOR BEING POSITIVE AND HAPPY
Have a strategic vision:
Strategic vision means the never-lasting purpose of life. If you run after the short-term visions like having 1 lack follower on your YouTube channel the aim of your life will be finished once your reach your goal. On the other hand, if your goal is to teach people about any productive thing, it will keep you busy and motivated to achieve that goal and you will continue to focus on your vision rather than other adversity or difficulties in your life.
Have a mentor:
Having a mentor means you have a GPS of your life to show you the best way to your destination. We can’t take decisions on our own, we need someone with experience and intelligence to guide us on what is wrong or right for us. Every successful person in this world has a mentor in their life.
If you have a mentor you can reach your goal comparatively faster because a mentor basis on his/her mistakes and failures or success teaches you to save yourself from being failed. Your mentor can be anyone like your friend, parents, siblings, or any experience person you are comfortable with. In this way, you will focus on your productivity instead of other problem.
Fit body, fit mind
Researches show that if you take care of yourself you grow faster. Exercise causes a release of happiness hormones “oxytocin” and “dopamine”, because of these hormones you feel happy. Fitness in your body makes you confident and devoted in your life, you become optimistic in your life. To test this, do your body a favor and start exercising for 40 days, you will feel the changes in your body and mind and ultimately become happy.
ARROGANCE DESTROYS HAPPINESS.
If you become arrogant in your life, it will ruin your relationship with others and as a result, you will feel loneliness. If you are arrogant you will keep on comparing yourself to others and will be reluctant to face failure ultimately, you will lose focus and can face depression also. To stay away from arrogance try to be humble, and down to earth, keep in your mind that there is always a superior person who is more successful or beautiful than you.
STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO OTHERS:
Every person has different struggles in his/her life. If you compare yourself with others, it will create self-doubt, envious, pessimism, and other related feelings in your life. Having an ideal is good but comparing yourself with him/her is unhealthy for you. If you want to become like him/her you need to work hard and keep going, only compare yourself with the old you, and keep working on yourself to be a better version of yourself.
Choose the right people:
Researchers tell that you become an average of five individuals you spend your most of time with. If people around you are arrogant, pessimistic, or having depression or negative thoughts, there is a possibility that you may also have the same feelings.
To be positive and happy you need to remove negative people in your life, if they are your close ones try to counsel them if they don’t listen, take negativity from one ear and let it out from the other. One thing to keep in mind is don’t judge people, if you do so you will become negative and lose the track of happiness and positivity, let them be as they are, and just focus on yourself to be better every day.
Conclusion:
If you want to be mentally strong you need good habits like practicing gratitude. But you also have to give up the bad mental habits discussed above like resenting somebody else’s success, no matter how often that happens it will hold you back.so, how would you train your mind to think in different way? How would you give up those mental bad habits that I discussed earlier? It starts by countering the unhealthy beliefs that I talked about with healthier ones.
Sadness is just a condition and if you change this condition be bringing positivity in your life sometimes we are the reasons for our sadness, depression and hopelessness in our life, we need to work on our own self instead of blaming external factors.
