If you’re like most people, the pandemic and the subsequent years post has left a lasting impression on your mental health and wellbeing. Your mental health; how your brain functions affects your quality of life, personally as well as professionally. Plus, as you spend a large amount of time working through the day, it is essential to nurture a healthy mind at work to improve your overall wellbeing.
Our mental health influences how we view ourselves and others, how we process our emotions, and how we react during tough times. Better mental health leads to overall harmony, happiness, resilience, and clarity in life. These 5 strategies can be easily integrated into your life and will maximize your sense of fulfillment; at work and in life.
5 Ways to Nurture a Healthy Mind at Work
1. Build a Self-Care Plan
If you want to have a positive environment, you will need to cultivate it. Granted, you cannot control all the factors that go into creating a positive environment but what is in your control is your state of mind. Start the day with intention. Your state of mind impacts the quality of your work as well as your productivity, not to mention your relationship with your colleagues. While your self-care plan may differ from others; there are a few common aspects that you can look into like getting adequate sleep, staying physically fit, eating good, and implementing solid coping strategies.
2. Take Conscious Action
Positive action is a healthy solution when faced with a problem, it directly impacts your wellbeing. This is a reflection of our preference for empowerment and need for control. The two most significant hallmarks of burnout are feeling trapped or ineffective. By taking action, you take control of how you react to a particular situation and become the best advocate for your own mental health. There a few ways you can rewire your brain to take positive action when faced with adversity.
- Take responsibility for your behaviour
- Practice positive affirmations
- Recognize and replace negative thoughts
- Establish and work towards goals
- Step out of a self-victimized mindset
- Don’t shy away from change
- Don’t waste your time and energy on things you can’t control
3. Understand Your Strengths
Utilizing your core strengths at work helps improve health, performance, productivity, and work satisfaction. Are you good at planning events? Do you like taking initiative, making excel sheets, leading training, or making people laugh? Once you understand where your strengths lie, you can hone them to elevate your own joy as well as foster a happier work culture.
4. Try New Things
Seeking new learning is always beneficial for brain health. Just like you stretch and workout to stay physically fit, exploring new areas to grow is a way of increasing mental fitness. Learning keeps you stimulated with what’s new and interesting for you, personally as well as professionally. It also builds confidence and empowers you to feel more in charge of your life while broadening your perspective as you acquire fresh knowledge.
5. Spend Time in Nature
Time outdoors can help boost your creativity, memory recall, and goal-oriented attention. As we take in the various sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations of nature, our brain loads up for “directed attention.” Since nature is gorgeous and captivating, it draws our attention unconsciously while improving our attention control. Gazing at nature gives us the opportunity to replenish our stores of attention control. Not just that, it also reduces our stress hormone levels which in turn reap mental health benefits.
These positive affirmations can help you attain a healthy work-life balance.
You spend a lot of time at work, it’s time to make it worth your time. Making your workplace a rewarding, uplifting, and meaningful place is the first step towards feeling fulfilled. When you feel greater contentment at work, the positive emotions will translate into other areas of your life as well.
Read More: 12 Signs You Need A Mental Break And How Can You Recover
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