Did you know, 1 in 4 of us will experience mental illness every year…
Here at ACL we offer FREE health and well-being courses to help you improve your mental wellbeing. January is known to be one of the most difficult months of the whole year and we have put together 10 tips to help you to stay positive…
1- Enrol on one of our FREE health and wellbeing courses! All of our tutors and existing customers are super friendly, it’s also a great start to meeting likeminded people. Remember you are NOT alone.
2-Drink lots of water. Aside from keeping our bodies hydrated, healthy and can even contribute to losing weight. Drinking water keeps our brain hydrated, this means the brain doesn’t have to struggle through dehydration, allowing us to think much more clearly.
3-Give out lots of hugs. Giving out hugs sets of happy hormones (Oxytocin) from within, and can improve your mood and emotional state significantly. So Hug your way through 2020 and make yourself and others around you Happy.
4- Exercise Daily!!! It is found that exercise also releases happy hormones such as Endorphins and serotonin- exercise also gets you out, helping feelings of loneliness and anxiety and kick starting your social life.
5- Take each daily activity one step at a time, get yourself a self-care routine. It might feel good writing out a 20+ To Do list, however if you only complete a few tasks you may feel snowed under in things you need to do. This can lead to feeling unmotivated. So we suggest to only write a short to do list for each day, this way you can focus on just a few tasks and end up feeling positive for accomplishing everything you set out for the day. Just don’t forget it’s important to rest too.
6- Eat some of the following: avocado, blueberries, broccoli and dark chocolate– these are just a handful of foods that are said to boost energy and mood! Just remember everything in moderation and that a balanced diet is a healthy one.
7-keep a daily journal write down 3 things you’ve achieved each day. Keeping a journal ofdaily tasks, meals and moods can be a great way of finding out triggers, and also being able to get all your feelings and emotions out and onto a page, and offloading them from your head. Also it’s so integral to celebrate your achievements and boost your positive thinking, today may have been a hard day but look what I still achieved!
8-Yoga (ACL courses available)-Yoga is a great exercise for relieving symptoms of anxiety or depression. It focuses on breathing techniques that you can take away with you for everyday use- it helps with pain, high stress levels and trouble sleeping. It may not be for everyone but you won’t know until you try.
9- Call someone you love. When you feel lonely, call someone you love. This can sometimes be the only therapy you need- it could be your best friend, partner, mum or sibling. But it will just reinforce that you are NOT ALONE. There is also plenty of charities with helplines for when you don’t feel like talking to a loved one, they offer a listening ear and zero judgment.
10-LOVE YOURSELF
Just remember it’s okay to ask for help, it’s okay to start again, it’s okay to say No, it’s okay to rest and it’s okay not to be okay.