How To Keep Your Mind Healthy?

Have you ever thought - you can do something to keep your mind healthy and at its best?

Or you take your mind as granted - let it go as it be!

Needless to repeat that we all are tensed and stressed – on the uncertain future, change of work pattern, bearing spouses for longer time at home and the list moves on.

Though Covid'19 reduces the air pollution index to an unprecedented lower level – despite cleaner environment, the risk of mental health induced by the stress and tension is high.

Many of us, specially who leaves in crowded places, cannot even go out for a walk outside for weeks after weeks – a complete new unwanted experience of life.

And hence, the task of focusing and caring for our mental calm and balance is more important than ever! 

So, who causes bad mental health?

The main culprit - Negative thoughts and emotions!!

Research on Cognitive Science has proven this time and again that human mind cannot bear ‘Negative Emotions’ – like anger, frustration, stress, anxiety, jealousy, sadness, fear etc. When the weight of negative emotions is more in our mind over our positive emotions (such as – Joy, Gratitude, Hope, Pride, Kindness and Love (yes! Love 😊 and I am happy to explain more if you want to know more on love!!!)

So, when we keep our mind in prolonged state under negative emotions – the health of our mind deteriorates and can cause alarming issues like depression to next level of clinical situations.

And why this happens?

Human are emotional being and human insights research has shown that 95% of our so called rational decisions such as purchase decisions of everyday stuffs are actually backed by emotion (though we human love to think that we are so rational).

According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, the answer to all these questions is directly related to the subconscious mind.

When we have a positive thought – it stimulates certain happy hormones in our body such as Oxytocin, Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphin etc. that generates happy emotions.

On the other hand, when we have a negative thought like fear (for example in primitive days, fear was a constant companion of human as we were susceptible to wild animals everywhere) – it generates hormones like Cortisol (which is also called as stress hormone) and hyperthyroidism.

Negative emotions are essential for our survival, but we are not designed to live with it for a prolonged time (Imagine living a month in the fear of a tiger jumping on you every moment – it will make us crazy right?)

Hence, what can be done to be mentally healthy?

So, by now, hope I could explain why negative thoughts and emotions leads us to a bad mental state/ health. But we all are under the threat of negative emotions induced stress as a result of Covid19 period?

Hence, the way to keep ourselves mentally healthy lies on the following two practices:

Spread Positivity and nurture positive emotions: Positive emotions like kindness, gratitude, love, empathy etc. are essential for us to thrive. However, we take these emotions for granted but remembers negative emotions more (For example – you will never acknowledge a colleague gives you a kind gesture or a nice smile every day for a year, but you will remember if s/he has ever spoken to you harshly, even that is a single word). Human mind is wired like this. However, to keep the mind stress free and healthy, this is the time to show positive emotions and acknowledge them more. The secret of a healthy mind lies in nurturing positive emotions with conscious effort.
Practice Mindfulness: Our mind is like a wild horse. Many a times it gets uncontrollable – makes us uncontrollable angry or become so tensed on things that is not in our control or can become obsessed with a person or thing. The problem is our mind is just a part of us that we want to control. But problem happens when mind gets out of our control.

The best way to keep mind under our control and not letting it go wherever it wants like a wild horse is a simple basic training called – Mindfulness or Breathe Observation Training.

Breathing is the most essential thing of life and we cannot survive for more than a couple of minutes without it. Mindfulness is a practice where you just need to spend 10 minutes of your day to observe breathe – the process on how you inhale and exhale. You will notice when you are in a balanced mental state you can have a longer focus on your breathe. But when you are anxious, stressed or tensed – these thoughts will not let you keep focusing on your breathe for long.

But by training mindfulness, one can attain next level of consciousness, attention and mental calm.

I wish all of you a healthy body and mind! Stay Strong.