Simple steps to boost your mental health and wellbeing
Building positive habits into your daily routine can increase your mental resilience. Find your little big thing with Every Mind Matters. Search Every Mind Matters today at nhs.uk/every-mind-matters
Everybody has days when the world seems a little too much – when the work deadlines pile up, perhaps, and life back home feels just as stressful.
It’s all too easy to let things get on top of you – but if you feel your mental wellbeing start to flag, there are steps you can take to help boost your mood and break a downward cycle.
This often means building healthy, mood-boosting structures into your daily life. Whether you are someone who has experienced mental health issues or you consider yourself to be in good mental health, embedding positive habits can help to strengthen your mental resilience.
The NHS’s Every Mind Matters digital resource offers plenty of proactive tips to help you take action, rather than allow problems to mount up. Doing just one small thing every day can have beneficial effects, helping to lift your mood and start feeling better.
Every Mind Matters is a great resource for those who feel overwhelmed by the amount of information on mental health you can find, offering simple, accessible advice.
Every Mind Matters provides information on accessing additional support you might need for mild to moderate mental health difficulties and helps you look after the mental wellbeing of others.
The Every Mind Matters website offers a free personalised Mind Plan, a mental health action plan that provides practical tips to help you deal with anxiety and stress, boost your mood, sleep better and feel more in control.
You can even access it through Amazon’s Alexa by simply saying ‘Alexa, start my Mind Plan’.
Email programmes offer a range of advice and guidance on making positive steps part of your daily routine. One is focused on easing anxiety by offering expert advice and practical tips, and another is for helping to improve your sleep by creating good sleep habits.
Try some of these ‘Little Big Things’, little actions that can have a big impact on your mental health and wellbeing.
Get physically active
Being active is not just good for your physical health, it’s good for your mind too. It can help you burn off nervous energy, and, while it will not make feelings of distress disappear completely, it can make them less intense.
Try activity that is right for your physical abilities and that you enjoy doing on a regular basis. You might choose gentle online yoga classes, boogieing around your home or short walks in the fresh air.
The NHS Active 10 app can help you track and build up your daily walks or the NHS Couch to 5k app can help you gradually work towards running 5km in just nine weeks. Download for free from the App Store or Google Play.
Manage your feelings
Thoughts, feelings and behaviour are closely linked and influence each other. Sometimes unhelpful patterns of thought can develop and these can lead to unhelpful behaviour, so recognising them and thinking about them differently can improve mental wellbeing.
You may have heard of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) which aims to help do this and improve how you feel. Every Mind Matters offers free, practical, CBT-inspired self-help tips and techniques you can try to help deal with worries and unhelpful thoughts, and work through problems in new ways.
Talk to someone you trust
Talking to someone you trust about how you’re feeling can improve your mental health and wellbeing and help stop you from feeling isolated.
Opening up to friends or family may seem difficult – you might be concerned about what they’ll think – but sharing how you’re feeling will help them understand what you’re going through and together you can explore solutions.
Choose the means of communication that feels right for you, whether it’s online, over the phone or in person.
You might find it helps to make notes about what you’d like to say. And make it a habit: you probably won’t talk about everything you want to cover in one conversation and it’s good to talk!
Get more from your sleep
Good-quality sleep makes a big difference to how you feel mentally and physically. When you are struggling to sleep, your mind can flood with thoughts and worries about the next day, which makes it even harder to unwind.
Instead, get out of bed and do something simple – like listening to some relaxing music or reading a book – until you feel tired again.
Get closer to nature
Spending time in nature – in green spaces like parks or gardens – can lift your mood and help you feel more relaxed. You can also bring nature into your life by tending to plants on a window sill (and you can give a healthy boost to your diet if you grow herbs, fruit or veg).
Plan things
It’s important to have something to look forward to, especially when you’re finding things tough. It will help you counter boredom and lethargy and will boost your mood and energise you. It does not have to be anything complex; it could be as simple as fixing a time to meet with a friend or neighbour.
NHS Talking Therapies service
If you are struggling with anxiety or depression NHS Talking Therapies are here for you.
The psychological therapies offered by these services are free, practical and can help with common mental health disorders including depression, phobias, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalised anxiety, health anxiety, social anxiety, body dysmorphia and post-traumatic stress disorder. They can also help you cope with anxiety or depression in the context of long-term health conditions such as diabetes and cancer.
Some of these psychological therapies can be accessed online, via text or through a website. Refer yourself today: to be eligible you just need to be registered with a GP. Go to nhs.uk/talk to find your local NHS
The NHS App is a simple and secure way to access a range of NHS services, including mental health services. It is available to all patients aged 13 and over who are registered with an NHS GP practice. Visit: nhs.uk/nhs-app or download it from the App Store or Google Play
Dancer and former pop star Carolyn Owlett finds exercise and dancing help keep her feeling great
Carolyn Owlett
Nothing in my business is set in stone. I ‘wear’ the stress of my job. Each morning begins with ‘is this going to be a good day?’ That’s why it’s important I get myself in the right place.
“I’ll get up at 5am and go into my garden when the sun’s coming up to do a home workout – it might be yoga, pilates or a dance class online. Then I’ll feel really good all day – mornings are my favourite time to do something.”
Winter, however, is a different story, but Owlett knows routine is important for her wellbeing, so she’ll try to attend an early dance class.
“I always try to do something before I start work. I’m not good at sitting still or meditation. I need to move to be happy – it’s like a gift to myself.”
As a single mum of two teenage boys, and a self-employed publicist and consultant, her schedule is hectic and unpredictable. Her eldest son’s busy acting career – he’s International Emmy winner Billy Barratt – means she’s juggling clients and family commitments.
“Nothing in my business is set in stone. I ‘wear’ the stress of my job. Each morning begins with ‘is this going to be a good day?’ That’s why it’s important I get myself in the right place.”
A former dancer and member of a girl band (411) in the early 2000s, it’s still dancing that she loves.
“While you’re doing it, you can’t think of anything else. I’ve been dancing my entire life. I feel I’m literally dancing the stress out of my body.”
If injury or schedule prevent her exercising, she notices the impact upon her mental health. “Everything feels stale, it’s horrible.”
In-person classes are her favourite: “I love the energy bouncing around the room,” but if she can’t attend in person, she’ll always try to follow an online class or app. “There’s some brilliant stuff online, and if I follow a structured workout, it makes me see it through. You raise your endorphins and you feel happier. It’s simple really.”
Singing in a local choir has its own special magic and helps to carve out ‘me time’, says learning and development adviser Emi Morimoto
There’s nothing quite like singing in a choir. You aren’t trying to stand out, you just want to blend in and make something really beautiful.
Emi Morimoto
“There’s nothing quite like singing in a choir. You aren’t trying to stand out, you just want to blend in and make something really beautiful.”
It was job stress that led Morimoto to seek out some activity for herself after working long hours as a secondary school teacher in northwest London.
She joined the Barnet Choral Society in 2017 and has been rehearsing with them once a week ever since.
“They do a lovely range of music of varying levels of difficulty. For about two hours you are totally involved. It’s something you work on but you’re thinking about how far your breath can get you, and that’s really lovely.”
Morimoto has since changed jobs and had a son, who’s now three. Being a working mother is all engrossing, she says – and choir offers precious downtime. “It makes a huge difference having something to look forward do that’s ‘mine’ during the week. It’s like exercise – even if you’re not in the mood, you go along and you forget all the other stuff you have on your plate.”