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Doing "Less" Might Be the Best Thing for Your Brain

When you start looking at ways to improve your mental health and your life, you’ll find that everyone is trying to sell you some kind of crazy idea. You've got wellness influencers telling you to wake up at four in the morning to stare at the sunrise from a mountain top, take ice baths or take up pilates lessons that cost a small fortune. Others might claim you need to eat specific rare types of foods or do things in your day in a certain order to be successful. We focus so much on adding habits to our lives to feel better, but actually a better place to start would be removing the habits that make us miserable in the first place. You can't out-meditate a terrible lifestyle! Here are some things you might be doing, that you could stop for better mental health. 

Stop Optimizing Your Downtime

Stop trying to make your relaxation productive, you really don't need to listen to a dense economics podcast at two times speed while you take a walk around the neighborhood just to feel like you aren't wasting precious moments of your day. Sometimes a walk is just a walk. Its not true for everyone of course but many of us have completely ruined our hobbies by trying to turn them into side hustles or measurable achievements. If you like playing video games after work just play the game instead of tracking your completion statistics on a spreadsheet like a maniac. Give yourself permission to be entirely useless for an hour! It doesn't mean throw caution to the wind and just indulge in any vice you want, things like smoking and drinking too much are dangerous and another thing to stop (places like Legacy Healing Center can help with this). But relaxing and kicking back with a book, game or some tv isn't just time wasted when you’re exhausted. 

Stop Pathologizing Regular Sadness

There’s a lot of open conversation out there when it comes to mental health these days, and that’s good. It means the stigma is being broken and people feel safe to talk about how they feel, their conditions and what they can do to help. But the downside is that when there’s so much talk about mental illness, it can be easy to assume you have one. But feeling sad or a bit down doesn't mean you have clinical depression, just like being tidy or ‘particular’ about the way you like things organised doesn't mean you have OCD. Don’t self diagnose, talk to a doctor if you genuinely think you have something more going on. Otherwise, its important to remember that ups and downs are just part of the experience we have as humans. We’re emotional creatures and life can be hard sometimes, it might just be a case of riding the wave and knowing you’ll feel better again soon. 

Stop Shower Arguing

We all do it, stand under the hot water having intense imaginary arguments about something someone said three days ago to upset you. It can feel satisfying coming up with the perfect comeback that you wish you’d said in the moment but your brain doesn't know the difference between a real confrontation and the one you just invented. They're functionally the same to your nervous system so you're flooding your system with stress hormones over a totally fictional scenario.

If you’re looking for more support on managing your own wellness journey, do take a look through my health and fitness page, where I share more about what’s worked for me over the years.

I’d love to hear from you—is there a habit you’ve stopped doing that’s made a massive difference to your mood? Or maybe you’re currently in a rut and just need to know you aren’t alone? Let’s chat in the comments!