5 Ways to Slow Down for Your Mental Health

Slow Down for your Mental Health

Sometimes life can be overwhelming and fast paced. You might feel like you can’t keep up with all of its demands. Summertime can especially highlight the busy times. Between work, events, kids, family, and friends you can feel like there is no end in sight.

Taking time to slow down, breathe, and re-center yourself can help mitigate the feeling of being overwhelmed. Letting the stress build up can not only bring forth feelings of anxiety and depression but also, can affect your physical health as well. 

Here are 5 ways to help you slow down and enjoy life to its fullest. 

1.  Take time to rest.

• Sometimes the answer to relieve feelings of stress from being busy is not some huge fix we need to make in our lives. By simply taking time to rest and get more sleep, we can help heal our body and mind. 

 2.  Focus on quality relationships.

• Relationships can provide immense value to our lives. However, juggling family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances can stretch us too thin. Creating quality over quantity relationships can help refocus our lives on what is important.

 3.  Set appropriate boundaries and expectations.

• Prioritize yourself by understanding what is physically and psychologically wise for you to take on each day. Find your comfort level and understand this may change throughout time. Learn to say no when you feel that you are overextended. 

 4.  Take a break from the overload of information.

• In today’s world, the flow of information is at our fingertips and everywhere we look. We can find ourselves consumed with reading about trends, celebrities, politics, and war. The constant stimulation of information can lead to feelings of anxiety and stress. By cutting out the constant flow of information we can have better focus in our own lives with renewed appreciation. 

 5.  Check in with yourself. 

• Being on autopilot can become second nature as we undergo busy seasons in our lives. Emotions can become buried as we go through the motions of each day. Take time to check in with yourself and how you are feeling. Learning to manage your emotions and understanding how you are feeling can decrease the chances of burnout. 

It is so easy to get caught up in the competition of being busy. That is why it is so important to slow down and prioritize a healthy work-life balance. If you find that you’re still struggling with life’s busyness and it is affecting your mental health, please reach out to us for help and compassionate care.