Nurturing Your Emotional Health: Building Resilience for a Fulfilling Life.
How do you feel today? How do you feel most of the time?
These are questions that may seem simple on the surface, but the reality is that our emotions are dynamic and ever-changing. From hour to hour, day to day, they can fluctuate depending on a variety of internal and external factors.
Our emotional state has a significant impact on our daily lives, affecting how we perceive the world, interact with others, and navigate life's challenges.
Emotional health is not a singular concept
Emotional health is not a singular concept but rather a multi-faceted continuum that encompasses various components, all of which work together to influence our overall well-being.
Emotional awareness: The ability to recognise and understand one's emotions and the emotions of others.
Emotional regulation: The capacity to manage and express emotions in a healthy and constructive manner, avoiding extreme emotional reactions or emotional suppression.
Coping skills: The ability to cope with stress, adversity, and life's challenges effectively without being overwhelmed by negative emotions.
Resilience: The capacity to bounce back from setbacks and difficult situations, adapting to changes and maintaining a positive outlook on life.
Self-esteem: A positive sense of self-worth and self-acceptance, allowing individuals to feel confident and content with themselves.
Empathy: The ability to understand and empathise with the emotions and experiences of others, fostering better social connections and relationships.
Emotional intelligence: The ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions, both in oneself and others, which is crucial for successful communication and interpersonal relationships.
Emotional Health is not something your have or don’t have.
Emotional health is not something we possess or lack outright; rather, it exists on a continuum, and achieving optimal emotional well-being involves optimising ourselves in the different elements noted above. It's an ongoing journey of personal growth and development.
The Interconnectedness of Emotional Health and Other Aspects of Well-Being
Emotional health is intricately connected to various other areas of our well-being, such as diet, sleep, and physical activity. To truly address emotional health, we must take a holistic approach and consider our lifestyle as a whole. For example, improved sleep can positively impact emotional health, but if we don't manage stress effectively, our emotional well-being will still be compromised.
Improving Emotional Health:
When you consider how to improve your overall emotional health it is important to reflect on your overall lifestyle together with strategies that can help to improve your emotional health.
There are many ways that we can take active steps to improve our emotional health, which of course, take effort. There is not a quick fix simple solution to improved emotional wellbeing. Achieving positive emotional wellbeing is a life-long endeavour that requires the development of habits which help provide the foundations and skills to sustain emotional health.
So, how can we improve our emotional health?
Build resilience.
To build resilience there are a number of steps you can take. Firstly, review your physical habits. A poor diet, getting little physical activity, poor sleep, can all inhibit your resilience and therefore your emotional health. Start by improving your physical health and your mental health will follow.
Change your perspective:
When we look at situations, problems or challenges from a negative perspective we can find ourselves feeling powerless and anxious which can lead to a decline in emotional health. By changing our perception we can shift our mindset from powerless to empowered and negative to one that can see opportunities. For example, think of challenges as opportunities to expand your mind and consider failures as opportunities for learning. Simply changing your mindset when it comes to difficulties, challenge and failure you can create a positive attitude which can filter into more positive emotional health.
Practice Gratitude.
Do not be mistaken - practicing daily gratitude is not about not wanting more, it’s about recognising all that you do have. It creates a mindset of abundance rather than lack and it does not take a genius to understand that a mindset of abundance will generate greater emotional health. But don’t take my word for it - the research is conclusive. Practicing gratitude improves mental wellbeing. (Benefits of Gratitude)
Explore your values and the purpose of your life.
Living in alignment with your values will help you to achieve better emotional health as your actions will mirror what is truly important to you. When you exist in a state of incongruence (where your behaviours do not align with your beliefs/values) you will experience a state of internal discomfort. You may, in the short term, try to justify the behaviour to alleviate the discomfort, you may even try and and change your beliefs, however, it will persist and eventually show up in ways that reduce your emotional health.
Check out this blog post about Happiness to help you reflect on your purpose: Happiness.
When you live in a way that is true to your values then you are more likely to find your purpose and meaning in life.
Tap into social connections and community.
We are naturally social animals and therefore isolation and loneliness are almost guaranteed to create poorer emotional health. Therefore it is important to create and maintain a healthy social support network around you. It is also important to ensure that the people you choose to surround yourself with lift you up, provide positive energy, allow your to be authentically you, and who will support you at times of stress and challenge.
Reduce Stress
Chronic stress eats away at our Emotional health, with directly by causing low mood and anxiety, but also indirectly by affecting our ability to function, our relationships and our lifestyle choices. You could argue that Stress is one of the single biggest factors that can impact on our overall emotional health. Therefore, taking active steps to reduce your stress or manage stress may be the most important thing you can do for your emotional health. Find out more here: Understanding Stress
Get good quality sleep.
Sleep is essential for healthy mental and physical functioning. When sleep is compromised then overall health can be affected which ultimately impacts on your emotional health. Find out more here: Improve your sleep
Practice mindfulness.
Discovering and maintaining a practice of mindfulness can not only improve emotional health directly but it can also help improve aspects of health which contribute to emotional health such as reducing stress, improving sleep, finding purpose and building resilience. If you are new to mindfulness then check out this link to help you get started: Mindfulness. You won’t regret it!
Conclusion:
Maintaining emotional health is important for a balanced and fulfilling life. It allows individuals to experience a range of emotions, acknowledge and address them, and handle stress and challenges in a healthy manner. Developing emotional intelligence and learning effective coping strategies can significantly improve emotional well-being and overall quality of life.
Note:
If someone is facing persistent emotional difficulties or mental health challenges, seeking professional support from a therapist, counselor, or mental health professional is recommended.
You have one life, do not settle for health and well-being that are lacking or impaired - embrace a change so that you can live your best life in the best health.
Contact me for more information or to find out about my programmes.
References:
National Institutes of Health (2017). Emotional wellness toolkit. [online] National Institutes of Health (NIH). Available at: https://www.nih.gov/health-information/emotional-wellness-toolkit.
Your Wellbeing. Your Life. Your Future. Your Choice.
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