Brighten Your Day With Emotional Health Exercises

What is an emotional health exercise? These are some specific practices that can boost your emotional heath and provide a sense of health and well-being and help brighten your day!

Let’s begin by talking about emotional health. Mental health and emotional health are not the same thing. Mental health is a larger category that includes emotional, mental, and social health. Mental health can be affected by various conditions and circumstances, including genetic and environmental factors. Emotional health is all about how we understand and experience emotions and what reactions they cause inside.

There are many ways you can begin to improve emotional health. Let’s explore a few:

Better Sleep Sleep affects our emotional health. If you are not getting enough sleep, the first place it will show is in your mental and emotional function. It is more difficult to deal with stress when you have not had enough sleep. Regular sleep patterns are a great place to start. What is your sleep environment like? You want it to be dark and quiet. Put your phone in the other room and on silent for the night. Create a nighttime routine that gets your mind and body ready to go to bed. Turn of all electronics an hour before, take a hot bath, read a relaxing book, write in a gratitude journal, get your to do list on paper and out of your head, for a few ideas.

Physical Activity When you do a physical activity, your brain and body come together to focus on performing a single action. When you choose to do something that you enjoy, there is a sense of accomplishment, and satisfaction when you have completed that activity. Doing something you enjoy is so important. Going to the gym and hating every minute of it is just as bad as not going at all. Moving your body also improves your quality of sleep. Regular daily physical activity is a great foundation for emotional health.

Deep Breathing According to many ancient traditions and cultures, the breath links the spiritual and the physical. Bringing awareness to the breath is an essential function of the mind and body that has excellent benefits when practiced regularly with intention. One of the reasons it should be practiced regularly is so it can be used when we are feeling upset. Knowing that our emotions affect us physically breathing can help us calm anger, fear, anxiety before they have the opportunity to disrupt our health. Breathing can be practiced anytime and anywhere.

Volunteering Your Time Giving oneself has been found to have a huge benefit on the way a person sees themselves and their situation. When you give selflessly, especially of your time and attention, your thoughts and feelings are no longer on you and your situation but are on what you are doing and who you are helping. In helping someone else, you can help yourself.

Spend Time With Friends We are social people and we get a lot of support from our family and friends. Getting out and spending time with my family and friends is one of my favorite things to do. Lunch, a quick text or phone call, or an afternoon together will rejuvenate me. Being open to doing something with someone always makes me feel better.

Make a Gratitude List I know that I have mentioned a gratitude list more than once, but for me there is no better way to refocus my attention to what is right and good in my life than what is not. This is easy, free and so effective!

Take Time to Unplug It is so easy to become attached to our phones, computers and television. Technology is our way of life but it does not have to become our life. It is very healthy to take an emotional and physical break from technology. Talk to a person face to face, read a book that you actually hold in your hands and turn the pages, take a walk outside in nature and ground yourself while you are out there. The important thing is to find a way to disconnect from technology and reconnect with real life.

Do Some Journaling Taking the time to describe your day and how you felt about your experiences is a great way to get things out of your head and on paper. You might be able to see a new perspective and see your growth and change over time. It is also a great way to help you remember what you did during that particular time.

Talk About Your Feelings Talking about how you are feeling is an excellent way to get a better understanding of your emotions. If you do not have someone close that you can talk to, your pet or the tree in the backyard are always willing to listen. If you believe in a Higher Power, talk to them.

Here are a few ways to help you keep your emotional health in a good place. There are going to be those days that we need professional help to get through what we are dealing with. Please address that if you are needing that type of help. Hopefully the list above can give you some ideas on how to help yourself stay as emotionally healthy as possible and brighten your day!

I hope you have a wonderful week!