We may be living longer these days, but our quality of life, especially with regard to mental health, is hardly something you’d really want to prolong. We lead busy lives, packed with stress, take limited spans of vacation time, and we don’t spend enough time focusing energy on improving the quality of our lives. So what can you do to give your emotional wellbeing a much-needed kick up the backside?
Firstly, put down the tablet, step away from the sofa, and go outside. Why do you stick yourself in front of a screen all evening, be it a lap top, tablet or the TV, when you’ve done that all day at work? Grab some low-tech time and go for a walk in a park or a public green space. If you really want to improve your emotional wellness, take a friend with you. According to a recent study in The British Medical Journal, people over 75 who have a moderately active social network could expect to add 5.4 years to their life.
If it’s hard to muster up the motivation to change things up, book that time in. You often think about things you’d like to do, but actually getting around to doing them is a different story. Schedule in activities that make you happy, as this will make you more likely to do them. Get out your diary right now and book it in: Me time, 2-3 pm, crossword puzzles, walk around the block. Taking time out for you is just as important as going to the dentist or having dinner with friends, so why shouldn’t it go in the diary?
Finally, focusing on making the most of the present moment can help you to maintain a more positive attitude. As George Bernard Shaw wrote in his play Misalliance, ‘The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.’