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Five tips for an emotionally healthy life – the stuff of fairy tales?!!??
Emotions can be hard to control, but even without a fully-fledged strategy for regulation, you can adopt some basic techniques to take better charge of them and so improve your overall wellbeing.
- Be active – physical exercise and intellectual engagement usually prevent people from focusing on negative emotions. Strain your body once in a while, either at the gym, practising yoga, dancing, walking or doing some heavy housework. In addition, enjoying good food, books, films and music can all make it easier to look at the bright side of life.
- Develop new habits – disrupting your routine can help you focus on positive events and avoid boredom. For example, start a diary and make a note of all the nice things that happen to you. Reserve a few minutes each day to remind yourself of happy times.
- Meet people – mingle with folk you like. An active social life is an effective means to overcome everyday worries and mild anxiety. You don’t have to be the life and soul of the party to be more sociable, just be a little more prepared to spend time with others.
- Be thankful – never under-estimate the power of counting your blessings. Being grateful for what you have already received doesn’t just enhance satisfaction in the now, it allows you to draw even more of what you want in the future. Appreciation for anything always attracts support.
- Set the bar at a realistic height – it is possible that you may want happiness too much. As we can never be happy all the time, putting pressure on yourself to always be merry may itself become a source of discontent. It is perfectly ok, natural, normal and healthy to experience a whole myriad of emotions, given how life throws at us so many different experiences.
Learning to regulate powerful emotions can indeed enhance both our physical and mental wellbeing because we finally master and take charge of our feelings. In fairy tale lingo, this means it really is quite futile to keep on chasing that Golden Goose on the outside when we already have our very own Fairy Godmother working on the inside. Get this right and we really do get to live happily ever after!