Selfcare and the Art of Balancing Mental and Physical Health

Achieving adept mental health is all about achieving a skillful balance in your life. When your piece of work, relationships, and cocky are attended to, and so your well-beingness and personal satisfaction is maintained.

In this podcast episode ,  John Sharry , Psychotherapist, Clinical Director and Co-Founder of SilverCloud Wellness, uses the metaphor of a  three-legged stool to draw good mental wellness. The 3 legs represent the key life domains of work , relationships  and cocky : If any of the legs is out of kilter, the stool falls over simply if all are  in  balance and so the stool and your mental wellness is stone solid.

Our mental health and personal well-existence  are tied up in the quality of our personal relationships. The more than closely we are connected to the people we love, th e  happ ier  we feel and the more personal satisfaction we have in our lives.  Even so, c reating and maintaining happy personal relationships and belonging to positive communities is not straightforward.

It is important to continuously attend to and nurture our relationships with the of import people in lives as well equally taking time to strengthen the communities to which we belong.

In the podcast, John provides seven simple habits that are the key to keeping your close relationships happy, supportive and personally satisfying.

Piece of work is the second leg of our well-being stool that is primal to maintaining balance in our lives . This may  include your paid employment or  how one  contribute s in li fe , such as  volunteering in a charity, getting involved in community projects also as creating music or art to entertain and inspire others.

John explains how  work becomes more meaningful when it is aligned with our strengths, passions and values  and how to find work nosotros beloved.

T he tertiary important life domain crucial to our positive mental wellness  is cocky-care . We won't have good mental health unless we await after our physical health  and well-being .

Oft,  mod life is characterized past busy and largely sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles.  Many people suffer from increased levels of insomnia, stress, depression and anxiety which are oft related to a elementary neglect of our health and fettle.

In the podcast, John discusses the 3 pillars of physical heal thursday: eating well, existence physically fit and getting plenty relaxation and sleep.

Listen to the full podcast below, on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. Follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date with our latest podcast episodes and content.

Prof. John Sharry is a Psychotherapist, Clinical Director and Co-Founder of SilverCloud  Wellness. He is a founder of the Parents Plus Clemency, an adjunct professor at the School of Psychology in University College Dublin and the acknowledged writer of xiv positive psychology and cocky-help books for families.

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Welcome to Digital Mental Wellness Conversations, the podcast, by SilverCloud Health. Today, we are going to have Professor John Sharry talk almost how creating adept mental wellness is almost creating residuum in your life and looking at this through the lens of relationships, work, cocky-care, eating well, existence physically active, as well as the importance of slumber and relaxation. Only earlier I mitt over to Professor Sharry, a little flake about our guest speaker. Professor John Sharry is a psychotherapist and clinical director and co-founder of SilverCloud Health. He is the founder of the Parents Plus Clemency and an offshoot professor at the School of Psychology at the University College Dublin. And the bestselling author of fourteen positive psychology and self-help books for families. Over to you, John.

Hi, I'm John Sharry, psychotherapist, clinical director and co-founder of SilverCloud Health. In this podcast, I wait at how you can take intendance of your well-being by creating residue in your life. Achieving expert mental health is all about achieving remainder. People usually become stressed when the dissimilar role of their lives are out of remainder. You lot might start over working and spending too much fourth dimension at the office, which means you lot neglect your relationships with your family and friends. Or you might spend hours obsessed with a piece of work or personal project that yous only terminate exercising or eating well. Once we fail key areas of our lives our mental health and well-being can take a nosedive. If you lot continually bring stress abode and neglect your close family relationships, you can observe yourself heading for relationship breakdown and increased stress and trauma. If you stop sleeping well or exercising your ability to cope in work volition be compromised and your stress levels will rocket.

In this podcast, I look at how you can take care of your well-being by creating balance in your life. In particular, I will wait at the three most important domains of your life that need to be in balance, namely your work and contribution, your family and relationships and your personal self-care. When your piece of work, relationships and cocky are attended to, then your mental health and well-being is maintained. A proficient metaphor for mental health is a three-legged stool. The 3 legs represent the key life domains of work, relationships and self and thus seizes your well-beingness and mental health. If whatever of the legs is out of kilter, the stool falls over just if all are in remainder then the stool and your mental health is rock solid.

For the remainder of this podcast nosotros are going to look at these key life domains in plow. Let's first look at relationships. Our mental wellness and personal well-being is tied up in the quality of our personal relationships. The more than closely we are connected to the people we love, the happier nosotros feel and the more personal satisfaction we take in our lives. Most people rate moments of connection and shared enjoyment with their loved ones as their near important life experiences. These important relationships not merely include family and personal friends but also the wider groups and communities we belong to. Forming connections and a sense of customs with work colleagues, neighbours and the various groups that make up our identity (these are sports, hobbies, religious and community groups), all contribute to our well-beingness. Forming a sense of belonging with other people around a shared mission or identity is a major contributor to our sense of personal pregnant in life. Our personal resilience is interwoven into the resilience of the communities to which we belong. Information technology is from this web of relationships and connections with other people that we draw our forcefulness. Such communities can lift us when nosotros are down and give us the capacity to deal with whatever challenges come our fashion.

Even so, creating and maintaining happy personal relationships and belonging to positive communities is not straightforward. We might start out with a loving supportive human relationship with a partner but then inattention, fail and stressful life events can accept their cost, and this leads to relationship conflicts and breakdown. At this point, the relationship far from being a source of well-being and happiness becomes a source of stress and dissatisfaction. As a upshot, information technology is very important to continuously attend to and to nurture our relationships with all the important people in our lives. It is also important to strengthen the communities to which nosotros belong.

There are six simple habits that are the primal to keeping your close relationships happy supportive and personally satisfying:

one – Accept time: Make sure to spend regular time with your partner, children, family and friends. One to one relaxed fourth dimension, when you have plenty of space to chat and have fun together is all-time.

2 – Be present: In our busy lives a major challenge is just not being present with the ones nosotros dear. Whether this is us being spaced out or checking email all the time when they are talking or being caught up in worries or stress that nosotros are not there for them. Non being present does damage the relationships. The key is to accept time to fully attend and to exist fully nowadays when we are with the ones we dearest.

3 – Express appreciation: Relationships are nurtured past frequent displays of appreciation. Whether these are but kind words of thanks to an important colleague, a gift to an important friend, affection with your partner or a reassuring hug for a child, everyone needs to be appreciated and nurtured in close relationships.

4 – Heed: Listening is the near important communication skill of all. Taking time to understand the other person's point of view is key to connecting with them. Listening is specially of import as the first step to managing conflict.

5 – Learn to communicate: Relationships suffer when one person cuts off and does not communicate about their needs. Or when they do communicate, they do it in an aggressive, explosive or dis-respectful mode. Learning to talk respectfully, warmly and assertively about what you want or need is crucial to happy relationships.

vi – Apologise and forgive: All close relationships will involve disappointment and getting hurt at times. Taking responsibleness and apologising, when y'all accept injure someone and moving on and forgiving, when you have been injure is the central to maintaining happy relationships through hard times.

Now let's look at the 2nd important life domain that is crucial to our mental wellness, namely our work and employment. Piece of work is the 2d leg of our well-beingness stool that is fundamental to maintaining balance in our lives. Work contributes to our well-existence when information technology allows united states of america to be productive in a meaningful fashion or when information technology expresses our talents and passions. Work also contributes to our well-being when it is aligned with our values and how we want to brand a difference. While the goal is to seek out work you love to exercise, the key is to bring love to whatever work you're actually doing. While it is of import to seek out employment that matches your strengths, passions and values, in many situations information technology'southward the case of bringing these strengths, passions and values to the employment you are already in.

I was watching a documentary a few years ago that explored what it meant to be happy in work and employment. The makers told a surprising story of a motorway price berth operator, who in a survey had much higher piece of work satisfaction than other people on boilerplate. When they spoke to her nearly this, she did non merely see her task every bit just existence a toll booth operator, instead she saw her task as sharing a bit of happiness with the drivers she met daily. She noticed that many of the drivers she encountered were oftentimes stressed, depressed and grumpy as they drove past her toll booth. And she fabricated it her personal mission to chat to each of them and to try and put a smile on their faces as they passed through. She transformed her work past bringing her values, her strengths and passions to it.

In because the importance of work I am not merely talking about your career or your paid employment only rather how in the whole of your life yous are making a contribution. Your work can include volunteering in a charity, getting involved in customs projects likewise as creating music or art to entertain and inspire others. While many people are engaged in meaningful piece of work through their jobs, for others their main source of meaning comes from other projects and commitments in other areas of their lives. Many people get their greatest sense of satisfaction in their roles outside of the 'mean solar day job' whether this is being a coach in a children'due south football squad, or working in local politics, or exhibiting their art or performing theatre or whatever else expresses their passions, strengths and values.

At present permit'due south await at the third important life domain crucial to our positive mental health, namely self-care. We won't have practiced mental wellness unless we look after our physical wellness and well-being. Eating well, physical exercise and getting enough slumber, balance and relaxation are crucial to positive well-beingness and mental health.

Unfortunately, modern life is characterised by busy simply largely sedentary and unhealthy lifestyles. People are rushing effectually doing things but not physically moving enough, or they are eating quick meals only they are not eating healthily. Or they are working hard, just not relaxing and resting enough. The health statistics reveal a problematic flick. Despite greater wealth and easier access to sporting facilities, poor health and obesity are on the rise. A shocking statistic is that the average person is 20 pounds heavier than twenty years ago. Think almost that. That ways on average we are putting on an extra pound every year.

Aside from the serious physical illnesses that our unhealthy lifestyles lead to, our mental wellness is also taking a hammering. Increased levels of insomnia, stress, depression and anxiety are often related to a uncomplicated neglect of our wellness and fettle.

Our positive mental health and well-existence are always rooted in the concrete intendance of our bodies. A healthy heed is closely related to a healthy torso. The three pillars of concrete wellness are eating well, being physically fit and getting enough relaxation and sleep. Now let's await at these of these in turn.

Eating well: In many ways we have never known as much as we do now near the importance of diet and eating well. Health and cooking books are best sellers, TV programmes on nutrient and diets abound, and most people know nigh the food pyramid and the importance of eating vegetables. Yet despite this knowledge, on average, we go on to swallow desperately and struggle to sustain a expert nutrition in our lives. The problem is largely environmental - we are surrounded past unhealthy foods in shops, convenience dinners on sale and are also fourth dimension poor to prepare healthy dinners at home.

When moving to a healthy lifestyle, the key is to take accuse of the surround and to make small changes that give you some command. This can include simple things similar always bringing a water bottle with you to ensure you lot drink more than water and thus avoid unhealthy drinks, do your breakfast at habitation as a filling healthy one so you lot avoid eating snacks later in the 24-hour interval or bringing your own healthy dejeuner to work then you lot avoid eating junk food in a restaurant.

Being physically agile: Co-ordinate to the WHO, adults should do at to the lowest degree 150 minutes weekly of aerobic physical activity. This type of activity tin can be brisk walking, cycling or swimming or even vigorous housework! Even if you don't accomplish the weekly WHO goal, increasing your level of activeness has enormous benefits to your well-being, including helping yous concentrate better, experience more free energy and fifty-fifty to sleep ameliorate.

Just similar making positive changes to your nutrition, making small steps is the key with concrete activity. Await at easy ways you lot can integrate activity into your day, whether this is choosing to walk instead of driving, using the stairs rather than the lift in work or even trying the new business concern trend of conducting walking meetings instead of sit down ones!

Accept steps to brand exercise fun and enjoyable by committing to an activity you dear, such as team sports, or loma walking or even dancing or aerobic classes. Also, join an activity with a friend or family member which make it all the more than social and more probable that you continue.

Sleep and relaxation: In a recent acknowledged book 'Why We Sleep', by neuroscientist Matthew Walker, he exploded the myth of the high performing person who gets by on v hours of sleep or less. He instead showed the many studies that prove that people who get almost viii hours of restful slumber are the ones who perform the best. These are besides the people who are more likely to be happier, slimmer, and even more able to ward off diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's. Taking time to create a good sleep routine is crucial your well-being and positive mental health. This is something I have always known as a psychotherapist working with families. Most of the stressed families I worked with, had poor sleep routines which were late and often fractious. The beginning important step with these families was building relaxed and early bedtime routines. This in turn would reduce stress and disharmonize and make family life more harmonious. Though information technology can take fourth dimension making sure you lot're getting a practiced sleep and building a good routine effectually your bedtime and including lots of residual or relaxation through the day. This is fundamental to your well-being.

We are coming to the end of this podcast, so now let's take a look at to where we take got to. Nosotros have proposed that looking after your mental health is near creating rest in your life. The goal is to look after the three key areas in your life all at once. This ways taking time to nurture your close relationships, bringing your talents and passions to your piece of work and making sure you prioritise your cocky-intendance. In particular, you want to ensure you eat well, are physically agile and get plenty of rest and relaxation. Taking some fourth dimension to create new good for you habits in your life can transform your mental wellness and sense of well-being.

Thanks for taking time to listen to my podcast. I'm John Sharry from Argent Cloud Health.

For more information please get to silvercloudhealth.com. Thank you very much.

Thank y'all John for your insights. There is plenty to think nigh there and lots of ways to create that all of import balance in our lives.

And please bring together united states for our next podcast which is on supporting mental health and well-being in the workplace subsequently COVID-nineteen with the use of digital. Thank you.

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Source: https://www.silvercloudhealth.com/uk/blog/mental-health-balance-in-your-life

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