How to Become Mentally and Emotionally Strong

Avoid bad habits that affect your peace of mind. If you play with your mental health by drinking, taking drugs, stealing, cheating or the like, you are depriving yourself of your ability to be emotionally and spiritually strong. God. Start getting rid of the bad habits in your life, or at least limit them so they don’t control your behavior and emotions. If you’re addicted to something, ask someone else for help.

Take care of yourself. Exercise, healthy food, rest and entertainment will help develop and maintain your mental and emotional health. When you care about yourself, you’re sending a signal to your brain that you’re worthy of attention. Make sure you’re giving yourself enough time to meet your basic needs for exercise, food, sleep, and rest. ^[11]

• Exercise regularly. Set a goal to exercise 30 minutes a day.
• Eat a balanced diet with healthy and unprocessed foods like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and fat-free protein.
• Get eight hours of sleep every night.
• Spend at least 15 minutes a day doing yoga, deep breathing, or meditation.
• Drink plenty of water, at least eight glasses a day and more if you exercise and sweat.

Enrich your mind. Challenge yourself to never stop learning. You will become stronger and wiser as you accumulate more knowledge. Don’t let yourself be confined, mentally or emotionally. Be curious, always aware and knowledgeable about the world.

• Read books, watch great movies, plays, ballet shows, and enjoy art in its many forms.
• Create your own art. Write, draw, compose music, carve, knit – anything that stimulates your creative side.
• Learn new skills. Try being a chef, do some homemade projects at home, garden, learn how to drive a manual transmission, learn how to fish, train to run 5 kilometers.
• Chat with people. There are deep conversations that go beyond petty chatter. Get to know people’s biographies and share your stories.

Improve your spiritual side. Many people gain strength by paying attention to their spiritual lives. Making a connection to something bigger than yourself – whatever it is – fills your soul with strength and a sense of purpose. Studies have shown that faith and prayer help relieve stress and shorten recovery time from illness. ^[12] come in many forms, and it’s important to find what works for you. There is no right way to be spiritual.

• Consider going to a place of worship to pray with others.
• Start practicing meditation or yoga.
• Spend time enjoying nature and admiring the beauty of the natural world.

Set reasonable goals and execute them. ^[13] You can practice building mental strength by setting meaningful goals and working toward them step-by-step. To go from one step to the next, you need to be diligent, overcome any frustration or pain, and persevere until you succeed. It’s not an easy victory, and the more you practice, the easier it will be to achieve your goal.

• If you have goals that are too big and seem unattainable, break them down into smaller achievable steps. ^[14] Suppose, if you’re trying to become more assertive, you could make it a goal to speak up for yourself three times a week. These expressions can be as small as telling your lover that you want to have dinner at a particular restaurant instead of going along with that person’s wishes.
• Maintain a “persistent” attitude. Resolute that even if there are obstacles, you will keep trying, even if the immediate goal is to continue working, complete a project, manage personal finances, etc.
• See failure as an opportunity to learn. Failures are merely temporary obstacles with many lessons for each of us.

Stand firm in the face of negativity. Negative things can attack you in many different ways: it can be from within, in the form of negative thoughts and harmful self-talk, or from external influences, such as negative or abusive comments. use from others. While completely eliminating negativity is beyond everyone’s control, there are ways to keep it under control.

• Curb negative thoughts by identifying and challenging them. Learn more by Facing Negative Thoughts.
• While you may be able to keep your exposure to negative or toxic people to a minimum—or even eliminate them entirely—sometimes these people are family members, co-workers, or people you are forced to interact with. Instead of aggravating their negativity, you can learn to ignore them and set limits on these people. The following wikiHow article, Facing Negative People, is a great resource for how to take action.

Positive monologue to build your mental and emotional strength. ^[15] Daily positive affirmations will help you develop your mental and emotional strength. Take a few minutes each day to look in the mirror and encourage yourself. You can say what you believe in yourself or what you want to believe in yourself. ^[16] Some examples of positive affirmations include:

• “I’m trying to be emotionally strong every day.”
• “I’m learning effective ways to manage stress and be kinder to myself.”
• “I know that if I work little by little every day to achieve this goal, I’ll feel stronger mentally and emotionally.”

Learn to stay calm under pressure. As circumstances get tougher, you’ll find your emotions just about to flow. When you hold back a little bit instead of acting impulsively and reacting, you’ll have time to weigh your options and find the wisest path.

• Taking the time to count from 1 to 10 may seem cliché, but it’s actually beneficial. Before reacting emotionally to something, stop, take a deep breath, and think hard. ^[17]
• Meditation can help you stay calm, because it teaches you to be more objective with your feelings and thoughts. Instead of reacting, you can see your thoughts and feelings to realize, “Yes, I’m really feeling down,” and think about what to do next. ^[18]

Skip the trifles. If you’re sensitive to the annoying little things or the sarcasm that everyone has to deal with every day, you’ll spend too much time and energy on things that don’t really matter after all. When you focus on the little things, notice them, or treat them as big distractions, you not only increase your own stress, but also increase your risk of life. ^[19] Learning how to calmly deal with minor daily stresses will help you control your stress hormones (cortisp), protect you against risks such as weakened immune system, high blood pressure and cholesterol, or risk of cardiovascular diseases. ^[20]

• Instead of stress, create healthy habits by thinking about the things that bother you, staying calm, and deciding on the best, healthiest, and most effective way to deal with them.
• For example, if your husband frequently forgets to close his toothpaste tube, remember that it may not be as important to him as it is to you. You can choose to deal with the situation – close the tube of toothpaste yourself and think about what your husband has done for the family, or stick a (cute) note on the wall as a gentle reminder.
• Be mindful of perfectionism, it can lead you to set unrealistically high and high expectations for yourself and your everyday life, forgetting that there are influencing factors that are not part of your life. your control.
• Try a visualization exercise to shake off all the minutiae that are bothering you. Hold a small stone in your hand and imagine it includes everything that is bothering you. Focus on that negativity and squeeze the stone. Then, when you’re ready, throw the stone away. Throw it in the lake or throw it far into the field. As you do so, imagine you are also throwing away all your negative emotions with the stone. ^[21]

Change your perspective. If you tend to wallow in your problems, find ways to take a different perspective on life and its full potential. Everyone will hit a dead end at one point or another; but those with emotional and mental strength will find another way to get to their destination. When you can’t stop thinking, try these methods:

• Read more. Reading news or novels will open the door for you to enter other people’s world, which will remind you that the world is huge and your problems are like drops in the ocean.
• Participate in volunteer activities. Communicate with people who need your help. Several studies show that volunteering has many benefits for your mental and physical health. ^[22]
• Listen to a friend. Listen to someone who needs your advice. Put yourself in that person’s shoes, give the best and sincere advice.
• Tourism. Stepping out of your comfort zone will give you the right perspective on your situation. Go somewhere new, even if it’s just a few towns away.

Have a positive outlook on life. Mentally and emotionally strong people do not complain. They have many problems just like everyone else, but they face them calmly and see things in general. A positive attitude towards the good things in life and the potential for the future will give you more mental and emotional strength to deal with difficult situations. Many studies also show that a positive outlook on life is beneficial for your physical health as well. ^[23]

• Live the happy moments. Try to enjoy moments with family, friends, pets, etc., as much as possible.
• Look at the positive side of difficult situations. You can always learn something from them.

Be honest with yourself. The ability to face the truth is the greatest indicator of a person’s emotional and mental strength. If you are going to overcome an obstacle, you need to be able to face it. Lying to yourself about what’s going on will only hurt you more. ^[24]

• If you have a tendency to run away from, for example, watching television to get away from your problems, recognize these bad habits and try to get rid of them.
• Be honest with yourself about your weaknesses.

Think before you act. When faced with a difficult situation, give yourself enough time to think carefully before reacting or making a decision. This habit will help you keep your emotions in check and weigh your options, and that’s necessary regardless of the situation you’re facing. ^[25]

• If possible, take the time to consider the situation and write down your feelings. ^[26] Try to identify one positive thing about the situation, even if it’s just a very small thing. ^[27] Such a small change in the way you think can make a big difference.
• Remember to take at least 10 seconds to think before you speak. Even if your partner says she wants to break up, you can still take 10 seconds to think before responding. In the end, you will feel satisfied with your actions.

Consider all angles. In a calm state, before deciding what to do, think clearly about the situation in front of you. What really happened? What directions can you take? There is always more than one way to solve a problem. ^[28]

• Suppose a friend tempts you to commit a crime, and you’re not sure what to choose between loyalty to your friends and compliance with the law. Weigh the good and the bad in both options. Is that person really your friend when he wants you to break the law? Or is the law obstructing real justice?

Identify the right path and choose it. Take your conscience as a guide for yourself. Studies show that people who choose instinctively are more satisfied with their decisions than those who carefully weigh their options. ^[29] Sometimes the answer is easy to see, and sometimes it’s hard to know the right thing to do. Don’t let the problem get worse and get out of control; Make a decision and execute it.

• Consult people you trust. It’s perfectly normal to ask other people’s opinions when you’re not sure about the path you’re taking. However, don’t let them turn you around and make you do the wrong thing.
• Imagine what someone you admire would do. The person must be calm, honest, and kind. What will that person do?
• After all, you are still responsible for your actions. Make the best decision you can — one you can live with.