Four mini ways to make you feel better in honour of World Mental Health Day

Feeling behind?  Overwhelmed?  Like your head and/or heart is going to explode from the unbelievable, surreal isht show going on in the world?

(Thanks to my dear friend Marsha for that great term).

I hear you.  I feel you.

70% of us have experienced trauma 

470 million of us are living with an anxiety disorder 

More than 1 billion people are living with mental health disorders (source: WHO)

In honour of the annual World Mental Health Day, I’ve come up with truly tiny things you can do to soothe your ruffled feathers; unclench your jaw, coax your shoulders down from where they’ve been camping out around your ears, and give the hamsters racing laps in your brain a well-deserved nap.

1. Drink one glass of water

The backstory: I love me my Diet Coke.  My taste buds, much to my frustration, do not like tea or coffee.  Weird right?  So I’m always looking for ways to drink more water because it’s healthier. 

I have my trusty large water bottle, but it was feeling a bit overwhelming.  Soooo much water. Such a big bottle. Oof.

The solution: drink water out of a smaller glass.  Simple.  In these harebrained times, it feels much more doable.  And guess what?  I’m drinking more water.

2. Meditate for one minute

The backstory: like you, I’ve had a tumultuous year.  Lots of great things happened but also world events that continue to tear at my heart.  I know meditation is good for me.  But again, like the water, it felt ginormous.  Like climbing Mount Everest backwards without oxygen.

The solution: I use my lovely Insight Timer app and meditate for minutes at a time.  Done is better than perfect.  And I shush any judgy inner chatter that tries to convince me I should be doing more.

3. Stand up

The backstory: Did you know that loads of sitting can increase your risk of up to 30 diseases (Dr. Sara Gottfried in her Brain Body Diet Book)?!  Yikes. I don’t know about you, but I can get so into my work, into the flow, that when I finally do stand up, I’m stiff.

The solution: Stand up.  It’s that simple.  Check out the funky tool I made you to help you do just that.

4. Stretch

The backstory: As I get older, I’m getting more creaky, and I know stretching is good for me and makes my body feel better, but it can be hard to actually do it.  It can feel like one more thing on my zillion-thing-long list.

The solution: the Bend app is truly easy-peasy to use.  You can target different parts of your body and control how long you want to stretch for.  Bendy bodies unite!

One glass. One minute. One stand. One stretch. None of these will fix the world, but they might help you feel a little more like you while you’re in it. And a little more you is exactly what the world needs right now. Start with just one today. Tiny counts.

Take Action Now – go on and learn, laugh, and lead

Learn

• Check out my other World Mental Health Day posts:
• Four tools to help you, in honour of World Mental Health Day (2023)
• World Mental Health Day: 10 Proven Ways To Be Kinder At Work (2024)
• Finding patterns and perspective with this fabulous tech tool (2025).

Laugh – gently

• Why going with the flow isn’t so easy.

Lead

• To help you both stand up and take more breaks, share my take a break cards with a colleague

P.S.

• I’m a bit late posting this as International World Mental Health Day is behind us, but I wanted to get the Learning and Development Roundtable invite out on time.  Annnd that’s part of the strategy too.  Give yourself grace, dear one.

P.P.S.

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Since 2009, I’ve been writing weekly posts across five topics. Click into whichever one makes you lean forward just now … you’ll find everything I’ve written on that topic waiting for you there.

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• Learning and Development – practical tools and fresh thinking for your own growth … because you deserve the same attention you give everyone else.
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