Staying at home amid the pandemic brings a whole lot of challenges to your mental health. Globally people are facing anxiety issues, depression, stress and stigma.
For many of us, traveling is the ultimate stress reliever but covid-19 has packed humans at home and we can’t even step out to interact with different people to enlighten and motivate ourselves.
Covid-19 has brought a certain amount of uncertainty and loss and is not just affecting humans professionally but also personally. Daily stress can play havoc with our health even for a long term.
Here are few things that can help an individual to keep themselves sane and motivated amid the crisis:
Physical exercise
Regular exercise helps to uplift self-confidence, improve your mood, lower down the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Practice any form of exercise that you like. It will help to increase your fitness level while decreasing your stress. Simple activity which can be easily done indoors like walking, stair climbing, dancing, yoga can work wonders in such difficult times. Start slow, so that you can stick to your program. If you will start with an intense workout, it will exhaust you completely and no motivation will be left to exercise the next day. If you don’t like to exercise daily, then at least try to work out 3 to 4 days in a week to see the results.
Eat healthy
This is the best time to inculcate the habit of eating healthy home cooked food as restaurants are shut and home deliveries are also not available in most of the areas. Eating healthy food can reduce stress levels and may act as a mood enhancer. Unhealthy eating patterns can increase stress levels and potentially increase the risk of major health problems in future if you don’t address them on time.
Develop a habit of eating a balanced and healthy diet to manage psychological changes. Start your day with a healthy breakfast. Avoid having sugary drinks, too much caffeine, refined foods, and unnecessary carbs. Rather, increase protein intake, have seasonal fruits, fibers, vegetables, beans, whole grains and drink plenty amount of water.
Most importantly, if you have a habit of emotional eating, avoid it! Try not to reach for food when you are feeling stressed as it increases bloating, gas and you become prone to discomfort.
Meditate
Mindfulness meditation helps to improve focus and concentration. It improves self-esteem, self-awareness and lowers the stress, anxiety and depression. Meditation helps to discover positive attributes about yourself; it helps to train your mind to focus on the present and helps to eliminate anxious thoughts that can fuel depression.
Not just this, if you have addiction of smoking or drinking and you want to overcome your addictions then meditation is the key. It helps to alter brain receptors associated with the addictions and it may reduce cravings for such substances. Meditation helps to have positive outlook, self-discipline, healthy sleep patterns and even increase chronic pain tolerance.
Playful Activities
Choose some playful activity of your interest that will bring joy and laughter like playing board games or cleaning your house, or simply gardening, listening to music more often, try doodling or painting or just being a couch potato while binge watching. Such activities will help to divert your mind from the ongoing crisis and will keep you in the present moment with a light-hearted focus and laughter that will come to you naturally.
Reading
Reading not only helps to increase knowledge but also helps to decrease blood pressure, lower heart rate and reduce stress. Reading can help to escape from the stress of everyday life. Invite yourself to the literary world which will relax your body and ease out tension in your muscles. Books are an endless source of history, humor, romance, fantasy, comic and whatever you might be craving for. Find a book of your interest and make a routine to read every day at least for 30 minutes in a quiet place.
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