May is mental health month, and it couldn’t have come any sooner!
We need to bring attention to the mental health situations that are becoming more and more of a challenge for Americans and people all over the world.
And the stigma around mental health is still so incredibly powerful!
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview one of the leading EMS captains in New York City, who point-blank told me on the show that they did not have enough mental health support for everything the first responders have been going through.
He also noted, an incredible increase of suicide rates amongst first responders just in his department!
And then when we look around at the number of people that are struggling with weight, struggling with addictions, struggling with relationships, struggling with careers, struggling with finances… anxiety! Depression! PTSD! Insomnia! All of these will lead to mental health challenges even for the strongest amongst us.
So what do we do?
Let’s look at a few options to help deal with all of the mental health challenges we are going through:
Number One. Understanding mental health challenges can be very difficult because everyone manifests them in a slightly different way.
Some people may express depression through anger. Other people could express anxiety via isolation. Many other people will experience loneliness and the avoidance of loneliness via alcohol or sugar or drugs or television or spending.
Working with a professional can help you get to the core, to the bottom, and to the cause of any mental health challenge you might be going through. It’s very difficult to heal issues by ourselves.
Number Two. Procrastination. Codependency. These conditions can turn into extremely large mental health blocks to success.
Once again, working with a professional to see, why you are procrastinating, or why you’re codependent when you hang around unhealthy friends, can be the beginning of the healing of your own mental health challenge.
Number Three. Gratitude journaling. When we’re in the middle of mental health challenges, it’s so important to be journaling about the opposite side, the good stuff that is going on in your life.
It might be that you have a place to live. Or food to eat. Or water to drink. Or a job. When we start to focus during challenging times, on even the small things that we are grateful for, it can release a cascade of chemicals in the brain lifting our spirits at least for a short period of time.
Write about a beautiful sunset that you saw or a sunrise that was absolutely stunning! Or maybe you saw the most beautiful cardinal and wrote about the brilliance of the colors in this bird.
Because this is such an important part of the healing in the world of mental health, we actually just came out with our 12th book, “The Ultimate Gratitude Journal… 52 weeks to a new you!“
Gratitude helps to level the playing field by allowing us to focus not just on the depression or the weight gain or the financial challenge or the relationship issues… But it also reminds us that even in the midst of struggle, there are very good things that we can be appreciative of.
Number Four. Exercise! Even six, 10-minute walks over the course of a day will release “feel good endorphin chemicals in the brain“, lifting our spirits while we’re going through challenging times.
If you have the time to walk twice for 30 minutes or once for an hour, go for it!
Number Five. Watch only uplifting videos on YouTube or uplifting shows on television!
It’s amazing that the power of what we watch has to do with our attitude and the release of some of our mental health challenges.
Number Six. Who are we hanging out with? Do they bring us up? Do they bring us down? Do they gossip constantly? Are they conspiracy theorists that are looking for all kinds of negativity in the world today?
We need to protect our mental health, and one of the ways we do this is to make sure that we’re interacting with people that are on a level up or even maybe several levels above us.
Surround ourselves with people that are proactive, positive, and difference makers. They aren’t sitting around and complaining about all that’s wrong in the world. This one step can have a huge effect on your mental health!
Number Seven. Energy work like massage therapy, or Reiki, can also help to stimulate the immune system, and once again release feel-good chemicals into the body.
Number Eight. For many people, completely eliminating alcohol within 30 to 60 days will have a dramatic effect in regards to turning around their attitude and mental health status.
Alcohol as we all know is a depressant. The last thing we need to be putting into our body when we’re struggling with any type of mental health condition is something like alcohol, a depressant, that’s only going to deepen the challenges we are facing today.
Number Nine. Meditation. Journaling. Prayer. All of these techniques have a powerful effect on enhancing our mental health status.
Number Ten. Play! Oh my Lord have we forgotten how to play? It doesn’t matter if it’s putt putt golf, going bowling, or picking up shells on the beach… Having playtime is incredibly important when it comes to restoring our mental health to a higher, healthier level.
There are so many more options we have to enhance our mental health, but I must warn you of one thing: it will all be done via an action step by you, it will not be done just by thinking positively or hoping for the pandemic to move on.
Everything that you can do to enhance your mental health will ask you to start to live life a little differently, and that’s OK.
And if you want to jump way ahead of the curve, and not only heal yourself but help to heal others, I invite you to join our brand new, “Mental Health and Master Life Coach Certification.“
This 30-hour certification, will help to educate you on the origin of mental health challenges like procrastination, anxiety, depression, codependency and so much more!
It will also help you learn the solutions for the above conditions as well as solutions for the many people that have gained weight during the pandemic or have seen their addictions rise dramatically.
By attending the certification, either in our offices in Fort Myers, Florida or via our certification programs on zoom, you will be given all of the information necessary in order to help people rise above their current challenges, at the same time you’ll be able to create either a part-time or full-time income.
So if you’ve been thinking about moving your career in a new direction, whether it is full-time or part-time, and you love helping people, this is a perfect opportunity for you!
Find out more about our brand new mental health Certification at https://www.davidessel.com
Remember, mental health challenges are rising all over the world, and we really do need to look at these more seriously than I believe we have in the past.
Our government is overwhelmed with so much to do, that there’s no way that they can organize the type of mental health support that this country really needs.
But, as American people, if we take responsibility for our own mental health, and start to follow the tips above, it will have a domino effect on people around us and before you know it, we will be moving past the many mental health challenges we are facing today.
This is not the time to procrastinate. This is not the time to wait for the pandemic to be over. This is the time to act, now. And if you do? The world will start to change at a much more rapid pace than it currently is.
“David Essel‘s work is highly endorsed by individuals like the late Wayne Dyer, and celebrity Jenny McCarthy says, “David Essel is the new leader of the positive thinking movement.“
His work as a counselor and minister has been verified, by so many organizations like Psychology Today, Therapy Tribe, Theravive, and marriage.com has verified David is one of the top counselors and relationship experts in the world.
For more information on working with David one on one from anywhere in the world, please visit http://www.DavidEssel.com
If you would like to read another article that David wrote on mental health try this one… The Mental Health Solution