3 Powerful Mental Health Routines to Add to Your Day
by Paul Marlow
Today I am going to help you create a winning blueprint, a blueprint for making it through those mentally tough days.
To give you the best chance at positive mental health from sunup to sundown.
Realizing the power of creating these mental health routines took me over eight months, and I want to shorten that time drastically for you.
I fell into a deep depression after my father passed away from a battle with Parkinson’s and then cancer. I stopped working for a month, had no reason to get up, and had no belief I would ever be happy again. One day, I realized this needed to change.
But where to start?
After much thinking and reading Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferris, I realized I needed to establish a routine in the three most important areas of my life.
Morning Routine—Create a positive space in the first sixty minutes of my day.
Exercise Routine—Finding a time that can be repeatable five days a week.
Evening Routine—Setting myself up to have the best chance to succeed tomorrow.
In this blog, I will go over the steps you need to follow to create your daily mental health routines.
Morning Routine
When I was battling the crushing heartbreak of losing my father, I soon realized that within moments my day could go from good to being a total washout. There was no rhyme or reason to the sudden bouts of anxiety and depression.
With that in mind, I decided I needed to go on the offensive.
Until this point, I had woken up like most people. I was grabbing my phone with my eyes half open, forcing them wider so the facial recognition would register to stop the alarm. Then systematically opened Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and finally, email.
The next twenty minutes would be a mixture of phone time, showering, and then getting a protein shakedown as I hurried off to work.
It was never the same and was very hectic and anxiety-inducing.
To counter this rough start to the day, I looked to add areas that would help my brain ease into it. Here are the steps that I added to my morning routine. By doing this, my mind had a chance to slowly wake up and create a solid base.
I was giving myself the best opportunity to succeed each day with my anxiety and depression.
Morning routine steps (30-60 minutes long)
- Setting your alarm for the same time each day.
- Making your bed.
- Drinking hot lemon water first thing.
- Writing in your journal.
- Meditating.
- Not opening your phone or computer till the routine is over.
Exercise Routine
Adding an exercise routine to your day needs to be implemented, no matter what level of fitness you currently have.
I am not talking about what you are going to do during the sixty minutes of exercising. That’s for another blog. Instead, the key focus for you is making time in your day to get the exercise in.
Mental health and physical health go hand-in-hand.
Plan your times for your workout in advance, and once again, try to stick to a dedicated time. By creating the same set times throughout the week for your workouts, you will have a higher percentage of showing up and doing them.
Daily workout tip: Get it early before your day has time to drain your energy and mental willpower. Getting your exercise in as soon as you wake up will give you more energy for the rest of the day.
I wrote a blog just for you to help explain why exercising is beneficial for your mental health and makes you a happier person.
Evening Routine
Finally, to end the day, the old habits of watching TV until tired, while snacking on treats and drinking alcohol, have to go.
Looking at your evening to celebrate in a small way, the routines you completed are not a bad thing to do. Go ahead and pour yourself one drink, turn on the TV, and watch one of your favorite Netflix shows. Keep these celebrations of today’s ‘wins’ to groupings of ones.
To make the most of tomorrow morning’s routine, look at the final sixty minutes of your night as a preparation.
Watching hours of TV or sitting with your face on your phone until you turn the lights off to bed isn’t helpful. These blue screens alter your natural production of melatonin. When the natural production of melatonin is negatively affected, you will have a harder time falling asleep.
To make sure this does not happen, look at the last sixty minutes of your night as prep for a positive start to the next day.
Evening Routine Checklist
- Clean the kitchen, so you wake up in a clean environment to start the day.
- Drink 1-2 glasses of water.
- Write about the day’s wins and losses in your journal.
- Meditate before crawling into bed.
- Do not look at your phone once in bed.
- Read until you feel drowsy.
Last Thoughts
There is no blueprint for beating your mental health struggles.
These steps won’t cure you tomorrow, but they will give you a fighting chance to gain control back in your life.
It is best to pick one routine to start with and grow it day by day. Once you feel comfortable that the routine has become second nature, consider adding the next routine.
Comment below with what routine you will start on!
Paul Marlow came up with the idea of Never Alone during his depression after his dad passed away. Over the next 16 months, he used the motivation to create something worthy to help others in the world, to also help him fight his way out of depression. Today, www.weareneveralone.co is live. Each sale goes back into creating free online content to help those who need it.
