Keeping your emotional well-being balanced is no easy task. Feelings can be hard to figure out and they might appear to be out of your control. Being able to manage your emotions and have healthy relationships with others is vital to your emotional wellness. Keeping these five tips in mind can help you achieve emotional balance in your daily life.
1. Awareness of Thoughts and Feelings
Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what causes negative emotions to spring up. It might feel like emotions or moods come and go with no rhyme or reason. Taking time to become aware of certain thoughts or environmental triggers that cause these negative emotions will allow you to understand and manage your emotional health better. If emotional awareness and management is an area you feel you need to improve, there are activities you can do to help you understand your emotional-self better. For example, talk therapy with a qualified professional, guided meditation, mindfulness apps on your smart phone, journaling or even spending time alone to really get to know yourself without any distractions or others interfering.
2. Staying Positive
While we all get in a bad mood once in a while and there is nothing abnormal about that, constantly maintaining a negative attitude will only eat away at your internal happiness. If you keep this mind-frame long enough, nothing will ever seem like a good situation when you only focus on the bad. Noticing how often you think or say negative things is the first step towards having a positive attitude. Then, work on limiting the amount of negative thoughts and speech you use every day. If you need help with this, try keeping a journal or asking a friend or family member to point out when you are being a “Negative Nancy”.
3. Ask for Help
If you are suffering from emotional distress, it’s okay to ask for help. There are no prizes handed out for who can bury their emotions the most. It doesn’t make you stoic or strong to keep the emotional turmoil all to yourself. Talking to someone you trust can be enough to ease the negative emotions brought on by a bad day. If more help is needed, seeking the advice of a mental health professional doesn’t mean you are weak, it means you are strong enough to to take care of your mental health.
4. Keeping Boundaries
Establishing boundaries with people in your life will contribute to your mental well-being. While it’s best to be nice to others in your life, there will be times when they cross the line and it’s up to you to tell them what is and isn’t acceptable for you. For example, it doesn’t make you a bad person to tell your neighbors that they should give you a call or a text instead of coming over unannounced. Advocating for yourself and your emotional needs will keep you from feeling overwhelmed by other people’s expectations and behaviors.
5. Self-Acceptance
Sometimes the expectations you set for yourself are more than the expectations others have for you. It’s okay to give yourself a break and let the self-judgment and self-doubt go. You won’t ever feel at ease in the world or with yourself if you are constantly talking negatively about yourself. If you wouldn’t let a stranger call you “stupid”, “ugly”or “not good enough” then you shouldn’t let yourself say those things. Just like with negative thoughts in general, becoming aware and then learning how to manage negative self talk is key to learning how to accept yourself.
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Staying positive when you are in a bad mood can be so hard. It is important for emotional wellness that you always try to look for good. Sometimes when I get upset I just focus on the bad but this is a good reminder that it won’t help. I’ll start trying harder to be positive for my own emotional wellness.
Lately, I’ve been looking for ways to control my emotions better. I’ll make sure to take your advice, and do things like stay positive. That way I can keep out as much negativity as I can. I’ll also make sure to reach out to someone if I need help. That way I know that I won’t be alone in the process.
Thanks for share these 5 Tips for Managing Emotional Wellness. Keep it up!