Simple Wellness Habits to Calm an Anxious and Overwhelmed Mind
With everything going on and life being as hectic as it is, it’s easy to feel a lot of negativity building up. These are simple mental wellness habits to calm an anxious and overwhelmed mind.
Learn different types of activities or habits that you can pick up to boost overall health with ease. Plus, check out a couple of journal prompts that can help give you mental clarity, inner peace, and direction!
Habits to Calm an Anxious and Overwhelmed Mind
Getting right into it, here are simple wellness habits to calm an anxious and overwhelmed mind. Plus, check out the journal prompts at the end. Journaling is a great way to improve mental health by helping you sort through emotions and increase inner peace and joy exponentially.
Movement
Movement is a really good way to reduce feelings of anxiety, depression, and fear. Sometimes, our bodies feel overwhelmed and highly stressed. This can cause an increase in cortisol levels and other chemicals that are released during a fight or flight response. Fight or flight is a series of biological processes that occur when you feel in danger. Our ancestors utilized this to get away from dangerous situations such as fleeing from predators or fighting them off.
In our modern society, we can’t flee from traffic or fight off bills. This causes dissonance that leads to mental health issues and physical symptoms such as high cortisol, high blood pressure, indigestion, microbiome issues, high heart rate, and more. One way to help direct the rush of fight or flight instinct is to physically get up and do something. This can be something as simple as doing push-ups, going on a brisk walk, jumping up and down, etc. You can even use daily movement to help lower everyday stress levels. A simple 10-minute walk outdoors can be just what you need to calm an anxious and overwhelmed mind.
Meditation
Meditation is another simple everyday habit you can use to calm an anxious and overwhelmed mind. This is because meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the part of the body responsible for shutting off your fight or flight response. This series of biological processes helps to lower heart rate, reduce blood pressure, improve digestion, clear the mind, and slow down breathing. It returns you to homeostasis, a regular state of body and mind.
Meditation also has the added benefits of improving circulation, increasing oxygenation of the body, and increasing self-reflection and self-awareness. Meditation is akin to training the brain. People who meditate as a habit often report more happiness, more inner peace, increased cognitive function, improved memory and learning capability, and an improved ability to regulate and control emotions.
Nutrition
Nutrition is a basic building block for the body. This is because everything you are comes from the food you eat. We require certain nutrients such as protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats, along with minerals and vitamins. These help to form the cells of our body, assist in chemical and biological reactions, and supply us with energy to move and function daily.
We notice that our nutrition has an impact on our mood. This may be because about 90% of serotonin (the happiness hormone) is created in the gut. That’s right, gut microbiome health is directly linked to mental health. That’s why it’s so important for us to eat things that will benefit our gut microbiome. For more information on how to improve gut microbiome health, check out this article here!
Plus, nutrition plays a big part in our physical health and mood. For example, if you’re not eating enough protein, your body does not have the amino acids needed to maintain, grow, and thrive. We also need healthy carbohydrates and healthy fats. All these are macronutrients that the body breaks down and uses as energy, in biological processes, and more.
Journal Prompts to Help Calm an Anxious Mind
Here are some general prompts that you can use to help improve your mental well-being. They can redirect negative energy and help you process negative emotions. Some of these journal prompts aim for you to look on the brighter side of things or become more solution-oriented instead of focusing on the issue.
- Why am I feeling overwhelmed – it can be useful sometimes to stop and think about why you are feeling a certain way. Think back on what you were doing before you became overwhelmed. This can help you work through issues or problems that you habitually experience.
- What can I control – in any given situation there are going to be things you can control and things you cannot control. For example, you can control your actions and reactions to a situation. You cannot control how others react, nor can you control the reactions of others. Here’s a complete guide on shifting to a mentality in which you focus on what you can control!
- What can I do differently – at the end of the day, doing the same thing will result in the same situation. Sometimes, stopping and thinking about what you can do differently makes all the difference.
- What am I grateful for – in a state where we are anxious and overwhelmed, we tend to only focus on the negative. As we continue in this negative state, we start taking things for granted. Stopping for a moment and counting our blessings is a great way to focus the mind on the positive, feel better, and increase happiness. For a full guide on how gratitude can change your life, check out this article here!
The Takeaway
These are simple mental wellness habits to calm an anxious and overwhelmed mind. These tips can help boost overall health, increase happiness, and improve mental wellbeing with ease. Best of all, they are simple yet highly effective if added to your daily routine. Try them out and watch how overall wellness flourishes.
Remember that health comes from within. Eat nutritious food, exercise when you can, and take care of your mental health. Daily habits become the building blocks for emotional, mental, and physical health. Take care of your gut health too! Learn everything you need to know about gut microbiota today for free here.
