5 Ways To Improve Your Mental Health

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, give us a rating and review on whatever platform you listen to us on. Reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more of those platforms actually present this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow and impact more people's lives. So if you do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.

0:34It'll take you five seconds. Today, I'm gonna be giving you five keys to improve your mental health. There's one thing that I've realized and I've noticed since 2020 and all the stuff that happened in 2020 is it seems like people are talking more about mental health, which is really great. And it's becoming normal. Like I feel like it's more normal for people to say, well, I was talking with my therapist and my therapist said this, or I've been doing coaching with somebody and all of that's really great. But I've also seen that it seems like a lot of people are struggling with their mental health more since 2020.

1:07Maybe it's just because of the fact that it's out in the light now. Maybe it's actually because of the fact that people are struggling. But I'm going to give you five different tips to kind of help you with your mental health. Number one, if something still bothers you after 24 hours, speak up within 48 hours. Because it is showing you something. It is showing you that there's something inside of you that doesn't feel right. And so if somebody does something and it bothers you, in 24 hours later, you're still thinking about it. You're still kind of ruminating on it. It's showing you that you need to speak up.

1:40It's showing you that you need to speak to that person, showing you need to do something about it. And I don't know about you. I've been one of the people who's been really good at burying things my entire life, not asking for help, all of that. And just something happens. Somebody says something, somebody does something and I just put it under the rug, put it under the rug and put it under the rug. If you continue to keep putting things under the rug, eventually you're going to trip over the rug. That's just the way it comes. And so you can't expect that if there's a heightened emotional event, if somebody does something that if you don't let go of, if you don't talk about it, if you don't release it, that it's not going to be coming up later on down the road.

2:13Ignoring something does not make something go away. And so if there's a situation in your life, talk about it. One of the things that I think people should try to, man, maybe one of the main things people should try to do, if not, I'm actually thinking about it, is to try to work on your communication skills with other people. If you're in a relationship with somebody, whether it's a friendship, whether it's a romantic relationship, whether it's a familial relationship. Get better with your communication skills with that person. Communicate with them that you want to get better with your communication skills, that you want to have open lines of communication.

2:49If you're burying stuff under the rug, they're probably doing the exact same thing. And that doesn't do anything for anybody. Ignoring something doesn't make it go away. It just means that it's going to be worse later on down the road. So if something bothers you after 24 hours, speak up within 48. That's the first one. Number two, just try to get better at expressing your feelings. This is also something that I've, that I've struggled with over my lifetime, right? Part of being a human is feeling a large range of emotion. And I'm going to do an episode on this in the future. But one thing I've been telling people a lot recently is to start making more space for your humanness, you know, express your feelings and feel how you feel.

3:29Allow yourself to feel that way. You know, if you have anger, allow yourself to feel that anger, but also allow yourself to let it out. If you have sadness, allow yourself to feel the sadness, but also allow yourself to figure out a way to let it out. If you feel frustration, feel it, but also find a space that's safe for you to let it out. So I'm not saying if you're angry or frustrated that you should just go punch somebody and that's getting it out. What I mean is, is there a way for you to get out? Whether that's through working out, whether that's through going for a run, whether that's through talking with somebody, whether that's going into your room and picking up a pillow and beating the hell out of your bed with the pillow.

4:11Stop holding it all in. You know, if your body is at ease without all of it, so if your body is at ease without all of the stress and strain and holding on to all of our emotions, it is at dis-ease if you don't release it. Dis-ease can cause disease in your body. and don't apologize for expressing your feelings. Once again, we want to do things in a safe way. We don't want to just blow up on people. But if you have feelings, calm down your feelings after you express it and then go to talk to somebody and actually express how you feel. And the one thing that I'll say is this, don't let someone invalidate your feelings.

4:51If you feel a certain way, you feel a certain way. If they're telling you that it's not okay for you to feel that way, then they're invalidating your feelings. It's not okay to have your feelings invalidated. It is okay to have a discussion around feelings and just have each people decide, you know, what they should do after those feelings are expressed, but it's not okay to try to invalidate someone's feelings. So if someone tries to invalidate your feelings, you need to have a conversation with them about that, or you need to renegotiate that relationship. So that's what I would recommend. Make some space for your humanness and get better at expressing your feelings.

5:23You know, we get all of these range of emotions from the lowest emotions, quote unquote, lowest emotions to the quote unquote highest emotions. Allow yourself to feel all of them because the amount that you restrict the lower feelings is also the amount that you're going to restrict the higher feelings. If you're running from and not feeling the anger and the sadness and the frustration, you're also not going to feel the highest of the highs, the joy, the love, the peace at the capacity that you could. Okay, so that's number two. Number three, damn, I didn't realize that all of these are things that I've struggled with my past and continue to keep working with until literally this moment.

5:56but number three is to get better at asking for help. Damn, that's another thing that I've struggled with over the course of my life but one of the things as I was doing my research for this of how to improve your mental health is to get better at asking for help from other people. We all need help. You know, imagine that everything that you do has weight to it and you keep putting more and more and more weight on your back and there's people around you that love you, that are more than willing to help take some of that weight. You know, imagine something happens to you and every single thing that happens to you, every single thing that you have to do or might have a little bit of weight to it.

6:33It's like having a backpack and putting a rock inside of that backpack and putting another rock inside that backpack and another and another and another. And over 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years of your life, that backpack's really damn heavy. And you're just continuing to keep going and not asking for help and not asking for help because, you know, big boys don't ask for help or big girls don't ask for help or you were taught by your parents not to ask for help or not to speak up, whatever it might have been. But there's people around you that I promise you are more than willing to help take some of that weight out of your backpack for you.

7:05But you won't ask for help. And it's why life can feel so heavy sometimes. It's just a reality is it can feel really heavy. At some point, you have to realize, you have to look behind you and be like, oh my God, I have this backpack that is just full of big old rocks in it? Do I want to continue to keep holding onto these things? Do I want some help of how to get rid of these things? At some point, you have to decide that you're going to drop the weight. Otherwise, there's a good chance it could all come crashing down. And I've been there before. You have to get better at asking for help and saying, hey, listen, I'm really struggling with this thing.

7:41I'm really struggling with this aspect of my relationship. I'm really struggling with this thing of work. I'm really struggling with trying to figure out how I'm going to get everything together, how I'm going to be paying my bills next month or whatever it is that might be coming up. Talk to somebody. There's people that you love that I promise are there for you, but you're just not giving them the chance to have a conversation with you. And so what I would recommend is just get better at asking for help for anybody else who's around you that you know, that you love, that you trust. So that's number three.

8:10Number four, this is a really big one, okay? Learn to treat yourself like someone that you're responsible for taking care of. learn to treat yourself like someone that you are responsible for taking care of stop taking care of everyone else and just forgetting about yourself one of the things i see like i've coached a lot of parents over years and over years and years and years they they kind of lose themselves to being a parent they put their children first which is beautiful thing yeah to put your children first but you have to realize the more that you take care of yourself the better you take care of yourself, the more space that you give yourself to sometimes be selfish, to work on yourself, to learn, to grow mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, the better you will be as a parent, the better you will be as a husband or wife or brother, sister, child.

9:02So if you're just taking care of everybody else, you can't just pour from an empty cup. You've got to get better at taking care of yourself. You've also got to start to speak to yourself better. One of the things that is mind-blowing to me is how many people are so mean to themselves in their head. And that does nothing for you. You know, people think like, oh, well, if I'm hard on myself, if I'm really hard on myself, it'll drive me to be better. I promise you. Roll with that for a few more years and see how it works for you. But when you learn that you didn't stop talking trash to yourself, you need to be your best friend and you start talking to yourself the way that you would talk to someone that you love, You know, like the crazy thing about it is if you think about your best friend coming to you and saying, Hey, this thing just happened.

9:49Like for instance, an example I always love is like, let's say your best friend comes up to you and she's like, Hey, I just went on this date last night and I want to talk to you about it. And you're like, okay. And you start talking about it. She's like, well, you know, I was at this date and I, we met on Tinder and I really liked this guy and he was very sweet. He's really good looking. And I was starting to, you know, feel like, man, this is awesome. I'm having some feeling towards this guy. And about the end of the dinner, you know, we ended up parting ways. And I'm like, hey, I'd really like to see you again.

10:16And he was really nice, but he said, you know, I'm not really that into you. And I think you'd just be better off if we were friends. You wouldn't say to your friend, well, yeah, of course. It's because you've gained 20 pounds over the past year. Well, yeah, because you got that zit on the front of your forehead. You're not looking as good as you used to. Yeah, you're not as presentable as you were when we were in our 20s. Yeah, you don't have a great job. You still work at XYZ. You never say all of those things to your friend, right? You'd be like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. You know, it's completely fine.

10:47I'm sure there's someone else out there for you. It's not meant to be. Like you would be there to give your friend love. But if the same thing were to happen to you and somebody were to reject you, you would find every reason why that person might have rejected you. And you could take yourself and guilt yourself and shame yourself and just go down this negative spiral loop of thinking why you're not good enough, thinking why you're not worthy of love or of companionship or whatever it might be. You've got to start treating yourself like someone that you're responsible for taking care of. You got to start talking to yourself that way.

11:23Now, when we also say like, when I'm saying someone that you're responsible for taking care of, I'm talking about mentally. I'm talking about emotionally, but I'm also talking about physically. You can't say that you don't have enough time anymore. You've got to figure out a way. Like I was reading a book the other day and there was this guy that I've followed for a while and his name's Naval. And he said his number one, like, you know, he's become a multi-multi-millionaire, super successful business owner and investor and all of this stuff. One of the biggest investors is out there. And he said the number one thing in his life is his health.

11:57Then comes this thing and this thing and it's this thing. So it was like his health and then it was his personal development and then it was his family, his family's health and then it was his family's personal development. He was going through all of these different situations and I was like, man, that's really crazy because I've never heard somebody just say, my number one thing is my health. But in reality, that should be your number one thing. Because if you're saying, oh yeah, my number one thing is my children, well, if your health isn't any good and you're not here anymore, you're not going to be able to take care of your children.

12:25And so when I say, take care of yourself, I do mean emotionally, I do mean spiritually, but I also mean like physically take care of your body. The most important person in your life is you. You cannot pour from an empty cup, but also you cannot continue down this path of not taking care of your body, of not getting enough sleep, of not getting enough water, of drinking soda or drinking alcohol instead of drinking water. Your body's like 60 to 70 % water and you're barely drinking it, right? So it's like, you've got to just learn to take care of yourself a little bit more. You can't pour from an empty cup.

12:58And, you know, what does self-care look like to you? Because self-care is not just like getting your hair done, getting a massage, doing your nails. All those things are great. But self-care is also like meditation. It's working out. It's eating right. It's speaking to yourself correctly. It's reading. It's growing. It's trying to improve yourself. You're serving nobody in this world by ignoring your self-care. And then number five, stop trying to escape your pain. Stop trying to escape your pain. an attempt to escape your pain ends up causing a whole lot more pain. The only way past the pain is to go through the pain.

13:33Not acting like it's not there, not looking in a different direction and being like, nope, it's not, I don't see that pain. Not numbing by drinking alcohol or eating food or playing video games or scrolling on Instagram or watching Netflix, all those forms of numbing. All those things do not make your pain go away. you know it's like it's like the uh there's a video i saw years ago and there's a guy that was holding on to a water bottle and he put the water bottle out in front of him and he said he's in front of a class right and he said how how much do you think this water bottle weighs and everyone's like oh you know it's 10 ounces another one said it's a pound and he said how much do you how much do you think it weighs and people were making guesses he said now how heavy is it they're like no it's not that heavy and he said how heavy would it be if i held it here for a few minutes out in front of me.

14:22And they're like, yeah, I'd be decently heavy. And they're like, what if I held it here for a few hours? What if I held it here for 24 hours? And they're like, yeah, I'd feel heavier and heavier and heavier. The weight of the bottle didn't change. The only thing that changes how long I'm holding onto it. The bottle is your worry. It's your problems. It's your stress. It's your anxious thoughts. You've got to learn to let those things go. You've got to learn to stop trying to escape your pain and to actually get rid of your pain, let go of your pain so that you can move on with your life. And so if you need to talk to somebody, talk to somebody, but you can't act like it's not there anymore.

14:56There's a great quote that I love that says the treasure that you seek, uh, I'm sorry, the, the pain of fucking this one up, the, the cave that you're afraid to enter holds a treasure that you seek. Right? So like the, the, the cave is like the pain that you're afraid to talk about the, the things that happened to you in your past, the traumas that happened to in your childhood that you're afraid of talking to a therapist about, whatever it might be. The cave that you're afraid to enter holds a treasure that you seek. Stop trying to escape your pain, trying to work through the pain, because if you try to escape it and just hold, you're going to continue to hold on to it and you're just going to cause more pain.

15:31Don't numb it. Don't look away. All of those things don't make the pain go away. You just got to figure out a way to release it, whatever that means for you. So those are the five tips. Number one, if it still bothers you after 24 hours, speak up within 48. Number two, get better at expressing your feelings. Number three, get better at asking for help. Get better. Number four, treat yourself like someone that you're responsible for taking care of. And number five, stop trying to escape your pain. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories.

15:59Tag me in it, share the love. It'd be great for someone that follows you to be able to see this podcast and hopefully it changes their life as well. And last but not least, if you're out there and you do love this podcast, you love everything we put out, You might enjoy my book that came out a few months ago. It's called Level Up. It's the step-by-step process to take action, understand the process of taking action, the psychology of taking action, how to create the action that you need to. Stop holding yourself back. Stop procrastinating, everything like that. So it's called Level Up. It's available wherever books are sold.

16:31And with that, I'm leaving the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.