Small, realistic ways to improve your mental health, wellbeing and mental fitness
Sometimes there isn’t anything particularly wrong.
You’re not necessarily struggling with a mental health problem. There hasn’t been a huge crisis or major life event. On paper, life might actually be going quite well.
But something in you knows you’d like to feel better.
Maybe you want more energy. You’d like to feel calmer or more positive. You want to cope better with stress, sleep better, understand yourself more, improve your confidence or simply feel more in control of your own wellbeing.
You know you want to make some changes.
The problem is, where do you start?
There is so much advice about mental health and wellbeing that trying to improve it can become overwhelming in itself. Meditate. Exercise. Journal. Eat differently. Practise gratitude. Try therapy. Get outside. Work on your sleep. Set goals. Do breathwork.
You could easily end up with a huge list of things you think you should be doing — and then do none of them because it all feels like too much.
So perhaps the best place to start isn't by trying to change everything.
It’s by choosing one thing and seeing what happens.
Think about what you'd actually like to change
Before deciding what you should do, spend a little time thinking about what you would actually like to feel differently.
Perhaps you notice that you're easily overwhelmed or that small stresses affect you more than you'd like. Maybe your mind is constantly busy and you find it difficult to switch off.
You might want to understand your emotions better, improve your relationship with yourself, feel more motivated, develop healthier habits or become more resilient when difficult things happen.
This is really what we mean when we talk about mental fitness.
We often think about our mental health only when something goes wrong. But just as we can look after and strengthen our physical health when we're not ill, we can work on our mental and emotional wellbeing when we're not experiencing a mental health crisis.
You don't need to wait until you're struggling to start looking after your mind.
Start small and experiment
There isn't one perfect wellbeing routine that works for everybody.
Something your friend absolutely loves might do nothing for you. You might try meditation and discover it's brilliant for you, while somebody else finds that journalling helps them much more.
That's why improving your wellbeing can be approached as a bit of an experiment.
Try something. Notice how you feel. Keep what helps. Leave what doesn't. Then try something else.
Here are a few places you could start.
Mindfulness and meditation
If your mind tends to race ahead, replay conversations or constantly jump between thoughts, mindfulness can help you practise bringing your attention back to what's happening now.
And it doesn't have to mean sitting cross-legged in complete silence for an hour.
You could begin with a short guided meditation, a mindful walk, a few minutes concentrating on your breathing or simply paying attention to what you can see, hear and feel around you.
Start with five minutes. See how it feels.
Journalling
Sometimes we don't realise how much we're carrying around in our heads until we put it somewhere else.
Journalling can give you space to explore your thoughts and emotions, notice patterns and work out what might need to change.
You don't need to write pages every day either.
Try asking yourself:
How am I feeling today?
What's taking up most of my headspace?
What do I need more of at the moment?
What could I do differently this week?
You might be surprised by what comes up when you give yourself the opportunity to think.
Look at how you're fuelling yourself
Our mental and physical wellbeing aren't separate things.
Food isn't a magic cure for poor mental health, but looking at how you're nourishing yourself can be one useful part of supporting your overall wellbeing.
You might start by looking at simple things: are you eating regularly? Are you getting enough variety? Could you add more fruit, vegetables, whole foods, fibre, protein and other nutritious foods rather than suddenly putting yourself on a restrictive diet?
Think adding and improving, rather than trying to become perfect overnight.
Try coaching tools
Sometimes we know something needs to change but can't quite identify what.
Coaching-style exercises can help you look at where you are now, where you'd like to be and what might be standing between the two.
Perhaps there's a goal you've been putting off. Maybe there's an area of your life that doesn't feel quite right. Or perhaps you've simply fallen into habits that don't really work for you anymore.
Breaking change down into small, achievable goals can make it feel far less daunting.
Rather than saying, “I need to sort my life out,” ask:
“What's one small thing I could change this week that would make life feel a little better?”
That's much easier to act on.
Explore different ways to relax
Relaxation doesn't look the same for everyone either.
For one person, it might be meditation. For somebody else, yoga, breathwork, a walk, music or a hypnotherapy audio might help them switch off.
Techniques such as EFT may appeal to some people, while others prefer more traditional counselling or CBT-informed tools that help them explore thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
You don't have to decide which approach is “best”.
You can explore.
Don't turn wellbeing into another thing to be perfect at
This one is important.
If you decide you're going to improve your wellbeing and suddenly create a routine involving meditation at 6am, journalling every night, exercising five times a week, completely changing your diet and doing three different personal-development exercises every day, there's a good chance it won't last.
Then it's very easy to decide you've failed.
You haven't.
Sustainable change is usually built gradually.
Pick something small enough that you can genuinely fit it into your life. Give it a chance. Notice whether it helps.
If it does, keep going.
If it doesn't, change it.
Your wellbeing isn't a challenge that you pass or fail.
You are allowed to change direction
This applies to the bigger changes too.
Sometimes we stay stuck because we're frightened of making the wrong change.
But you don't have to know whether something will work before you try it.
You can take a step, see how it feels and learn from it.
If it isn't right, pause, reassess and try something different.
That isn't failure. It's information.
In fact, learning what doesn't work for you can be just as useful as discovering what does.
Over time, those small experiments can help you build your own toolkit — one that actually suits you rather than one based on what somebody else says wellbeing is supposed to look like.
Not sure where to begin? Explore MELP+
This is one of the reasons we created MELP+.
Mental health and wellbeing aren't one-size-fits-all, so we don't believe support should be either.
MELP+ brings lots of different approaches together in one place, allowing you to explore, experiment and discover what works for you.
You might want to try mindfulness or meditation. You could explore breathwork, yoga, hypnotherapy audios or EFT. There are counselling and coaching tools, worksheets and exercises, alongside nutrition information and recipes to help you think about wellbeing more holistically.
You don't have to use everything.
In fact, we don't expect you to.
Try something that interests you. See whether you like it. Explore something else. Come back to the things that help and leave the things that don't.
Over time, you can begin to understand yourself better and build a collection of tools you know you can turn to when you need them.
And if you don't know what might help, talk to Emsu
Even with lots of options available, you might still think:
“But I don't know what I need.”
That's okay too.
Within MELP+, you can talk to Emsu, our Emotional Support Companion.
You can tell Emsu how you're feeling, what's happening in your life or simply that you want to improve your wellbeing but don't know where to start. Emsu can help you talk it through and guide you towards approaches and tools that might be useful for you to explore.
Sometimes the first step isn't doing anything at all.
It's simply having a conversation about where you are now and where you'd like to be.
You don't need to change everything. Just start somewhere.
Improving your mental health and wellbeing doesn't have to begin because something has gone wrong.
You can simply decide that you'd like to feel better, understand yourself more and become better equipped to navigate whatever life brings.
That's what building mental fitness is about.
And you don't need a complicated plan to begin.
Choose one small thing. Try it. Give it some time. Notice what happens.
If it helps, keep it.
If it doesn't, try something else.
You might meditate for five minutes today. You might write something down. You might make one change to the way you eat, try a breathing exercise, explore a coaching tool or open MELP+ and see what catches your attention.
The important thing isn't choosing the perfect place to start.
It's starting.