10 Steps to Overall Health

We all seek optimal health. We work out, eat right, avoid nasty habits such as smoking or drinking excessively and try our best to get as close to eight hours of sleep every night as we can. But what's as important to overall health is our emotional and mental health: how we handle stress, how we deal with our emotions (especially anger), what we worry about and even who we surround ourselves with can all have a toll on our health too. Although we all say we are aware of how these things can impact our health, a lot of us don't pay enough attention to it.

I've always been a chronic worrier. My thoughts kept me awake at night causing me to be over tired. This resulted in not being able to handle the normal every day stresses that came up the next day. Which resulted in not getting enough sleep. Sound familiar?

It's a vicious cycle to be trapped in because fatigue alone can cause depressive symptoms. And it's the depressive symptoms that cause us to stress or worry about things more. Keeping our bodies in this state can be harmful and, in a lot of cases, irreversible.

After doing research on the importance of good mental health, and seeing how many other people out there had the same symptoms, Dr. Elizabeth Atherton-Reid, chartered psychologist, helped me figure out some important ways we can all have good mental health. Allow me to share them with you:

(1) Being open to change is half the battle: Essentially, a person has to realize their attitude affects their health and their relationships with other people before they'll be open to and stick with the decision to make positive changes. "People don't realize they have a problem nor do they believe you when you tell them so." Dr. Atherton-Reid said "I usually don't see these people until they've gone to their physician, who can't find an underlying physical cause for their symptoms. Even then, I have to get the person to see through their own words how they affect their lives."