Finding Your Mental Health Routine
It’d have been strange to see me galloping along the roads in the past. It probably still is a strange sight in fairness. Quite often I’ve remarked at how boring I find running to be, how pointless it feels, how painstaking it is. I’ve never enjoyed it, even though a lot of my friends and my brother have been running for years. I could never get into it. I’d usually rely on basketball training for fitness but we can’t do that now so I started running and I’m enjoying it now.
Of course, the reasons I train or go to the gym, and now run, don’t reside in physical fitness alone. That’s one aspect of it but it isn’t the foremost one. I run now because I can’t play basketball and I play basketball because it’s a huge part of maintaining my mental health. I maintain that exercise is one of the most effective, anti-anxiety and anti-depression treatments you can get, and it’s also completely free. I’ll never stop saying that.
My calf was tight as fuck on Thursday. I could barely walk let alone run, so I didn’t exercise that day. That’s fine, we need to take days off. However, I did notice a flare up of anxiety on Friday, for most of the day. I hadn’t gotten my mental health routine right the day before and so it affected me the following morning. It was nothing I couldn’t handle but it was still a noticeable difference in my mental state. I ran Friday evening and Saturday morning and Saturday turned out to one of the best days I’ve had in a while (The weather helped, to be fair).
What I’m saying here is, I think it’s important to find out what aids your mental health and make sure you do those things, even if you don’t want to sometimes. For me, exercise is essential. It may not be that for you, but there is definitely something you can do every day that’ll make your head a less troublesome place. If you get your routine well-oiled and consistent it’ll even make your head an enjoyable place.
None of us can do exactly what we used to do to help out our anxieties. We can’t meet friends. We can’t go to the gym. We can’t socialize. We can’t do a lot of things. This is temporary but we do need to get on with life too. All of us have had to adapt our entire lives. That goes for our mental health too. The things we usually do for out head-spaces have to be altered to fit the predicament we find ourselves. We need to find ways around. For me, I’m running because I can’t go to training. That’s how I’ve adapted and now I still get my serotonin kick. I don’t know what your thing is, but you have to find a way to get your kick. It can be a challenge, but it’s always worthwhile.
