Your mental health isn’t something you fix once and forget about. It’s like fitness. It needs regular attention and small adjustments, but you also have to be patient with it. You don’t need a total life overhaul to feel better, though. With simple, inconsistent steps, you can make a difference to yourself over time. Let’s take a look at 10 practical ways that you can get on top of your mental health. You want it to feel manageable and realistic, and that’s what we’ve got for you below.
- Take it seriously. The first step to getting on top of your mental health is to actually take it seriously and recognise that it matters. Feeling stressed, low, anxious or overwhelmed isn’t a personal failure, it’s a signal. When you stop brushing those feelings aside and start acknowledging them, you give yourself permission to seek support and make changes.Remember that the longer you take to make those changes, the more you’re putting on yourself and others around you.
“One of the most common things we see is people arriving at a crisis point that could have been avoided if they’d taken earlier warning signs seriously,” says Rostislav Ignatov, a Chief Medical Officer at Haven Detox. “Stress, low mood and anxiety are signals, not weaknesses. The sooner someone acknowledges what they’re feeling and reaches out, the more options they have available to them.”
“We work with people at their lowest points and the one thing that consistently holds them back from recovery is not taking their struggles seriously soon enough,” says Josh Collins, Clinical Director at SOBA New Jersey. “Reaching out early, whether to a friend, a professional or a support service, changes outcomes dramatically.” - Talk to somebody you trust. You don’t have to carry everything on your own. Talking to a friend, a family member, or someone that you feel comfortable with is important.You can lighten the mental load more than you expect, but you don’t need a perfect paragraph or a clear explanation. You just need to say that you’ve been struggling lately, and that’s enough to open the door.
- Talk to a therapist. While it’s good to lean on friends, you need professional help if you want your mental health to thrive. Therapy isn’t just for crisis moments but for stress, relationships and work pressures. You also may need support for personal growth, too. If access and coverage matters to you, looking into options like the best UnitedHealthcare therapists can be a practical starting point as early as possible. The right professional can help you to build your tools that last you well beyond your sessions.
- Build in a basic routine. When your mental health starts to dip, structure is the first thing to disappear. If you create for yourself a simple daily routine, with a good wake up time, planned meals, work blocks and rest, you’ll bring a sense of stability to the day. This doesn’t need to be either strict or too fancy, but predictability helps your brain to feel safe and in control.
“Building even a basic daily routine is one of the most effective and underrated tools for mental health,” says Marcus Smith, Professional Counselor at Alpas Wellness. “It doesn’t need to be complicated. A consistent wake time, regular meals and some time outside can create enough structure to stabilise mood and reduce anxiety significantly.” - Put sleep first. Sleep is impactful to your routine in a big way. It affects your mood, your ability to focus and your ability to regulate emotionally, too. Poor sleep makes everything feel harder than necessary and so you should aim for a consistent sleep and wake up routine. In the same way a child needs sleep to regulate, so do you – it doesn’t make you childish, just smart! Poor sleep makes it all feel much harder than necessary and that means limiting screens before bed and having a wind-down routine. It won’t solve everything but life will feel lighter as a result.
- Move your body gently and do it regularly. Mental health struggles often lead to refusal to do more than is necessary. So, don’t worry about intense workouts or gym memberships. Walk, stretch, swim – it all counts toward releasing built-up tension and supporting your brain chemistry better. You already know that your mood and brain chemistry are linked together so make a point of giving yourself just ten minutes a day to reset and let go.
“There’s a perception people have, especially those back home, that if you’re travelling the world you couldn’t possibly have anything to worry about,” says William Hatton of The Broke Backpacker. “A bit like how people assume footballers or actors are immune to depression because of their wealth, often mistaking depression for just being sad or unhappy. But mental health doesn’t care about your passport stamps. Travelling on a shoestring actually forced me to take it more seriously than ever, with no fixed routine, no familiar faces and no safety net. Now, running businesses full time, the freedom of movement I once had is far more limited, but the mental health challenges didn’t stop, they just changed. Movement is still my most reliable reset. Even a 20-minute walk can completely shift your headspace.” - Watch how you talk to yourself.
Sisse Marie, Psychologist at Neurogan Health, also responded to our question on mental health and as a working actor herself, her perspective adds another layer to the conversation.
“The way we speak to ourselves is genuinely one of the most underestimated factors in mental wellbeing,” says Sisse Marie. “As an actor you exist in a constant cycle of rejection and self-scrutiny, and if your inner voice is already harsh, that environment amplifies it fast. In my clinical work I see people who have every external resource available but are completely held back by a relentlessly critical inner voice. Catching that pattern early and actively reframing it isn’t just positive thinking, it’s a clinical skill that anyone can develop with practice.”
It’s so hard to do this but stop that inner voice from telling you that you’re not worthy of your life. You need to pay close attention to the way in which you talk to yourself. If your inner voice is a harsh critic, you’ll believe it. Your brain is your control centre, but if you are allowing negativity to filter through and you’re constantly telling yourself that you’re not good enough, you won’t ever be good enough for yourself and that just won’t do! You deserve so much better than that. - Set yourself some boundaries. Burnout often comes from giving so much of yourself without recovery, and it’s time to stop doing that. It’s ok to lay down some boundaries and just say no. You need to set social boundaries, work boundaries and do the things that make you feel like you’re putting yourself first. It’s not selfish to do this – not in the slightest. It’s actually so much better for yourself to say no because you need that boundary in place to be peaceful.
- Limit information overload. We’re exposed constantly to news these days and while information is powerful it’s also a form of torture if a constant stream of bad news is going to affect your day. You can turn notifications off, delete news apps and take back control of what you hear and when. When you do this, you can curate the digital space in which you live. You probably can’t turn it fully off, but you can minimize what you’re exposed to and make life easier for yourself as you do it. It can have a surprisingly positive effect on your mental health.
- Be patient. Improving your mental health takes patience and you can track your progress with it over time. Some weeks will feel better than others and some won’t but the key is to ensure that you are staying on top of your improvements you’re making. It’s the smaller moves that tell the world that you’re ready for anything and that you are making effort to feel good in yourself
Getting on top of your mental health doesn’t mean you won’t struggle from time to time, it just means that you recognise when things are getting bad and know how to pull yourself back from it. When mental health struggles are ignored, the impact can last you much longer than you could have expected.
