Episode 349: World Mental Health Day
How often do you prioritize your mental health in your daily routine? In this episode, Fiona discusses the importance of maintaining good mental health. She also shares some effective practices you can incorporate into your daily routine. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The importance of regular, daily actions for mental health
Simple practices to incorporate into your daily routine
Deep breathing exercises and one-minute meditations
Choosing uplifting content for mental well-being
Encouragement to prioritize daily mental health practices
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 349 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today is a quick tip episode and this is one of the most important tips that you'll ever hear in business. That is a big claim, but I feel like if you're not looking after this, then it doesn't matter how successful you are in business because it won't feel great. Before we get stuck into that, I wanted to let people know that Marketing for Your Small Business kicks off today. If you are reading this in real-time and still want to take part in it, you can always jump in. The first week is an orientation, you can jump in and start with us next week, you can find all the information at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. You can also just buy the course at any point in time and work through it at your own pace.
We offer the course and coaching program, which is a nine-week live coaching program twice a year, and we'll be offering it again in about March 2024. If you want to jump on that now, you can go through the program and then just sign up in March. Or you can jump in and just come today if you're reading this very early in real time. Or you can come in next week and you won't miss too much. All the information for that is at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. Before we get stuck in today's session, I also want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record this podcast, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to do is just send a big bunch of love and hugs to anyone who's First Nations listening to this in real-time. We have the referendum coming up very soon, and I just know that it must be an incredibly hard and difficult time at the moment in particular. If you need help, check out 13Yarn. That is support for First Nations people from First Nations people. Let's get stuck into today's quick tip episode.
If you're reading this in real time, it is Tuesday the 10th of October. The 10th of the 10th was my dad's birthday. I always feel him on this day. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2019 and I always feel his presence around me. But the other thing that happens on the 10th of October is that it is World Mental Health Day, and I thought today we would talk about mental health. I know that I've done a few episodes recently on mental health and many more before that over the course of this podcast. I've also talked about it at length in my Sunday email. If you're not on that, you can subscribe to mydailybusiness.com/subscribe. But today I thought it's about what are you doing regularly, consistently to show up for your own mental health. It may be that you are already seeing a psychologist or you're working on mental health in that capacity, but what are you doing on the daily?
If you are not seeing a psychologist, or maybe you're not at that point where you need professional help, what are you doing to concentrate and strengthen your own mental health? In business, we see all the time people talking about, “I get up at 5:00 AM, I have my green juice and I do my exercise, and then I get on my Peloton.” There's so much out there about exercising as a small business owner, and I get that that has a huge impact on your mental health. But it's not like we are looking at just regular anyone can do tactics that can help you if you're doing them consistently. It's not about this big chunk in the morning where you get all your healthy stuff done. It's about what are you doing throughout the day every day to look after your mental health.
This could look like some deep breathing exercises. It could look like a one-minute meditation. I do them before pretty much every coaching call. It could look like prayer if you're interested in that. It could look like chanting. It could look like just listening to some chill music. We have a chill sounds playlist on Spotify that will link to the show notes. That is something I often listen to and I've recently taken to listening to that loud while I'm in the shower. I have to listen to it loud because we don't have a waterproof speaker. I'll have to check them out. But in the morning after my walk and before I start my workday, I've taken recently to just blasting the chill sounds whilst I'm having a shower. I have to say, it's amazing. It is amazing to put you in such a good mood.
It calms you down. I might be worried about something that I've got on that day or presenting or doing something else, and I'd noticed that it calms me down just listening to that music before I start my day. It could be having an end-of-day ritual. I've talked about that before, having a way of changing your mindset between I'm at work and now I'm at home, especially if you work from home like myself. What I do is I shut down my computer fully. I don't just put it to sleep, I shut it down. It's not tempting to flip it back up and start working in the evening. But I will sit in a particular chair in my office. These chairs that I have in my office are not for work. I'm only allowed to sit in them if I'm doing something that's non-work related.
Often I'll shut everything down, I'll write what I need to get done the next day, so it's out of my head. And I will sit in those chairs, one of those chairs, and I'll either put on the chill playlist, or I might lay out a candle. It's not this big elaborate thing, it's like five minutes, it sometimes 10 minutes. I have to say that it's worked wonders for my stress levels for any anxiety that I might be having that day. Today it's about you thinking, what are the things that I'm doing regularly? Not just like, once a fortnight I might go to a yoga class, or I might go see a friend and have a walk once a month. It's not that. It's the actual daily actions that you're taking that might take five minutes or less, and if you do them over time, it's like compound interest.
It adds up and it's beneficial to your mental health. The other things that you might be choosing instead of say, watching True Crime or listening to a True Crime podcast, it might be, what could I listen to that would be great for my mental health? It might be a comedy, it might be a podcast like The Imperfects or a podcast like On Being where they're quite deep and philosophical. I mean more on being than the imperfect in that sense, but where people are sharing their stories. Often when we hear other people going through challenges or just overcoming things, it can help us in our own life. Today is World Mental Health Day, and there'll be a lot of promotions out there about seeking help, exercising and getting eight hours of sleep.
That one annoys me always, because it's not possible all the time, especially if you have young children who don't sleep. Sometimes I think people think that's the perfect fix to everything, and I get it. When I do get eight hours of sleep, I feel incredible. I get it. But it's just not possible every single night to do that as a mom of young children. But you want to be thinking about today, what are the small things that I can do every single day, whether I'm working or whether it's the weekend or maybe you work on the weekends, but thinking, what are those things, the tactics that I will put into place every day that will help my mental health? The one that I often use is deep breathing. I do that a lot while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil.
I have about five or six cups of tea a day. I also do the end-of-day ritual quite often, not every day, but I would say I do it 75% of the time. I do 30 seconds to 60 seconds of just a quick meditation or quick deep breathing before every coaching call. I tend to do coaching calls on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I might be doing that up to six or seven times in the day. In addition to that, I listen to music quite a lot. It might be three minutes of listening to like one song, it could be 15 minutes if I've got more time. I often listen to chill music while I'm getting ready in the morning. I'm blasting it or more recently doing that while I'm having my shower. And it helps. But all of these things add up, and this is not to at all take away from seeking professional help and for sure reaching out to your GP. You can check out resources at Beyond Blue. If you are in Australia and you have an ABN, Beyond Blue have a program, I think it's called New Access. If you have an ABN, you are eligible for six free mental health coaching sessions.
They're not from a psychologist or psychiatrist, but a mental health coach. We'll link to that in the show notes, or you can just Google new access business mental health, and it should show up for Australian residents who have an ABN. But before I go, I just wanted to stress that I know that this can sound fluffy and often we can feel like I'm so busy, that I don't even have 10 minutes to do a meditation or to do something like this. But I will promise you that if you do take that 10 minutes and if you feel like you don't have it, you're more, you're more likely than other people to need it. Taking that 10 minutes to do a guided meditation or to listen to some music or to just do some deep breathing or to just do some journaling or anything else that is getting you back into the present away from that spiralling thought pattern that can happen is going to have a positive effect on your mental health.
Don't let today and everything that you see out there about World Mental Health Day, just be something else that you're like, "Cool." Or we ticked a box, we put something on social media about it. Think about what you are doing as a small business owner to look after your own mental health. It might be that you have staff and if you're lucky enough to have staff, maybe introduce some of these things the whole company-wide so that you're looking after yourself and everyone else around you. That is it for today's quick tip episode. You'll find links to anything we mentioned over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/349. Thanks so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
