Category: AppExercises

7 Tips to Boost Your Mental Health Through Exercise

Mental health and exercise play crucial roles in our overall well-being, encompassing our emotional, psychological, social, and physical health. They influence how we think, feel, and act, impacting our relationships, work, and daily functioning. Prioritizing mental health is essential, as it can lead to improved coping skills, greater resilience, and enhanced productivity. One effective way to support mental health is through regular physical activity.

The Connection Between Exercise and Mental Well-Being

exercise mental healt
The relationship between exercise and mental health is well-documented. When we engage in physical activity, our bodies release a variety of hormones, including endorphins, which are often referred to as “feel-good” hormones. These endorphins create a sense of happiness and euphoria, helping to alleviate feelings of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, exercise has been shown to improve sleep quality, increase energy levels, and boost self-esteem—all of which contribute positively to mental health.

Incorporating exercise into your daily routine can be a transformative experience, but it can also feel overwhelming at first. Many people struggle to find the motivation to start or maintain a consistent exercise routine, particularly in times of stress or uncertainty. However, developing a sustainable approach to exercise doesn’t have to be complicated. By integrating movement into your life in enjoyable and manageable ways, you can create a positive feedback loop that enhances your mental well-being.

In this article, we will explore seven practical tips for incorporating exercise into your mental health routine. Each tip is designed to help you cultivate a healthier lifestyle while reaping the numerous psychological benefits that physical activity offers. From setting realistic goals to discovering activities you enjoy, these strategies can make exercise a fulfilling and integral part of your life. Let’s delve into these actionable tips that can lead you toward improved mental health and well-being.

  1. Start Small and Set Realistic Goals

    Begin with manageable activities to build a sustainable exercise habit. Setting small, achievable goals allows you to celebrate your progress and gradually increase the intensity or duration of your workouts. For example, aim for just 10-15 minutes of activity a day, such as a brisk walk, and increase it as you feel more comfortable. This approach can boost your confidence and motivation, leading to improved mental well-being.

  2. Choose Activities You Enjoy

    Finding joy in your workouts is crucial for long-term adherence. Engage in exercises that genuinely excite you, whether it’s dancing, swimming, hiking, or cycling. When you enjoy your workouts, they become less of a chore and more of a fulfilling experience. This positive association can enhance your mood and contribute to a more positive outlook on life. For pregnant women, it’s equally important to find enjoyable activities that are safe and beneficial. Light exercises such as prenatal yoga, walking, or swimming can be wonderful options.

  3. Establish a Routine

    Consistency is key to reaping the mental health benefits of exercise. Set aside specific times each week for physical activity, treating your workouts as important appointments. Establishing a routine helps make exercise a regular part of your life, which can create a sense of stability and predictability, both of which are beneficial for mental health.

  4. Mix It Up

    Variety keeps your exercise routine fresh and engaging. Alternate between different types of workouts, such as cardio, strength training, and flexibility exercises. This not only prevents boredom but also challenges your body in new ways. Engaging in diverse activities can increase your motivation and enjoyment, further enhancing your mental well-being.

  5. Incorporate Mind-Body Practices

    Mind-body exercises, such as yoga and meditation, can complement your physical routine and promote mental clarity. These practices foster relaxation and help alleviate anxiety and stress. By incorporating a short meditation session or gentle yoga practice into your weekly schedule, you can enhance your emotional resilience and improve your overall mental health.

  6. Exercise with Others

    Working out with friends or family can provide motivation, accountability, and social interaction. Joining a fitness class, walking group, or sports team fosters a sense of community and can significantly boost your mood. The shared experience of exercising with others can help alleviate feelings of loneliness and enhance your overall well-being.

  7. Listen to Your Body

    Pay attention to how your body feels during and after exercise. It’s essential to practice self-compassion and adjust your routine based on your energy levels and physical state. If you experience fatigue or discomfort, allow yourself to rest or modify your activities. Prioritizing your well-being ensures that exercise enhances your mental health rather than detracting from it.

Conclusion

Incorporating exercise into your daily life is a powerful way to boost your mental health. By following these tips, you can create a balanced approach to physical activity that enhances your overall well-being. Remember, it’s about finding what works for you and making movement a joyful part of your routine. Prioritize your mental health today by embracing the positive impact of exercise.

7 benefits of Positive Affirmations for your Well-Being

The words we say to ourselves are very important in promoting mental health and well-being. Positive affirmations are brief but effective remarks that can be uplifting and helpful in fostering a life that is less stressful, happier, and more self-assured.

Positive affirmations: What are they?

Repetition of uplifting remarks or phrases, known as positive affirmations, can help counteract negative or self-defeating thinking. These statements serve as subtly helpful reminders to support a good view of oneself and an upbeat approach to life. They can serve as a reminder of your value, strength, and competence.

The effectiveness of affirmations comes from their repetition. By frequently affirming positive statements, you can create a pattern of optimistic thoughts. Over time, these positive thoughts can overshadow the negative self-talk that can often creep for many of us during challenging periods.

positive affirmation examples

How positive affirmations works?

The foundation of positive affirmations is self-affirmation theory, which supports the idea that having a good self-image affects your attitudes and actions.

New neural pathways can be created by using it: The brain’s capacity for adaptation can facilitate the development of fresh, upbeat neural pathways. Through this method, repeated positive affirmations might help to gradually create a habit of optimistic thinking.

Also when your beliefs and behaviors fall out of sync, the use of affirmations can bring them into alignment with your intended outcomes, fostering a coherent self-image. This is a method by which affirmations can help address cognitive dissonance.

Our brain can be trained by positive affirmations: Regularly reciting affirmations is akin to training your brain to embrace more positive and empowering thoughts, much like physical training shapes your muscles.

Top Benefits of using them

  1. Boost your self-confidence with an affirmation
    Positive affirmations targeting self-confidence contribute to a more assured and capable mindset. This confidence can translate into various aspects of life.
  2. Improve your mood
    A happier mood might result from using positive affirmations to help you change your attention from negative to positive ideas. Consistent use can lead to a more positive attitude about life.
  3. Reduce your stress levels
    Affirmations can reduce stress by encouraging a more optimistic outlook on life. Above all they foster a way of thinking that is more capable of managing difficulties.
  4. Encorage yourself to adopt a growth mindset
    In the journey of personal and professional development, adopting a growth mindset is the compass that guides us toward success. Rather than seeing abilities as fixed traits, a growth mindset thrives on the belief that intelligence, talents, and skills can be developed through dedication, hard work, and resilience.
  5. Boost your mindfulness practice
    Your mindfulness practise can be strengthened by adding affirmations that support acceptance and presence, like “I can experience this moment without judgement.” One technique to practise self-kindness and mindfulness is through positive affirmations. With Jeff Warren’s book Mindfulness for Beginners, you can get more advice and resources.
  6. Support your overal well being
    Consistent use of positive affirmations is associated with improved mental health outcomes. They can be a valuable complement to therapy or other mental health interventions.
  7. Increase Productivity
    Positive affirmations can enhance motivation and productivity by promoting a can-do attitude. They can serve as a mental prompt to stay focused on tasks.

Try positive affirmations exercise in RelaxifyApp

What is Emotion Recognition and Why is it Important?

Effective communication and healthy relationships with others are a two-way street of mutual understanding and proper interpretation of behavior. This being said – the manner in which people interact with each other can be altered by one’s ability to recognize, interpret, and react to the hints given out by others – voluntarily or not. 

So, today we discuss the so-called “emotion recognition” and its substantial influence on how we interconnect with our friends, family, colleagues, and associates. 

What is Emotion Recognition Exactly?

Briefly explained, emotion recognition is the process of identifying the emotions of people around you. It has much to do with accurately reading facial expressions, non-verbal gestures, and even body language – communication features that can oftentimes speak louder than words ever could.

Emotion recognition is primarily expected to occur during live and face-to-face conversations. Still, it can also help us orientate ourselves in the changing mood of any other form of intercommunication – through audio, video, and text including. Improve it with Relaxifyapp Exercise

Emotion Recognition as a Part of Emotional Intelligence

Registering and acknowledging the emotional state of the person in front of you is the first and foremost condition needed for engaging in fruitful communication. Doing so can help you facilitate your own thoughts, outline your behavior, and regulate your own emotions. 

According to the American Psychological Association, emotion recognition is an element of social skills and empathy within the broader emotional intelligence of the individual. It plays a vital role in our evolutionary mechanism by keeping us aware of the situation and the safe, smart, and adequate ways to react to it. 

Or else said – being able to apprehend the emotional spectrum you observe is fundamental for a proper reaction and a healthy ongoing interaction with the world.

emotional recognition

Understanding Others Helps Our Own Selves!

Bringing theory to practice – how does emotion recognition boost our own well-being, and how does it mold the way we position ourselves in our social realm? Here are a few emotion recognition benefits, proven by both time and science:

Improved Social Interactions

Being able to stay flexible to others’ moods and momentary dispositions is highly valued in both personal and business relationships. Showing emotional intelligence and understanding of the situation will help you improve your social interactions and enhance your reliability in the eyes of others – be they your friends, your co-workers, or your partners.

Healthy Relationships 

You can’t maintain a healthy and mutually-satisfying relationship if you haven’t got the emotional tools to read the frame of mind, continually revealed by the other person. Modalities of behavior are here to show you the proper way to respond to a situation – all you need to do is decipher them and let them guide you to the common ground you’re looking for. 

Better Emotional Regulation

Understanding what you’re involved in comes with clear plans of action, realistic expectations, and a reduced chance of nurturing harmful misbeliefs. Or else said – once you know what is actually going on, you know what to anticipate. This can help you regulate your emotions accordingly and take your time to prepare for whatever may come your way. 

How to Improve Your Emotion Recognition Skills?

As satisfying as they sound, the advantages of proper emotion recognition are not so easy to achieve at all times. Some people have better inherent emotional intelligence skills, while others are required to work harder on their performance when dealing with others. 

If you happen to be born in the second group, there is still much you can do about becoming better at reading the emotions of others. Here are a few things to consider as a good starting point:

  • Pick a favorite actor or actress, then browse some movie pictures they appear in. Try to guess and name the emotion you are reading. This is a beginner-level exercise, as research shows that known faces are easier to read than unknown ones.
  • To level up, start watching new movies, videos, and programs with the sound turned off. First, try to guess the emotions of the people on screen without being able to hear their words. Then put the sound on, and check if you were anywhere close.
  • Spend at least five minutes a day playing the “Emotion Recognitiongame for free in the RelaxifyApp. There, you will have to match an emotion with a picture by picking between three different images. Our exercise is designed by experienced psychologists and shown to generate tangible improvement in the quality of your perception of nonverbal emotional display. 

The more you exercise, the better you will become at understanding others without them having to say a word. With that kind of development, you will also enjoy a more satisfactory social life, more stable relationships with people, and a harmonious state of your own mind. 

7 Tips for Dealing With Negative Thoughts

Negative thoughts don’t necessarily mean apparent gloominess, depression, or torturing anxiety. Sometimes, it’s just a background thinking pattern that defines the way we react to what’s happening around us. 

Anyway, the longer that thinking pattern persists, the worse its impact on our physical and mental state. Until apparent gloominess, depression, and torturing anxiety begin actually developing.

How do you Define a Negative Thought?

A negative thought is a dysfunctional thinking pattern, also called an “automatic thought.” It’s an involuntarily triggered cognitive response to a challenging situation, often generalizing and painting a pitch-black picture where there are multiple shades of grey. 

An automatic negative thought is when you say to yourself, “I’m a total failure” instead of “I simply couldn’t cope with this task.” 

It’s also when you say to yourself, “I will never trust people again” instead of “I was let down, and I’ve learned my lesson,” or “My life is ruined” instead of “I’m supposed to change my ways in order to move on.” 

As you may already suggest, these thoughts tend to produce a direct impact on our lives – in matters of emotional resilience, life events, and even physical health. 

How do Negative Thoughts Affect Your Well-Being?

Emotionally speaking, persistent negative thoughts can result in anything from a bad mood to anxiety, anger, self-esteem issues, and even depression. 

Also, they can get very physical by manifesting our thinking as higher blood pressure, increased risk of developing heart disease, lower immune system, higher level of stress hormones, or insomnia.

Put shortly – bad thoughts can literally get you sick! So – what is there to do about them?

Everyday Strategies for Dealing with Negative Thoughts

Here is our little guide for dealing with negative thinking in your everyday life:

#1 Learn to Recognize Thought Distortions

According to Psychology Today, there are four kinds of thought distortions:

  • Black and white thinking – classifying events as either satisfactory or disastrous, with nothing in-between.
  • Personalizing – believing that anything that goes wrong is always your fault.
  • Catastrophizing – expecting the worst outcome of any situation.
  • Filter thinking – recognizing only the negative side of any situation.

Analyzing your thoughts and recognizing a dysfunctional thinking pattern you have is the first and most crucial step towards fixing it. 

#2 Re-Evaluate Your Situation

Once you feel that automatic thought starting to creep in, try to distance yourself from it and change your perspective. For example, what would you say to someone else in your situation? What would it look like to you if you were not personally involved? 

That’s right – negative thoughts almost always keep you from being realistic, and reality is probably way better than you perceive it subjectively.

#3 Feel it Before you Let it Go

Frantically running away from bad thoughts is never a good strategy, as a person’s emotional spectrum is not (and is not supposed to be) monochrome. Instead, spend your time with your frustration – sit back, feel it, live through it, and, finally, dominate it. 

Feeling sad or angry is ok. It simply doesn’t mean you have always felt that way, or you’ll be feeling that way forever. 

#4 Don’t Keep it All to Yourself

Sometimes, other people’s opinions and support can be of great help in overcoming negative thinking. As hard as it may be for you, try to share your concerns and emotions with another person – communicate it, talk it through, and make an effort to accept advice from the outside. 

You can talk with a friend, a relative, a significant other, or a professional psychologist – it’s all fine when it makes you feel fine.

#5 Count Your Blessings

The good old balance scale strategy comes in handy when negative thinking makes you feel down. This approach is very simple – you are supposed to merely think about the good things you have in your life. The things you are grateful about and rarely appreciate on a daily basis.

Be it your family, your child, your pet, your talents, or your passions – make a little list of blessings and keep it present in your conscious thoughts every time you begin to slide off. 

#6 Make a Lifestyle Change

Negative thinking is harder to win when you take better care of your general well-being. Where to begin?

  • Eat better;
  • Sleep more;
  • Socialize more often;
  • Spend more quality time with your loved ones;
  • Do not systematically overwork yourself;
  • Engage in more dynamic physical activities;
  • Spend time in nature.

At the end of the day, you will be startled by the massive difference that little things can make. 

#7 Practice Automatic Thoughts Recognition in RelaxifyApp

In our RelaxifyApp, we’ve designed a playful and engaging experience based on science that will help you reconsider your patterns of thinking.

negative thoughts exercise in RelaxifyApp

 

By spending just a couple of minutes per day playing the Negative Thoughts mind game, you will become increasingly aware of dysfunctional thinking and learn to control it – for a better mood and a better life.  

Because every positive change begins with the notion that something needs to change and the conscious effort to change it the healthy way!

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