As I mentioned in my last posts, your mental health plays an important role in your productivity and your basic life. In this post I want to teach you how to avoid negative influences on your mental health. What not everyone may know is that stress or anxiety can not only have direct and short-term consequences but can also damage your mental health in the long run. So it is important to fight the causes and to act against them so that on the one hand you as a person basically feel well and so that you by avoiding such negative influences where possible even help yourself and strengthen your mental health and thus also your productivity. It is important to know that the cause for such negative feelings always lies with you, because they result from how you deal with „triggers“ for negative feelings. When I have introduced you to these triggers, I hope that you will develop an awareness of them and that in the future such triggers will no longer cause negative emotions. But now we come to the most common negative emotions and their triggers:
1. Fears
Everyone has felt fear in his life and it is actually not a bad thing, it is an important aspect and has always been in order to survive. Without fear, for example, we would not be afraid of the tiger when he stands in front of us and that would definitely be a danger to our lives. I find here one should distinguish between justified and unfounded fears. To be afraid of a tiger is a natural fear because he represents a danger for your life. I find it difficult an example for an unfounded fear is there that is different for everyone. Nevertheless I took it out me the example of the Arachnophobie to take, the fear of spiders. Being afraid of spiders is unfounded because you are a human being and a thousand times bigger than the little spider. Besides, you could always kill them while a spider cannot. Unfounded fears can have a lasting negative impact on your life and that is something you should avoid at all costs. Unfounded fears in the workplace, for example, also affect your productivity. For example, the fear of underachieving, in my opinion one of the most difficult and worst unfounded fears. I have a little exercise for you to distinguish between justified and unfounded fears: Write them down and think while you look at the paper on which your fears are written how justified or just unfounded they are, if you can’t do it so well yourself, you can also ask friends of yours or your family. I simply asked ChatGPT because I thought a machine without emotions can determine best and objectively if fears are justified or not. I understand of course if a fear is justified for you although everyone else finds it unfounded, then I can only recommend you to seek professional help because constantly running around with fears only harms you in the long run.
There are some negative influences on your mental health that can later become fears, so I would like to list a few examples:
1. pressure to perform, as I mentioned before
2. stress, stress is a very important point which I will discuss separately in a moment
3. social isolation
4. trauma, traumatic events can develop into permanent fears, here I also recommend seeking professional help.
2. Physical influences
Physical influences also have an impact on your mental health. Many say that body and mind are closely connected and there is a certain coherence. When you are mentally unwell, you are usually physically unwell and vice versa. Physical influences that negatively affect your mental health are, for example:
1. An unhealthy lifestyle
- Bad nutrition
- Lack of sleep
- Lack of exercise
2. Genetic predispositions to mental illness, is there a history in your family? It is also advisable to seek professional help
3. Substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes)
It is easy to say that everything that is bad for your body is also bad for your mental health, so it is recommended to live as healthy as possible and just treat your body well.
3. Your environment
There is also coherence between your environment and your mental health. It is especially important that you have an environment in which you feel good and also avoid negative influences there. It applies to your social environment on the one hand, but also to your physical environment and factors such as pollution (poisoning of soil and drinking water as an example) or the order in your room or your entire apartment.
There should also be a certain basic solidity in your life, both in terms of your future, health and work, as well as your finances. If you have a solid life in a positive sense, it will also have a positive influence on your mental health.
Now that you know about these negative influences you can project them onto your life and see where you have problems and fight against the causes or eliminate them. It is simply important for your whole life that you are well and that you fight against what is making you not well. If you work too much whether it’s productive or not can also lead to pressure and anxiety, of course this post was meant to help you with your productivity because that’s what this channel is about but it’s still important to have a certain balance. The work-life balance. So don’t overwork yourself and also take care of yourself because you are still the most important, more important than work and more important than results. I hope I could help you with this post today and wish you a nice Sunday.
