Healthy Mind: 6 Life Changes That Are Also Good for the Soul

When identifying what makes for a healthy mind, we could look to any number of psychological theories for an answer. However, each theory varies in what it believes are the core components of what makes one’s mind healthy. Some theories focus on emotional awareness, while others focus more on flexibility of thinking.

Before modern psychological theories were created, the Bible spoke about how to have a healthy mind. Philippians 4:8 tells us to think about things that are honorable, just, pure, and lovely. If we aren’t used to focusing our mind on such things, it takes time to create these habits that lead to a healthier mind. Changing ways that we think and behave can be especially difficult when some of the unhealthy habits we currently possess have been with us since we were young.

Throughout our lifetime, we can learn and incorporate unhealthy habits without even being aware. Habits such as negativity, people-pleasing, distrust of others, and perfectionism (to name a few) can have an unfavorable impact on how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us. If we continue in these unhealthy habits for long periods of time, it can take a toll on our mental health and lead to issues such as depression and anxiety.

The Nature of Creating Healthy Habits

Take a moment to think back to a time when you tried to do something new that would benefit your life. Perhaps you tried eating healthier or exercising more regularly. Maybe you decided to spend less money and to put more money away for a rainy day. Maybe you tried to be less critical in a relationship and improve communication. Were you successful in forming new ways of behaving? If so, how long did it take before the new behaviors seemed automatic?

Researchers Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, and Wardle conducted a study in 2009, concluding that it usually takes around sixty-six days before a new habit feels automatic. However, the time to create the new habit can vary widely (18-254 days) based on the complexity of the desired behavior, personal motivation, and the surrounding circumstances in which the person is trying to create the habit.

The good news is that the researchers also found that slipping up and missing a single day does not significantly harm the overall long-term success of creating a healthy habit (Lally et al.). In this article, we will look at six life changes that you can turn into habits that will contribute to a healthier mind as well as positively increase how you feel about yourself and others.

Remember that adopting new behaviors can be challenging, so you may want to pick one new habit to start at a time. Be kind and forgiving to yourself if you mess up because, even if you must start the new behavior again, it just reinforces to the mind that it’s worth doing.
Cultivate hope and optimism
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines optimism as “the quality of being full of hope and emphasizing the good parts of a situation, or a belief that something good will happen.” We have numerous ways of looking at the world with hopeful expectations. As a child, did you ever throw a penny into a wishing well, hoping the wish would come true? How about wishing upon a star or making a wish while blowing out birthday cake candles?

Some people believe that hope and optimism are lost once you become an adult with serious responsibilities. With this outlook, individuals can get into a habit of complaining about everything. Complaining can be contagious but hope and optimism can be contagious too. Researchers have found that both optimism and hope are related to greater happiness (Snyder, 2002; Carver & Scheier, 2014).

Optimism is often paired with hope, but they are not the same thing. Optimism is a general outlook that good rather than bad things will happen, while hope tends to be focused on something specific. Hope focused on a specific goal may make you more likely to succeed. This is what is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The way you think can drive your behavior to the point of success or defeat, depending on whether your thoughts are positive or negative. The cycle then begins. The more optimistic and hopeful you are, the more success you may see. This, in turn, can make a person more optimistic and hopeful in the future. The great thing about optimism and hope is that anyone can learn these skills by becoming more aware and incorporating them into their daily life.

Simple Ways to Practice Hope and Optimism

• Look up quotes from inspiring people that foster a sense of optimism and hope. Here are some of my favorites:

“When the world says give up, hope whispers, try it one more time.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see the shadows.” – Helen Keller

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

• Every day for a week, catch yourself when you are complaining. Try to take the circumstances you are complaining about and find something positive about it.
• Name a source of inspiration you have. It could be a person or something that provides a sense of purpose. Think about why you find them/it inspiring. Could you be someone else’s source of inspiration?

Practicing gratitude
Consider this quote from Joyce Meyer: “I’m not where I want to be, but thank God I’m not where I used to be.” This quote shows that we don’t have to have it all together to be thankful for the progress we have made.

Gratitude in our everyday lives helps us to value what we have and decrease the focus on what we don’t have. Learning to increase gratitude helps us to appreciate and savor those everyday events and experiences and can also increase satisfaction in relationships.

How do we begin to increase gratitude in our lives? Gratitude is not just something we identify at Thanksgiving or Christmas but needs to be a habit that we incorporate daily to reap the benefits. We all have things that we wish were different in our lives, but we also have numerous things for which we can be thankful.

Taking time to identify the small things that we are blessed with can help to begin a pattern of gratitude. Gratitude can also be displayed in how we appreciate others. When was the last time you thanked someone for something small that they did? Creating this habit of thanking people close to you for all the small things they do can help to develop a habit of gratitude.

Plus, you get the added benefit of having a more positive relationship with that person. Overall, gratitude is one of the easiest life changes that a person can incorporate and has the biggest social and personal payoff, contributing to a healthier mind.

Simple Ways to Practice Gratitude

• Write a thank-you note to someone who has made a difference in your life. Explain to them what they have done and what this means to you.
• Every day for a week, write down three things that happened during the day for which you are thankful.
• Take a walk outside. Notice different things that you see, hear, smell, and touch. As you walk, name the things in your life for which you are grateful.

Develop an attitude of curiosity
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines Curiosity as “An eager wish or desire to acquire new information or investigate strange things.” When we think about curiosity, we might think of a child learning about the world around them or how researchers come to achieve scientific breakthroughs. However, developing an attitude of curiosity about the people that we interact with every day can help decrease conflict and develop an increased level of empathy.

We each have our own interpretations of life and how the world around us works. This is called our perspective. Our perspective is determined by many things. Our genetics, the temperament we are born with, our culture, and the experiences we have throughout life can all influence perspective.

A large part of our perspective develops during the early years of life and can be highly impacted by our early caregiving relationships. Our perspective is made up of good experiences, bad experiences, and everything in-between.

Often, we misinterpret a situation because we judge the circumstances by our own perspectives. Our brains are wired to scan for information we are familiar with that might explain what is going on in any given circumstance. The researchers at the HeartMath Institute (2019) found that we have emotional responses to our perceptions of events.

These emotional responses usually lead us to negatively judge people and situations. When we are hurt by others in those situations, we can become distrustful and feel as though we have to protect ourselves. These trust issues can spread and become part of our overall perspective of people. We put up emotional walls and begin to judge the intentions of others quickly, which leads to miscommunication and increased conflict.

It causes hurt to be continually passed on. To approach a situation without judgment takes practice and a desire to be curious about how others might view things differently than yourself. This is called “perspective taking.” This can be a challenge, since we never really know what others are thinking unless they tell us.

However, practicing perspective taking with an attitude of curiosity toward others can help cultivate a healthy mind. Having an attitude of curiosity can help decrease personal frustration, thus decreasing health-damaging cortisol levels. An attitude of curiosity can also help increase patience in yourself and strengthen your relationships.

Simple Ways to Practice Curiosity

• Analyze the way you view others’ intentions. Are you always thinking that people are out to harm you?
• Pick a person with whom you don’t agree on something. Try to describe the reasons why that person may think differently than you.
• The next time you interact with someone from a different culture or geographic location than your own, ask them about their favorite thing about their culture or the place they are from.

Develop a Sense of Humor
What people find humorous can vary from person to person based on their perspective. But the fact is, people like to laugh and be entertained. After all, laughter increases social bonding and is contagious, spreading from person to person to lighten the mood. As we look around our world, we find that a lot of time, money, and effort are spent creating ways to make people laugh, such as through music, movies, and art.

There is something positive that happens in our brains when we experience humor. According to researchers at Harvard University (2010), the surprising characteristic of a joke causes parts of your brain to search for a recognizable pattern. When the punchline comes, the brain shifts from trying to process information to looking for an emotional response.

During this process, your brain releases chemicals called neurotransmitters that make you feel good. So, having a good, hearty laugh can result in positive results for the body. Laughter has been found to relieve tension, decrease pain and stress, enhance the experience of pleasure, boost the immune system, and help reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke (Harvard University). Laughter really is the best medicine.

Life can be unpredictable, not fair, and downright out of control at times. The difficulty lies in being able to laugh about a mistake we make, when a mishap occurs, or when life just isn’t rolling out how we expect. We usually can’t reverse what happens to us and, if we are alive and learning the lessons of life, we are going to make mistakes.

Humor can be a valuable way of coping when things do not go as expected. Being able to find humor in a tough situation can help lessen the negative impact that it has on your mood and decrease your stress.

Simple Ways to Practice Humor

• The next time you are feeling down, set aside some time to watch a funny movie or watch your favorite comedian.
• Describe a really awkward past moment in your life. Can you laugh about this today?
• If aliens were to abduct you, describe three silly things you do that would make them send you back.
• Next time you are struggling, exaggerate about how things might be worse. Coming up with silly ways that a situation could have gone can help you find some humor in your current circumstance.

Experience pleasure in a healthy way
Researchers have found that pleasure is an important part of healthy psychological functioning and well-being (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2015). In fact, anhedonia, which is a symptom of depression, is when a person has difficulty finding pleasure in anything they experience. You can imagine how this would cause psychological functioning to decrease.

On the other hand, some experiences of pleasure can lead to addictive behavior. Most people might agree that eating indulgent foods, winning money at a slot machine, or playing a thrilling video game can create pleasurable experiences, but too much of anything can become excessive and unhealthy.

When examining what things bring pleasure, people also find that helping a friend, solving a problem, creating something artistic, meeting a goal, appreciating nature, and engaging in calming prayer or worship also provide pleasurable experiences. Some people might even say that these latter kinds of pleasures are more valuable overall since they tend to be more lasting (Heathwood, 2013).

When pursued with a healthy balance, pleasure brings about appreciation, playfulness, sensuality, spontaneity, and a healthy focus on self-care (Huta, 2014). In fact, healthy pleasure is essential for self-care and can increase feelings of joy, comfort, and relaxation.

There is a skill used in psychology, created by Fred Bryant, called savoring that helps to enhance an appreciation for pleasure and to regulate emotional states. The skill of savoring is more than just feeling and enjoying pleasure. Savoring requires a person to put forth conscious, mindful awareness.

This allows a person to fully soak in and prolong an experience while appreciating the positive emotions they feel. Savoring can be used to experience pleasure related to things in the past, present, or future. The savoring of pleasurable experiences helps to combat negative emotions, which can lead to depression and anxiety.

Simple Ways to Practice Pleasure

• Choose something new to try that you have never done before. Examples could be trying a new and strange type of food, engaging in a type of sport you have never tried, or researching a topic of interest that you know nothing about.
• List at least three things you think are beautiful. Describe them and really focus on detail.
• Name something that you used to love as a kid. Do it again, no matter how silly it may seem. If you can’t do it, then imagine what it was like when you were a kid. Remember how it made you feel.
• Is there something pleasurable that you are doing in excess that is creating problems in your life? Create a plan about how you could use more moderation.

Create positive social interactions
Have you ever had a bad day that was completely turned around by someone just noticing you and being nice? How does it make you feel when someone walking by smiles and says, “Good morning?” Have you ever had someone pay for your order at a drive-thru? These are small behaviors that work reciprocally. This means that the receiver and the giver of the kindness both benefit.

Performing small acts, like opening the door for someone, smiling, being friendly to the person waiting on you in a store, and telling someone to have a nice day, are some of the easiest ways to change your mood. Even better, it begins to change the mood of the people around you, creating a more positive environment.

According to the Mental Health Foundation (2019), depression and anxiety are the most common mental health issues. Even though these issues are common, when we are experiencing depression or anxiety, we often think we are the only ones who feels this way. People that you interact with every day may also be feeling depressed and/or anxious. We don’t know who they are because we have all gotten good at hiding how we really feel.

Many people around us are lonely, grieving, scared, or feel forgotten. You may be feeling that way right now. Simply smiling and being kind to someone can make them feel seen, valued, and at ease.

At the same time, you can feel seen, valued, and at ease when the person reciprocates with a warm response. Incorporating positive social interactions into your everyday life can create an atmosphere of compassion and generosity, as well as help combat feelings of depression and anxiety.

Simple Ways to Practice Positive Social Interactions 

• Do you have difficulty asking for help when you need it? How does it feel when you help someone? Find something small that you need help with and ask someone to help you. When the task is done, reflect on how it made you feel and how you think the other person felt.
• In the morning, every day for a week, smile and say good morning to passers-by. What kind of reactions did you get? Do you think it helped increase your mood?
• Try doing a random act of kindness for someone. Examples could be writing an encouraging message for someone in the office who may get overlooked for what they do. You could let someone with fewer groceries go in front of you in line at the store, pay for someone’s morning coffee, or when you ask someone how they are, really listen.

Where to Find Help

Some life changes are easier than others to incorporate and make into habits. When unhealthy habits become rooted in everyday life and are leading to issues such as depression, anxiety, and conflict in relationships, extra help is needed to make life changes.

Contacting our office at Texas Christian Counseling can help connect you to Christian counselors who can support and guide you in creating positive life changes that align with your values while also improving the health of your mind and the quality of your relationships.