Spending too much time on our phones, eating a lot of junk food, not drinking enough water, not eating enough healthy foods are some examples of bad habits that affect our physical well being. However, is it possible that some of our habits also have a negative impact on our mental health?
Below are a few habits that may seem harmless but actually affect our mental health negatively.
1. Excessive use of your phone before bedtime: This has been known to lead to sleep loss, poor quality of sleep as well as more tiredness during the day. Sleep is a crucial part of mood cognitive function and lack of it has been linked to mood deficits and poor memory. Using a phone prior to our bedtime can have harmful long-term consequences on our health.
2. Lack of gratitude: Taking the time to be grateful for the blessings in life, big and small can make a huge difference. When we actively choose to be grateful, we’re choosing to focus and search for the positives. Not practicing gratitude does just the opposite, if we’re only focused on the negatives all that we’ll end up feeling is a negative emotion.
“…Anyone who is grateful does so to the profit of his own soul…” (31:12)
3. Believing in the idea that you will be truly happy with the arrival of ‘xyz’: “Things will fall into place perfectly once I land that job/promotion”. “I’ll be happy once I buy a house”. “my life will be amazing once I move away/ get married/have kids”etc. If you spend your life believing that life will improve inevitably once certain things/events happen, you may be doing yourself more harm than good. Yes, it’s great to have goals and to work towards them but to tell yourself that all your problems will vanish upon the achievement of the said goal is unhealthy. It can take away focus from the cause of your current unhappiness, discontentment, and problem. Moreover, if things don’t go as planned it can leave you feeling helpless.
4. Avoiding apologies: We often let the guilt & shame we feel upon wronging someone lead us farther away from them. Instead of owning up to our faults and apologizing for our wrongdoing, we begin to keep a distance from the person, or avoid the subject around them altogether and pretend it never happened, in doing so we fail to recognize the other person’s feelings and we end up damaging our relationship with them.
5. Poor posture: A study published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry reveals that the way we walk can also affect how we feel. Research showed that when people walked with shoulders slouched and hunched over, they experienced more negative moods, moreover, they were able to recall unpleasant experiences more easily than positive ones.
These are just a few common unhealthy habits that can affect our mental health. The good news is that habits can always be changed!
The Prophet (s.a.w) said, ‘There are two gifts which many men are unmindful about – good health and leisure.’ (Bukhari).
It’s important to adopt good habits especially if they have a direct impact on our health. Adopting good habits is an underrated yet essential part of self-care, while some habits might not seem that dangerous they can leave us to face some unpleasant consequences in the future so it’s important to make sure that we’re aware of our habits and their impact on us!
