30-Day Mental Health Challenge: Part IV

It’s the last part of your 30-day mental health challenge!! How’s it been going? If you’ve been following along, then you’re just a few days away from the end. Hopefully you’ve learned some new skills, refreshed on some old ones, and challenged yourself to do things differently. That’s amazing! You’ve got a few days left to make even more of an impact on your mental health.

Remember, this mental health challenge is designed to help you

• Move from thinking about changing to actually changing
• Practice the skills you’ve picked up from all your research
• Discover new strategies for managing your mental health
• Establish a habit of focusing on your mental health on a regular basis

If you missed the first few weeks, no problem! Head back to the details for the first 7 days here and follow along from there. Or, just start here! There’s not necessarily an order these challenges need to be done in, so start where you are. The most important thing is just that you START.

Keep This In Mind As You’re Doing the Challenge

As you round the turn into the final stretch of this 30-day challenge, remind yourself of the tips for success we reviewed at the beginning of the challenge. To summarize:

• This is a mental health challenge, not a self-care challenge
• Most of these strategies aren’t a quick fix
• There’s no good time to start, so start today
• You don’t have to complete the challenge in 30 days

For a more detailed refresher on those tips, head here.

If you’re ready for the final installment of the challenge, let’s jump right into week 4.  For a summary of the entire challenge, grab this PDF download. 

Here are more details on your tasks for the final 9 days.

30-Day Mental Health Challenge: Part IV

Day 22 (February 28, 2021): Calm Your Mind

Check in with your mind: How is it feeling? Stressed, anxious, overwhelmed? Bored, disengaged, unenthused? Calm, centered, soothed?

Your challenge today is to practice calming, centering, and soothing your mind. You could do this by meditating or by choosing one of these 10 strategies to calm your mind. Whatever you choose, choose something that’s calming and practice it today.

Day 23 (March 1, 2021): Organize Your Stressful Thoughts

Yesterday, your challenge was to soothe your stressed-out mind. Today, your challenge is to organize your stressed-out mind. When we’re stressed or overwhelmed, our minds can feel like a tangled mess of spaghetti noodles. Straightening out the mess helps relieve stress.

In a previous article, I introduced you to a 7-step process to organize stressful thoughts. Here’s your opportunity to put it into action! Head over to the article, read through the steps, and try them out!

Day 24 (March 2, 2021): Create an Emergency Playlist

For times when you need some love or comfort, it’s helpful to have a go-to music playlist. Our brains respond uniquely to music, and it can be a really powerful way to affect our mood. Today, your challenge is to curate a playlist full of songs that will help you when you need to feel loved or comforted.

As an example, here are some of the songs on my playlist:

• Jason Mraz – “I Won’t Give Up”
• Mariah Carey – “Hero”
• R. Kelly – “I Believe I Can Fly”
• The Wallflowers – “One Headlight”
• U2 – “Beautiful Day”

Day 25 (March 3, 2021): Practice Opposite Action

“Opposite action” is a coping skill that helps us when we’re noticing strong emotions and we want to change the way we’re feeling. For example, if you notice you’re feeling sad and you want to change that feeling, you could try opposite action. Same with feeling anxious or angry or any other feeling.

Here’s how it works. Identify the emotion you’re feeling. Now, identify what emotion is essentially opposite of that. Next, figure out what a person who is feeling that opposite feeling would be doing in your current situation. Finally, engage in that opposite action.

Here’s an example. I identify that I’m feeling helpless regarding a project I’m working on. The opposite of helpless might be empowered. A person who is feeling empowered in my situation might use their assertiveness skills to approach a coworker, supervisor, etc. to problem-solve the situation. So, I decide to try that myself.

Another example. I identify that I’m feeling stressed after work. The opposite of stressed might be calm. A person who is feeling calm after work might be using one of their strategies from Day 22 of the 30-day mental health challenge. So, I decide to try that myself.

Your challenge is to try this for yourself today. Identify what you’re feeling, what it’s opposite is, and what the opposite action is, and then do the opposite action.

Day 26 (March 4, 2021): Read for Your Mental Health

One of the pitfalls we run into with managing our mental health is spending too much time in the researching, reading, information-gathering stage and not enough time in the changing, taking action, and trying new things stage. That’s why most of your challenges so far in this 30-day challenge have involved action. But today, take a moment to read something that will help your mental health.

This could take two angles. One would be to read something that directly relates to your mental health — a self-help book, a favorite mental health blog, etc. The second would be to read something that just makes you feel good — a favorite book, a comic strip, something that makes you laugh, etc. Find something to read that would benefit your mental health in one way or another and read it today.

Day 27 (March 5, 2021): Make a Plan for Something You’ve Been Putting Off

Procrastination is one of the things all of my clients have in common. Most of us procrastinate on things like chores, work projects, or school projects. But even those of us who are diligent about those things tend to procrastinate on things like self-care and socialization. Today, your challenge is to identify something you’ve been putting off and make a plan for getting it done.

Bonus tip: If you’re really struggling to get over the hump of self-sabotage, check out these 10 strategies to stop self-sabotaging.

Day 28 (March 6, 2021): Spend Time Outside

Today’s challenge is a feel-good challenge. Your challenge today is to spend some time outside…even if it’s cold or raining or snowing. You’ve got a jacket and you know how to protect yourself from the elements, so figure out what you need to do to be able to get yourself outside. Notice the ground under your feet, the breeze on your face, the temperature of the air. Hear the birds and the squirrels and the people. Find something green (a leaf, a blade of grass, a weed) and touch it. This challenge is about reorienting yourself away from the hustle of ordinary life and back to the tranquility of nature, and that reorientation is good for your mental health.

Day 29 (March 7, 2021): Check In On Your Habits Again

You’ve got just a couple of days left of the 30-day mental health challenge, so it’s time to start winding down and wrapping things up!

On Day 2, you identified your personal and mental health goals. And then on Days 3 and 4, you determined what habits would be helpful to break and what habits would be helpful to add to help you improve your mental health. And you checked in on your progress on Day 15 to recalibrate your approach.

How are those habits going? If you’ve been able to keep up with them, even semi-consistently, for the past few weeks — CONGRATULATIONS! That’s seriously an extraordinary achievement. Make a plan for how you’re going to continue your success after the 30-day mental health challenge ends.

If you’ve had trouble getting it going, no worries! Habits are notoriously hard to add and remove. Make sure you grab the PDF worksheets to help yourself figure out what to do differently moving forward:

Take a few minutes today to review what interfered with your success over the past few weeks and establish a plan to try a different approach moving forward.

Day 30 (March 8, 2021): Solidify What You Learned

It’s the last day of the 30-day mental health challenge! It’s time to review your progress and choose some strategies that you might want to hang on to for future use. Your challenge today is to review the challenges from the past 30 days and identify three to four strategies that made the biggest difference for your mental health. As we discussed at the beginning of the challenge, these strategies can take a while to actually show results, so the strategies you choose today might not have provided immediate relief. BUT if you can sense that they’ll be helpful in the long term if you continue to use them, then they might be good candidates for selection. Write down the strategies that have the most promise for you and establish a plan for continuing to practice and use them.

30-Day Mental Health Challenge

If you made it all the way to the end of this 30-day challenge, you deserve some serious praise! What an accomplishment! Spending 30 days focused on your mental health is no easy feat, but it’s a commitment that shows how serious you are about taking charge of your mental health and changing you life. Celebrate!

High Functioning Anxiety

Now that you’ve completed your 30-day mental health challenge, it’s time to get back to our regular schedule of learning new info and strategies to manage your mental health. Up next week, we’re talking about high functioning anxiety: what it is, its benefits and drawbacks, and what to do about it. Don’t miss it.

Talk to you soon,

Dr. Finch

P.S.    Remember, this is education, not treatment.  Always consult with a psychologist or therapist about your mental health to determine what information and interventions are best for you.  See the disclaimer for more details.