Healthy Head Habits - Kevin #8

 Introduction

This blog post is going to be revolved around the mental health side of working in projects and going through college. I'm going to focus on three "healthy head habits" that I have experienced and have a some knowledge about. College can be a very stressful time period in general, especially due to the fact my course is primarily continuous assessment based. Additionally trying to manage a job alongside being in 4th year of college is something I found very challenging at times but worked through by using some mental health tips that work for me.

The area's I'm going to tackle in this blog post are: 

• Time Management
• Setting Goals and Understanding Limits
• Talking

 Time Management

This year, my time management has been the most important aspect to keeping my mental health in check. Allowing myself to plan ahead what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it, doesn't seem like something that would impact your mental health but I think it's vitally important. 

Making sure you set aside time every week to ensure you are, getting enough sleep, eating proper food, exercising and having time to "switch off" and relax. All impacts how you can perform in work and college, allowing you to be present and not get burnt out over time. 

In the past when I had poor time management I often found it difficult to concentrate at times and allowed a lot of stress and anxiety to build up around completing work or not being happy within myself. Once you decide to set a strong regiment or schedule to your life, I found it helps immensely.

Additionally, under the heading of time management, this also applies to planning our assignments that are due,  ensuring that you set aside enough time to work on them and when you are, you are not wasting that time, but doing work that might not be vital to the project or getting distracted and using up that time in other areas. I always set aside at least 30 minutes at the start of every project or assignment for planning out how long each sections should take and how I am going to tackle certain aspects.

Setting Goals and Understanding Limits

Personally, I find setting goals and celebrating when they are achieved or completed is a massive aspect of staying on top of my mental health. Recognising when I have put a lot of work into something and celebrating it's completion. Allows me to relieve some stress and relax and enjoy the moment, whether that be a small celebration, where you just sit for a minute and be proud of what you achieved or something slightly bigger and buying a nice meal or going our celebrating. Having goals I set for myself allows me to become a better worker.

I find when I have a goal in mind, I become a lot more driven and focused, it can prevent me looking at the big picture which can seem daunting or stressful at times and just hone in on the current goal at hand. For my mental health this aspect is vital, I find that little celebration or completion of a goal I set for myself very fulfilling and refocuses myself on the next task.

However, on the other side of that coin, being able to recognise when a goal or challenge I set myself is not going to be completed, or has to be adjusted, is super important for my mental health. This could be due to time constraints, a misunderstanding of the work requirements or something unexpected coming up. Whatever the reason, sometimes I find I just need to take a step back from the work and re-evaluate what I will be able to achieve. That could mean adjusting how much time I spend on the project or even just accepting I won't be able to complete everything. Once I have decided on that, I obviously feel disappointed but for my mental health I cut my losses and try not to worry about it, it's out of my control now and I complete every aspect I am able to.

This recognition has helped deal with a lot of stress, especially with college assignments. This year we didn't get a lot of the assignments until just before the Easter Holidays and then we got assigned a large portion of assignments at once. I was unable to complete every aspect for all these assignments, I was worrying and getting stressed at this fact, until I just took a step back, accepted that fact and moved on with what I could complete.

Talking

The last "healthy head habit" I want to discuss is, talking, talking when you feel overwhelmed, talking when you feel stressed out, talking when you are upset or annoyed. In general having someone you can speak to about problems you are facing or in general just having someone you can tell about your day. 

A lot of research has been done around this area, concluding that talking to people about what you are going through is very helpful, that's why it has to be included in my "healthy head habits", having that support network around you, so that you can go to someone when you are struggling and have a conversation about it, is vital. 

This could be your family or friends, or anyone in your life that you are close to. For myself, it's definitely my family and a select few friends, being able to turn to them and speak about issue's or challenges is often what keeps me going and staying on top of my mental health.