Why Your Mental Health Is Just As (If Not More) Important As Your Physical Health

Let’s face it—we all want to be healthy, even if we don’t want to put in the work to get there. Fine. But most of the time, people assume that being healthy directly corresponds to the amount of vegetables you eat and the number of push-ups you can do in a minute. How about our mental health? Isn’t that important too?

Damn right it is. Think about it—our brain controls everything. It tells us to walk to the fridge, to pull our hand away from the hot stove, to put the car in park, etc. It’s the powerhouse of our sole existence, the mitochondria of the cell we call a body. Which is precisely why we need to pay more attention to its health.

To get a six-pack, you eat clean, train hard, and work overall to maintain a consistent and focused path to reach your desired goal. The same goes for someone yearning to lose stubborn belly fat—no matter our physical health goals, consistency and focused attention to a routine will help us get to where we want to be. 

Fortunately for us, we can use this approach similarly to better our mental health. It is important to constantly feed our minds with positive information that will benefit us and carve a six pack of strength and empowHERment into our beautiful brains.  

Even deeper, we can see how a week of consistent positivity flooding our brains will transform our outlook on life and lead us to start seeing some noticeable oblique-like definition in our cute lil’ craniums. 

Here are three simple things you can do each day to build mental abs of steel:

1. Smile every hour, on the hour. Research shows that simply forming a smile, even if you’re unhappy, can trigger response nerves in your brain and trick yourself into feeling happy. #fakeittilyoumakeit
   
2. Read “You Are A Badass” by Jen Sincero. Take in about ten minutes of this powerful book a day. You’re welcome in advance.
   
3. Workout! YES working on your physical health can also improve your mental health! During and after a workout, your body releases endorphins aka the happy drug produced naturally in your brain. So do those squats and know you’re growing your mental cake as well. Boom. 

And overall, just remember one thing—there is only one YOU. So take this information with a grain of salt, preferably some coating a margarita glass, and trust the process. Health is a journey, not a destination. Balance will find you, but only if you allow it. Namaste and stuff! 

Editing Note: This article did not filter through the normal EmpowHER editing and fact checking process. It was checked for spelling and grammar.