Cycling has been a massive boon to my health, both mental and otherwise. It’s such a fun way to get around, and just so happens to be great exercise in the process.
Reading. It doesn’t have to be much, but occasionally filling idle moments with a few pages read instead of doom scrolling social media can do wonders. It did for me at least.
The Libby app with most public libraries is really good!
I allways read a bit before going to sleep. It helps with shutting down. My sleep improved a lot
Installing an ereader app (ReadEra) helped me so much with this. I always have my phone with me anyways, and tapping the ereader app instead of Instagram takes away so many barriers.
Doing this actually got me back into reading. Started with Manhwa (Solo Leveling) and that spiraled into reading books such as Midnight library, Before Coffee Gets Cold, The Words We keep and now “1984”.
I need to feel productive. Be it a programming project or woodworking. Just creating something new instead of maintenance like oil changes and mowing the lawn. Creating something new.
Also, take a walk in the forest. Get out on the water. Both are great therapy to disconnect from the mental todo-list of things going on around the house.
Renting a paddleboard and just chilling on a lake on a sunny day. It really is a kind of heaven.
Petting kitties.
Eating kitties…
… I mean, making stupid jokes nobody understand. It works for me at least.
We understand
Bird-watching is very relaxing and surprisingly engaging. You get to know your local birds as individuals with personalities. It’s pretty neat.
Slightly more active, but not by much, raising native bees is low effort and it can be enjoyable to watch the bees go about their business in your garden or yard, assuming you have flowers. In fact, once you get the bees, you might become more interested in gardening because you need to get some nice flowers for the bees, naturally.
Cooking and working out. Proper nutrition and taking care of your body make a huge difference, along with reading.
If anyone struggles with plenty of ego identification and unhelpful destructive thoughts I recommend meditating. 30-day guest pass https://dynamic.wakingup.com/guestpass/SC13AF7E5
You can also ask a support for a 1 year for free when you ccan’t afford it.
Photography maybe, you go on walks and travel, forces you to observe the world around you.
It depends a lot on the person, but it always does me good to do something tactile after working all day on a computer. Cooking, baking, sketching, woodworking, Legos, hiking, that kind of thing. I’ve noticed it really helps me ground and be mindful.
League of Legends /s
Yeah, totally! The best answer so far!
Only (former) League players will understand.
Lol
That is indeed the correct abbreviation
But honestly, quiting such a toxic dumpster fire is really relaxing on your nerves.
You joke, but sometimes I’ve had a crappy day and just wanna play some ARAMs.
Going on a walk regularly.
a little bit of exercise is amazing for mental health. just half an hour, 2 or 3 times a week makes a massive difference
… Where there is greenery. It’s scientifically proven to improve mental wellbeing if you see greenery just 20 minutes a day.
I was just coming in here to say walking in nature or hiking. 🙂
Although I do also get some benefit in driving through nature too.
Hobby? I dunno, but habit? Meditation.
Whatever hobby you enjoy, avoid its online community as much as possible. It’s a great way to see negativity and arguing, which we all know constant negativity and discourse is fantastic for our collective mental health.
Not for everything! I find that hobbies which are based around nature tends to have very welcoming and helpful communities online. Gardening, bird watching, hydroponics, that sort of thing.
It’s also a good way to never actually getting the ball rolling on a new hobby, and instead obsessively research what the “correct” way of doing xyz is and then be too overwhelmed by all the opinions to actually get started yourself.
How do you know if you don’t have good mental health? I feel fine almost all the time.
You’d know, trust me
As a very stable genius, I completely agree with this.
In much the same way that almost no one has perfect physical health, almost no one has perfect mental health.
You don’t need to be a complete wreck to be able to benefit from paying attention to your mental wellness.
Eating well, regular exercise, mindfulness, forgiveness, good sleep practices are all worth practicing whether you feel unwell or not.
I do those things by default. Only have one body, I like it to be healthy.
I’m a huge advocate of gardening. It gets you outdoors and active, gives a sense of achievement, you learn and improve over time, it’s popular enough that you can get involved in a community, if you’re growing veg it promotes healthy eating.
It should be mandatory.
You… sound like my mother. She’s an incredible woman, but christ, no I’m not gonna go climb a tree right now and chop off the top branches, I’m in the middle of a Minetest marathon
House plants bro. It’s a game where the goal is not killing them.
Succulents are the answer! They thrive on neglect and look so cool and alien. I love them.
I have a bamboo plant that seems to thrive on my neglect
I know you didn’t really mean it literally but just to reiterate as others have done for other suggestions in this thread, this is very much an “if it works for you” sort of thing and definitely shouldn’t be mandatory. I fucking hate gardening with a passion, I want absolutely nothing to do with it, though it’s clearly very beneficial to others.
You dont seem to know this but its been shown that dirt actually has bacteria in it that have natural anti-depressant properties on humans. So you gardening and digging in the dirt is literally making u happier.
