5 tips to help you feel great in the winter
Monday 10th October is World Mental Health Day and at Jumar, we recognise how important mental health habits are to your wellbeing. Sarah Wright, People Director has compiled five hints and tips to help you feel great through the winter.
1. Get outside
It’s so tempting to stay inside during the winter months when it’s cold and grey. While I’m a great advocate of a blanket and a cup of tea, stepping outside, even for a short time makes a difference to your mental health. Top up your vitamin D when the sun is shining or even if it’s not. Having a walk will help you sleep better, reduce stress and even boost your immune system. Make some time to get away from your screen, you won’t regret it!
2. Eat healthily
Eating a broad range of colourful fruit, vegetables and wholegrains, as well as some treats in moderation, makes a massive difference to both your physical and mental health. If you are struggling for motivation or ideas, I can personally recommend Gousto. They have a broad range of recipes every week to suit most dietary requirements. If you don’t fancy that, homemade soup is a great way to boost your vegetable intake and use up leftovers. I have loads of foolproof easy recipes, let me know if you’d like them!
3. Have a routine and stick to it!
During the pandemic, it started to feel a little like we are living at work, rather than working from home. It’s really helpful to start and end your day at roughly the same time (barring any urgent issues!) and make sure to build in time for regular breaks, including a walk at lunchtime, if you can manage it.
4. If you are struggling, please talk to someone, it really can help.
Like Jumar, most business will have trained mental health first aiders and access to counselling through the employee assistance programme. Don’t keep it to yourself, we are here to help. Just as you would take notice if you hurt yourself physically and needed to take some medication or talk to the doctor, your mental health is no different. Get help if you need it, even if it is only to share that you are having a rubbish day. It helps and those feelings will help, with the right help.
5. Stay connected
Human contact is a great way to boost your mental health and stay positive. Having cameras on Teams meetings and spending some time in the office with colleagues are great ways to stay connected. Do make sure you spend some time connecting with your work friends about more than just work, projects and candidates. We’ve lost some of the social time at work through the pandemic and it’s really important!
These are just a few things that can improve how you are feeling. The most important one is to keep talking! It really does make a difference.