With all of the negative news in the media nowadays, it can be difficult to find the motivation to improve your mental well-being. While it’s important for us to be informed about current events, it’s also important to keep up with our mental health. Rather than trying to complete larger tasks that require high amounts of energy and planning, there are smaller actions you can take to improve your mood now.

Drink Water
This may feel like a cliché, but drinking enough water every day is one of the best ways to improve and sustain your mental well-being. This is because staying hydrated improves brain performance and clarity, provides your body with more energy, and decreases headaches. To encourage yourself to stay hydrated, find a reusable water bottle you like, or customize your own, to make drinking water a bit more fun. Having water more accessible will make staying hydrated easier. Feeling mentally and physically well is the first step to keeping your mood high.

Meditation
Thoughts can turn dark and scary fast, especially with recent current events. Rather than allowing these negative thoughts to simmer, turning to meditation can help slow down your brain. At first, meditation most likely won't feel intuitive and may even feel silly or pointless. To combat this, there are many guided meditations online to walk you through the process. A good thing about these guides is that they can be as long or short as you want, with some only being 3 minutes long. Meditation can be done from anywhere in your home, making it the perfect way to improve your mood if movement and effort feel difficult.

Call a Family Member or Friend
When you're feeling down, you may be more inclined to isolate yourself from loved ones. Rather than feeding into this, call a family member or friend instead. Having an emotional support system combats loneliness, which will then help improve your mental health. You don’t even have to talk about your struggles. Talking about other areas of your life can be a great distraction from heavier topics. Having social connections goes beyond just improving your mental health; it also decreases risks for strokes, dementia, and heart disease. The phone call doesn’t even have to be long. Having a short 5-minute conversation can help remind you that there are people in your life who care about your well-being.

Clean One Thing
When the space around you is cluttered and messy, it may lead to decreased focus, increased stress, and increased tension. It can also feel overwhelming to think about cleaning an entire space, especially when you know it might take hours. To make cleaning feel more accessible, choose one thing to clean instead. This could be as small as bringing a dirty plate to the sink or picking up a piece of trash. Then you can say you did something productive while also cleaning your space. If you feel motivated to clean more afterwards, then do so. If not, it’s okay! Doing that one productive thing is an accomplishment to be proud of when your mental health is low. 

Go on a Short Walk
Depression can’t hit a moving target, so going on a short walk is a great way to help improve your mood. This takes slightly more effort, but the walk doesn’t have to be long. Even a 10-minute walk can decrease stress while increasing your energy. Listening to your favorite music or starting an audiobook can make the walk feel more exciting and quiet any racing thoughts. It’s easier to ruminate on negative thoughts while sitting inside. If a walk feels too difficult, just stepping outside and feeling the sun on your face can help improve your mood by increasing serotonin levels in the brain, relieving symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Hopefully by doing one of the tasks above you’ll have the motivation to continue to keep the momentum going. If not, you still can celebrate that you were able to do something positive for yourself today. Fighting away negative moods starts with doing one small task for yourself.