Tips to boost your mental health 

‘You were born to be real, not perfect’

Mental health is close to my own heart because of the challenges that I’ve experienced around depression, and in my own life. They’ve been the catalyst for me to do the work that I do.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching ways – coping mechanisms, different guiding principles – that were helpful to myself, as well as sharing them with other people. There are so many things that we can do for our mental health.

Everybody deserves to have premium emotional wellbeing. My three key pieces of advice to achieve this are:

1. Get support

Get some support, because there’s so much good stuff out there that can help you. You don’t need to feel alone. That’s really important and it’s not something to be ashamed of. I think every single person has mental health challenges and issues throughout their lives. We are dynamic human beings. We’re going to experience all sorts of different things, so we’re all in it together.

2. Avoid perfectionism 

It’s really important to avoid chasing perfection. Remember, you were born to be real, not perfect. Sometimes, particularly with social media and Facebook, we start to look at other people’s lives and we compare our own. We think we’re not having this perfect existence, but that’s totally unrealistic.

Avoiding chasing perfectionism, you don’t have to get things right 100% of the time. You’re going to make mistakes; you’re going to fail. Big deal. That’s life. If you’re going to increase your rate of success, you’ve got to be prepared to increase your rate of failure. Be proud to be real.

3. Adopt a positive mindset 

I’ve always been an advocate of having a positive mental attitude. Aspire to be as optimistic as possible because there will be negative situations in our lives. If we can flip them over and start to think about what the alternative can be, that can be very helpful. That essentially is what underpins what is known as CBT, or cognitive behavioural therapy.

If you’ve got some challenges around anxiety and depression, any kind of mental health, hopefully your doctor will also guide you to seek out and get support through talking therapies, which can be extremely helpful.

This is an edited version of a conversation with Liggy Webb that appears in the Clear Lessons video learning library. The library contains more than 1,500 videos and is completely free to all voluntary sector organisations, their staff and volunteers. Corporate organisations can purchase a licence, which supports free access for charities. Please ask us for more details.