Hey! Let's continue this topic in part 2.

What is mental and emotional health?

Everyone can create their definition of mental and emotional health based on their life's philosophy. But, it is wise and exciting if we study some scientific explanation for more precise meaning.

MentalHealth.gov (2020) stated mental health includes oneself emotional, psychological and social well-being. It is linked and affects how we think, feels, and acts as a reaction to the situation or environment around us. Mental health determines how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. No matter which stage of life we are, mental health is necessary for you, us and everyone.

Why is mental and emotional health necessary and essential for me?

Being Spoonie.

I have a Spoonie life. Have you ever heard of Spoonie? (I will share about this in my other article). Due to my Spoonie life, mental health must at the top of priorities. Because Spoonie faces physical energy limitations, we need to make sure everything in our lives must help us be balanced.

It's a kind of struggles, hardship and sacrifices. But life goes on. Keep smile.

I think this is common for us, which is a toxic environment.

Yeah, I agree—toxic environment very exhausting and draining spirit.

As a writer in rtor.org (2019) mentioned, a toxic environment is any place or any behaviour that causes harm to our health, happiness and wellbeing. If we feel small, insecure, or inadequate with your family, friends, colleagues, or even a life partner, we may be in a toxic environment. Or maybe we are our toxic environment? Self-sabotage.

High awareness of our mental health condition makes us WISE!

Wise equal to having wisdom. Macmillan dictionary defines wisdom as the ability of oneself to make good decisions based on knowledge and experience. In other meaning, wisdom relates to intelligence, intuition and ability to understand things that happen around them.

In other words, wisdom flourishes when our mental and emotional health are balanced. Gaining wisdom and balanced mental health is not easy but possible to achieve as long as we open to improve and learn more from wiser and successful people who shows nothing is impossible.

Well, being wise is one of my life wishlists. The hunger of knowledge and life's truth makes me want to learn more and keep improving myself. I love knowledge. I never get tired to gain knowledge to equip myself to be a better person. That is why I'm taking a Master's Degree in Psychology (Counseling), to learn more about myself.

Learn to be wise in every life decisions is happiness for me. Life? It's a long, long, long journey to go and yes, as a human we prone to stumble and make a lot of mistakes that makes others frust on us but, it's okay, isn't making mistakes is the life learning process? Throughout downside life experience, we become wiser and wiser. I wish you all the best!

The BIG QUESTIONS here is, " How to keep our mental and emotional balance? "

As a Spoonie, I maybe give different suggestion to learn about balancing our mental and emotional health. But, nothing right and wrong ways when it's comes to mental health. Do anything that helps us grow to be more balanced and keep growing.

My toolkits to make sure I'm in well balanced mentally, emotionally and socially is;

1. Priorities self-care. Self-care is a must for a Spoonie. Learn to take care of our self. Learn to not neglecting our needs as your soul craves for it. It's not selfish, and it's about loving yourself and care.

2. Gain and improve life skills. Enhancing life skills is also a need for us, if not at least for me. Gerencer (2020) explains hard skills show oneself's the ability to do chores such as writing, play instrument, drawing, dancing, singing, etc. Hard skills are mostly are gain and need practice and more practice. In comparison, soft skills are part of our personality, attitude, flexibility, motivation and manners. Soft skills examples are interpersonal skills, communication and leadership. With or without realising, the life skills needed to help us to be more adaptable and independent.

3. Get rid anything that drains us psychologically and physically. I know this is the most challenging to do, but trust me, it's worth it. Maybe it is more challenging when our family, friends or even life-partner makes us drains, but there always a solution for every problem. Energy vampires, energy suckers or just unhappy, negative people are categorised into these types of situations or people. Curious about what energy vampires? I'll share more in my other articles. Yeah, I'm looking forward it too.

4. ASSERTIVE. A kind of communication skills that I still need and struggle to improve. Sometimes I manage to do it, sometimes I failed. But I will keep trying till I make it, consistently. I know the meaning of assertive words, but I never practised it in my daily life. I thought being a people-pleaser is the best kind of person. Only after I learn counseling, I understand assertiveness and learning to apply it in my communication. Mayo Clinic Staff (2020) explained that assertiveness helps us express ourselves effectively and stand up for our perspective while still respecting others' rights and beliefs. Being assertive also helping oneself to boost their self-esteem and gain others' respect. When we decisive, we able to manage our life stress well. Assertiveness is an exciting topic, and I will share more about this soon.

Hope you won't boring to read this but yeah, let's do this together and I would hear your sharing about how you keep your mental health balanced especially throughout this challenging moment, Pandemic Covid-19. Stay Safe!

Little Flowers.