Mental Health Awareness Month
Mental health awareness month was established to help educate the general public to teach them that it is okay to share experiences, vulnerabilities, and shared concerns about mental health issues. Its main purpose is to reduce the stigma which has been attached to mental health and will help countless others.
Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make healthy choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.
One of the ways can obtain and maintain good mental health, is by learning to practice self-care, an often-overlooked aspect of self-care is learning self-celebration.
The Benefits of Self-Celebration
- It increases your confidence
Confidence is created by your thoughts, so if you’re thinking about yourself in a constantly negative way and you’re focused on what you’re not achieving, it will decrease your confidence.
If you’re someone who struggles with confidence, how often are you celebrating yourself? Chances are, not very much, if at all.
- You inspire others
When you’re proud of yourself and you share it, you’re honoring yourself and inspiring other people by showing them what is possible.
You’re also giving off positive energy. When you’re in a place of celebration, your attitude is very different than when you’re beating yourself up.
- It helps you to overcome doubt
You can use celebrating yourself to overcome doubt when you want to try something new.
When you create a goal for yourself and all that doubt comes up from the start, you can simply sit down and write out your achievements to show yourself what you’ve done and what you’re capable of.
- It helps you to focus on the journey
One of the reasons why people give up on their dreams way too soon is that they’re so focused on the outcome that they’re constantly feeling the lack of not being there yet. The only thing they are doing is making themselves miserable along the way.
There’s no upside to making yourself miserable. So, focus on the journey by celebrating yourself along the way.
- You attract more in your life
When you’re celebrating yourself, you attract more into your life, you reap what you sow.
As a man or woman thinks in their heart that is what they are. So, if your attention is going towards denying yourself of feeling proud of yourself, then that’s where all your energy is going, too.
And wherever your thinking is going, that’s what is creating your life. So, by celebrating, it’s like stopping the momentum of your energy moving in a negative direction and starting it flowing towards what you want to experience more of.
When you celebrate yourself, you’re telling the universe that you’re ready for more – and you start attracting more things to celebrate.
5 Ways to Celebrate Yourself More
- Write down your achievements
Firstly, write down all your achievements.
If you start saying to yourself: ‘well, I haven’t really achieved that much,’ then that’s not true. If you’ve made it to this point in your life, you’ve had accomplishments. Force yourself to come up with at least 10, to begin with.
- Think about how you like to celebrate others
How do you like to celebrate with others? This can give you an insight to how you might like to celebrate yourself.
Do you like to take them to dinner? Do you buy them a gift or flowers? Do you tell them how amazing they are?
You may want to ask yourself the opposite of that: how do you enjoy others celebrating you?
- Celebrate your qualities
Celebrating yourself isn’t always just about accomplishments – it can be about celebrating your good qualities.
These are just some of the ways that you could celebrate yourself for all the small things you do and for already getting this far in life.
The important thing is that you make it a conscious, deliberate practice to celebrate yourself often and make time for it. Recognize all of your achievements and allow yourself to be a success.
- Write down 5 things you’re proud of doing every night
Writing five things down that you’re proud of doing gives you a chance to reflect on how well you’ve done that day, both for yourself and other people It’s a practice that gets you to celebrate yourself.
- Celebrate yourself in the mirror!
Some people like to smile, thumbs up, or high-five themselves in the mirror. There’s some scientific evidence that shows this is a great way of celebrating yourself to increase your confidence and happiness.
© Wanda Currie
Vision of Recovery believes in and practices a non-denominational Christian perspective on Addiction Recovery/Mental Health Care. Vision of Recovery integrates biblically based information with coaching and counseling interventions to treat the whole person: Spiritually, Emotionally and Physically.