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5 important skills linked to greater physical and mental health

Many of us are looking for a simple answer or quick fix to improve our physical and mental wellbeing. However, new research shows that a combination of life skills, which can be learned and built upon, may be key for reducing risk of depression and enhancing wellbeing into older age.

A study by Steptoe and Wardle (2017) examined 8000 participants over the age of 52 years old. The findings of the study link 5 important life skills with a variety of benefits, including lower levels of depression, greater social connectedness, greater levels of subjective wellbeing, greater physical health in older adults and greater economic success.

The authors of the study outline that the combination of these five factors and can lead to greater wellbeing:

Concientiousness
Optimism
Emotional Stability
Sense of Personal Control
Determination

No one factor alone can account for the benefits outlined in the study, but instead an accumulation of the aforementioned life skills is important. The authors suggest “fostering and maintaining these skills in adult life may be relevant for health and wellbeing at older ages.”

Individuals with the lowest rates of the five skills had a 23% rate of depression. Those with the highest amounts of the skills, had a rate of just 3% who suffered from depression.

The good news is, is that if you feel you could improve in some of the skills mentioned above, these things can all be developed and built on.

Here are some simple tips I’ve put together to help you to increase these important skills:

Conscientiousness – if you’re not someone who is naturally conscientious, this can be a broad area to try and improve. Focus on a small area at a time – for example, improving your punctuality by planning ahead the night before…or creating a plan or list of tasks that you’re going to complete the next day. Remember when planning, to be realistic about what you can achieve in a day so you don’t run the risk of overcommitting, then feeling you haven’t accomplished your goals.
Optimism – If you tend to see things from a pessimistic viewpoint, you may have a tendency to attribute good things to external successes, and bad things to internal, permanent causes….but this can be changed. Reflect on a recent success or positive event in your life, and write down what you did that contributed to that success. If you’re feeling doubtful or pessimistic about an event in the future, try asking others for their unique perspective, to help you to gain a more balanced view of the situation.
Emotional Stability – Practising mindfulness may be a simple way to improve your emotional stability. Regular practice of mindfulness has been linked to improving mood fluctuations and having better control over mood throughout the day (see study here!!). If you’re interested in practising some simple mindfulness mediations, try downloading a mindfulness app, such as Smiling Mind or Calm.
Sense of Control – If you’re feeling like life is often out of control, try setting yourself a small goal where you can measure and assess your progress. Keeping a log of your baseline behaviours, then recording and monitoring your successes can be a great way of helping you to feel in control and to improve your self regulation. It could be learning a new skill, or making a lifestyle change such as increasing your exercise or changing your diet. Reflect on the hand work and effort that you put in to help make your goal a success.
Determination – Once you’ve set yourself a goal, aim to persevere, and avoid changing goals too soon. Try and persevere and stick to the task you’ve set yourself. If you set yourself a regular time to devote to your goal, you’re more likely to stick with it.

Would you try these tips? Do you excel in any of these skill areas, or are there specific areas you feel you need improvement in?

If you’re finding that any of the skills mentioned above are holding you back, speak with your GP for a referral to a psychologist in your local area, or contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 (Australia only) for 24/7 telephone counselling support.

A simple strategy to improve your self regulation

I for one, know what it’s like to set goals just to realise I haven’t come close to achieving them!! I’ve set about many resolutions to increase my exercise, save money, improve my diet etc, but haven’t got there…why is this? Did I not clearly define what I wanted to achieve? Was I not motivated to actually achieve the goal? Or could it have been that I hadn’t taken the time to look at what I was currently doing, and reflect on this is relation to what I wanted to achieve.

Self regulation lies at the heart of goal setting. Self regulation is about firstly setting a standard for our desired behaviour, then monitoring our current behaviour….if the fit between our desired goal and our current behaviour is right, then we don’t need to act to change what we’re doing….. but if what we want to achieve does not match up with what were currently doing, this discrepancy (also known as Cognitive Dissonance) then motivates us to act!!

So….when preparing to make a change, firstly, set a clear goal for what you want to achieve (for example, I want to reduce my coffee consumption to one cup per day)…and then spend some time collecting some observations about what you are currently doing (currently drinking four cups!). It’s likely that simply comparing what you’re currently doing, to the goal or standard you wish to achieve, will increase your motivation to act towards change, as you have a clear baseline for what you want to address. Taking the time to really notice what we’re doing, also helps us to notice when we’re doing things on “auto-pilot” and to reflect on possible triggers for our behaviours. Is it that in fact I go for another coffee when I’m in need of a break, or is it to relieve boredom?

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Wanting to change your diet? Start with a 1 week food diary where you write down everything you eat each day. Wanting to save money? Keep a log of every purchase you make (no matter how small) for seven days. At the end of your week reflect on your log/diary in relation to where you want to be. Then have a think about the triggers or antecedents that might have led to the behaviour you’ve logged. This simple self monitoring task is very likely to increase your motivation and help you achieve your goals. Continue your log as you set about achieving your goal, and this will give you objective feedback of your progress!!

It may sound basic, but it works!! Have you tried this strategy when making a change?

References:

Watson, D. (1997). The principles of self-regulation. Self directed behaviour: self modification for personal adjustment. Pacific Grove: California, pp 111 – 136.

Best of the Best Wellbeing Apps

Do you use wellbeing apps? Wellbeing apps are huge at the moment and with improvements in technology are getting better by the day. However, it’s often hard to know where to start (and it’s so much easier to scroll through Instagram than to do something mentally taxing)!! I’ve been road testing a few apps lately, and have found that being able to use my smart phone to fit in health and wellbeing activities around my busy schedule has been fantastic. I can practice mindfulness anywhere, get a free workout without going to a gym, and become more mindful of my health behaviours.

No more Snapchat, it’s time to improve your wellbeing!!

Here are a few of my favourite apps:

Mindfulness and Psychological Wellbeing

Smiling Mind (Cost – Free!!). This is my favourite mindfulness app – it has mindfulness meditations designed for adults, as well as for children and teens. You’re guided through simple to follow mindfulness activities that require no previous experience with mindfulness. The great thing about this app is that you can follow structured programs, or you can choose “bite-size” meditations from as short as 2 minutes. Once you get your practice up, you can also choose from longer and less guided meditations. The app keeps track of your practice time, and you even receive reward badges as you build up your practice time!! I also find the voice of the narrator to be quite pleasant!!
Calm (Cost – Free for a selection of meditations, then $14.99 per month on a subscription basis). Calm is another mindfulness meditation app which is great for beginners. With the basic free app, you can complete the “seven days of calm” course, which will take you through a 10 minute daily mindfulness meditation, which includes information about learning mindfulness before each meditation commences. You can also access a loving kindness meditation and a body scan meditation for free. My favourite thing about this app, is the relaxing sounds and visuals which play in the background during the meditations (you can choose from a gently flowing lake, falling rain, waves on a beach and all sorts of other delightful sounds!!). If you decide to subscribe, you can access mindfulness courses to help with anxiety reduction, increasing focus, happiness and other great topics.
Mind the Bump – (Cost – FREE): This is another great app from the creators of the Smiling Mind App, in collaboration with Beyond Blue. It’s specially designed for new mothers, pregnant mothers-to-be and for partners too, to support their emotional wellbeing when becoming parents!! I thoroughly recommend this for mummas and mummas to be. As well as guided meditations, it also includes introductory information about mindfulness and info on the importance of mindfully caring for your baby.
Mood Mint (Cost – $2.99) – Mood Mint is a game designed to reduce stress, anxiety and depression, and uses a technique called Cognitive Bias Modification, which trains the brain to develop a tendency to focus more on positive information in your day to day life, rather than negative information!!

Fitness and Exercise

Freeletics (Cost – Free – with additional in-app purchases) – Freelethics gives you short workouts which can be tailored to your fitness level!! You can choose from a variety of routines, and no equipment is needed!! I just started on the “Aphrodite” which consists of a series of Burpees, Squats and Situps. If you don’t know what the hell a “burpee” is, luckily the app also provides short videos of how to perfect each technique (Phew!!).
FitBit (Free, but you have to buy the Fitbit first 🙁 approx. $80 – $370). I recently started tracking my daily steps, using the FitBit app. Since doing this, I’ve actively been finding ways to increase my walking throughout the day. As well as tracking your steps, the FitBit app can store all sorts of information – you can enter your daily calories, and based on your height, weight and daily exercise, the app will calculate how many calories you should be consuming. You can also track your quality of sleep, how much water you’ve consumed and set goals around exercise and weight. I’ve been using this app every day for about a month now and find it’s helped me to increase my exercise, as well as become more mindful of what I’m eating each day.
Pocket Yoga (Cost – $4.99). Pocket Yoga takes you through easy to follow yoga routines from 5 minutes, up to an hour long!! This is a great way to practice yoga at home (however, I would suggest doing some initial classes first to correctly learn the poses if you’re a beginner).

Close your Facebook/Candy Crush/Snap Chat App immediately!! There are a world of amazing health and wellness apps out there which you can draw on to improve both your mental and physical health!! Do you use any of these? Do you have any favourite health and wellbeing apps I haven’t listed here? I’d love to hear about them!!