You might be looking forward to having an extra day off work with the bank holidays coming up. But if you’re looking for bank holiday ideas, why not try our simple tips to make the most of your day and look after your mind…
The 3 ‘Rs’ We recommend for a health bank holiday. All three tips have been proven to help reduce stress levels, and to support your emotional wellbeing.
1) Reconnect
Use the day to reach out to people that you haven’t spoken to for some time. Most of us have one or two people in our lives that we have struggled to find the time to keep in touch with. Now is your opportunity!
Research has shown that common symptoms of a range of mental health problems are withdrawing from social encounters. Well, the reverse has also been shown to be true too. By increasing the number of positive, nurturing and supportive relationships you have in your life you can actually reduce your vulnerability to many emotional problems.
2) Re-energise
One bank holiday idea is to ‘kick back’ and do as little as possible. Sometimes the consequences of this aren’t quite what many people hope for. Research suggests that often when we do less as a way of ‘charging our batteries’ we actually end up feeling more worn out and having less energy. Have you ever got back from a relaxing holiday and found yourself saying ‘I need another holiday to recover?!’
An alternative is to use the time to re-energise yourself with pleasurable and centring activities. Ideas here could be: buying a yoga book and learning some basic moves, having a change of scenery by visiting somewhere new or to trying a new skill or activity.
3) Recover
Last, but not least, see if you can use part of your day off to catch up on all of the odds and ends that you don’t get chance to do normally. Take care though not to spend all of your extra time doing chores though, balance is the key here.
The extra spare time can be a great opportunity to organise your life into a new system. For example David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done‘ strategy is a way of prioritising tasks in your life and staying organised. Why not explore this, or other strategies to see if you can start something this bank holiday with benefits that last into the future? Remember, prevention is better than cure – so having some recovery time to find new ways to organise your life can be a really useful way to spend even small amounts of time.
If you’re interested in finding other ways to look after your mind, check out our other articles today. Or if you have more suggestions for other people to use please share them below…..