How to stay mentally healthyHow to stay mentally healthy
All In The Mind
What small changes can we make in our daily lives to improve our mental health?
28:52•27 Sept 2020
Small Daily Habits That Lift Your Mental Health
Episode Overview
- Mental health is broader than mental illness and includes living to your optimum, coping with challenges and contributing to your community.
- Around 40% of mental well-being is linked to factors people can influence, especially with early skills like thought management and self-regulation.
- Mindfulness practices, including app-based tools like Smiling Mind, can help with anxiety, sleep, focus and building a healthier relationship with emotions.
- Simple actions such as regular movement, making “good enough” decisions, and practising gratitude can shift brain activity towards an upward spiral.
- Seeing a psychologist or therapist, and treating mental health support as normal rather than a weakness, is strongly encouraged by the guests.
“Some research suggests about 40% of our mental well-being experience is made up of the factors that we actually have some control over.”
What are the common struggles and victories in addiction recovery, mental health, and everyday stress? This conversation from All In The Mind focuses on how small, practical habits can make a real difference to how you feel day to day. Psychologist and Smiling Mind CEO Addie Wootten starts by challenging the usual way people talk about mental health.
Drawing on the World Health Organization’s definition, she explains that mental health is about “living to our optimum” and having the capacity to contribute, cope with challenges, and feel connected, not just the absence of illness. She notes that around 40 per cent of our mental well-being is shaped by factors we can actually influence, especially if we make changes early. Netballer Amy Parmenter gives that idea a human face.
She talks frankly about intense performance anxiety, saying she once thought her breathing troubles were a physical problem before a sports psychologist helped her see “you just have anxiety.” With tools like mindfulness, affirmations and the Smiling Mind app, she found ways to stay present, manage stress, sleep better during a hectic Covid-affected season, and be less hard on herself.
Neuroscientist Dr Alex Korb adds a brain-based angle, sharing small, science-backed shifts that can lift mood over time: gentle physical activity instead of punishing “exercise”, making “good enough” decisions to break paralysis-by-analysis, and practising gratitude to change what your brain pays attention to. These ideas sit well with anyone trying to reduce anxiety, low mood or the emotional swings that often show up in alcohol and addiction recovery. The episode keeps circling back to prevention, early support and breaking stigma.
From teaching kids emotional skills in schools to normalising seeing a therapist, the message is simple: mental health is something you can work on, just like physical health. What’s one tiny habit you could start today to feel a bit steadier tomorrow?
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