Maintaining overall wellbeing and wellness during Covid19 is the biggest challenge. Everyone is under tremendous stress from prolonged home confinement while following the government and health advisories to reduce infection. While people enjoyed homestay for some initially, it gradually turned into a stressful experience because the disruptions of regular living left people highly disappointed and frustrated. Restricting free movement is the biggest setback, and the uncertainty about how life will take shape in the new circumstances is having a toll on our overall wellness and wellbeing. With various restrictions, the new lifestyle is a truncated version of what people enjoyed earlier, and coping with it is not as simple as one might think, observes Eric Dalius.
Since our wellbeing depends more on our mental health, which is now under duress, staying healthy and happy is a tremendous challenge. Staying mentally strong will help you stand by other family members and friends and encourage them to fight the pandemic by overcoming fear about the disease, which does not have any definite treatment. Taking care of your mental health will enable you to fulfill your employers’ expectations in case you are working from home.
To stay healthy during the pandemic by balancing your physical and mental health, you must be mentally strong and practice some healthy habits that help improve immunity, keep you relaxed, and take care of your wellness and wellbeing. It will help you gather inner strength to cope with the unprecedented situation that you are now facing. Stay healthy in the face of adversities if you know the techniques of looking after your wellbeing in the best possible manner, explains Eric J Dalius. Start by taking the best care of your body, which paves the way to protect your mental health.
Take care of your body
Building strong immunity should be your top goal because it is the only way to build a strong defense againstthe coronavirus. For a healthy body, maintain a proper diet with the right amount of nutrition and be careful about the choice of foods to support the metabolism to the fullest and build immunity. When you have a healthy body, it empowers you to fight mental stress while keeping it under control. To continue on a healthy diet, focus on fresh and nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables, and keep your body well hydrated by increasing the intake of fluids. Drink lots of water, fruits, juices, and other stimulating beverages but be careful about consuming too much tea and coffee that contains caffeine. Avoid processed foods and restrict alcohol and tobacco intake as these are as much harmful as caffeine and can disturb sleep patterns.
Maintain physical activities
As you are at home for most of the time, find some time to raise your activity level. Engage in various physical activities that could include some household chores and some hobbies like gardening that you usually could not do before as you had little time. Now that you have time on your side and very little work in hand, there might be a temptation to idle your time away, which can be harmful to your health as you might develop a sedentary lifestyle and even turn into a couch potato. Follow a schedule of daily exercise, preferably in the morning before you start your day. Since it is not possible to do activities that require some equipment and a lot of space, choose simple and easy exercises at home with minimal or no resources.
Eric Dalius suggests that you do some back extensions, squat, plank, and knee to elbow exercises that involve a lot of body movement but does not require any equipment. You can comfortably do these exercises in a small space of 10 feet x 10 feet. When you take good care of your physical health, it automatically improves your mental health and ensures your wellness and wellbeing.
Avoid unhelpful coping strategies
Dealing with too much stress developed during the pandemic might sometimes drive people off their feet as they struggle to find the best means to control stress. Having little idea about what to do during the trying times to seek stress relief, people often turn to some dangerous habits like drinking, smoking, and drugs, which do more harm than good. Although these provide a reprieve, it can have harmful health consequences in the long run, and it will be like jumping from fire to the frying pan.
Tackle information overload
Consuming excessive information is a sure sign of mental sickness because the flurry of conflicting information and news distorts the mind and builds up too much stress that becomes difficult to handle. With numerous channels of information that flows from all directions like the television, newspapers, social media, and other digital outlets, the bombardment of fake news and sensational news can negatively impact your mind and paralyze your rational thinking ability. Rumors and sensational news, most of which are from dubious sources, increase mental anxiety and distress.
Restrict your exposure to information by scheduling some time for accessing limited information and updates only from authentic sources like the government bodies and reliable news agencies that follow the best practices of ethical news presentation.
Stay connected
Most mental stress develops when you stay isolated. Still, the various digital avenues’ availability gives enough opportunity to stay connected with ones you love to interact with and share your experiences. Stay in regular touch with your friends and colleagues and your superiors in the office with whom you can open your mind and vent out much of the stress. Staying in touch with people you can trust will never let you feel alone as you would know what others are going through.
While staying connected with people, you will gather more insights about the best ways of coping with the situation you are now facing and learn about tactics to deal with stress that have worked well for others. It will help to build a positive attitude that protects you from unwanted stress.