“Our Life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think!”
Did you know that every year , on the 10th of October, ‘World Mental Health Day’ is celebrated, with an intent to spread awareness about mental health issues. WHY do we need to spread awareness and understand about it????
🖤Every 40seconds, someone loses their life to suicide.
🖤Half of all Mental illness begins at a tender age of 14.
🖤Depression, anxiety and mental stress affects our productivity at work space.
🖤There is something called psychological first aid.
A little about fashion and mental health connection: Fashion and mental health is connected. The pieces of garments which we wear has a definite impact on our mental state in a positive or negative way. Vice versa, our mental state makes us decide, what we want to wear on specific occasions! Clothes have symbolic meaning which affects our psyche and this is called ‘Enclothed Cognition’
What is mindfulness?
I just love the way mindfulness.org has defined ‘mindfulness’ as, a basic human ability, to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we are doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us!
Why should we at all, be mindful?
Practicing mindfulness help us to increase our ability to be optimal with our feelings and exhibition of our emotions. It helps us to decrease stress, over-thinking, anxiety and depression. When we are mindful, we are able to focus and channelize our attention to what needs our attention. Not just that, a conscious mindful self, observes better, and is able to think and feel good about oneself, without any judgement.
How can we practice mindfulness?
It isn’t as easy as it seems to – be aware of yourself, of where you are, why you are doing what you do, how to break the pattern! But let’s just understand that being mindful means to create an invisible space for ourselves, in an agenda-driven life! A life full of to-do’s and schedules and plans and hustles…
Coming back to the question of HOW :
- Break the pattern. Most of the time, overthinking and over-reacting is a habit which we have cultivated, our self. Let’s first STOP doing that, by repeating an affirmative statement (yes, i mean self-talking) that ‘Everything is under control!’ , ‘I can handle this’, Let me calmly look at the situation’
- Control the physical surrounding. Yes, you read that right. Change of place when a ‘situation’ occurs, is a great way to change your perspective. Look at something beautiful. May be outside of the window? At the lush blue sky? Or, may be just choose to start a new conversation with a person who’s not connected to the ‘situation’!
- Notice and control your breathing pattern. And by that I definitely mean, a mindful breath-in-breath-out exercise, right at that moment. Conscious breathing helps the mind to calm down. An outdoor run, a casual walk in the nature, exercising , meditation or yogic stretches, can be taken into consideration for exercising purposeful breathing.
- Mind your body-language. Our body-language speaks much louder than our words and this form of non-verbal communication is, to a great deal, because of our thoughts. Did you ever notice that when you feel confident about something, your walk is steady, tall, fast, firm? When you are doubtful about something, you tend to become more frigidity, fingers are not steady, your lips are unclosed ( may be because you want to talk about your doubts)? OR, when you are lying about something, you refuse to make eye-contacts!? Well that is the effect of mind and body-language! Practice to master your body language because, it helps you Make-Belief! A firm, fast and confident walk into an interview room, actually makes you feel more confident!
- Distract yourself from the old pattern of reaction. Here I want to mention a little about my experience which I gauged and understood about the connection between my anxiety and fashion. I noticed that when ever I felt upset, anxious or depressed about a situation, I would straight away head to a shopping mall or even an online fashion-retail site to buy some new outfits. Well, now I don’t, but I am surely in a position to share with you that, it’s not the new garments which made me feel better, BUT the sense of control and feeling of newness helped. I realized that we do tend to over-rate retail-therapy! I now buy books, when I am upset 😉 At least I am no more contribution to polluting and detrimenting my planet with my fast-fashion purchases. AND reading is good for the brain, right?
A little about Mental Health
Mental illness is for real, mostly we miss out on it. SPEAK, EXPRESS, OPINIONATE, VENT OUT, SCREAM, if you need to! But do not keep quiet.
P.S. To read more about World Mental Health Day, go to @who ‘s website : www.who.int
Fashion is dynamic, exciting and creative and clothing is a beautiful expression of our innate instinct. Our fashion choices are reflection of our personality traits and are heavily influenced by our mental status!!
As I have already mentioned that 10th of October of every year is World’s Mental Health Day and considering the fact that conversation about mental illness is still considered a taboo, let’s propogate, open articulation with regards to how we feel. IT”S OKAY, NOT TO BE OKAY! Let’s respect our feelings here and feel grateful for what we have. Because there are so many people in the world, who are yearning for a glimpse of what you think, you don’t want any more!
How do you think about Mindfulness? Comment!
Until then
Obrigada Amigos
🙂
