I am writing you this week from Rancho La Puerta in Mexico where I have the privilege of teaching health and wellbeing workshops while hiking, sound bathing and farm to table eating. As I reflect on the mental health theme for this month’s HealthBite podcast, I cannot help but marvel at my own journey. Suffice it to say that the old Dr. Adrienne would never have believed that doctoring could look like this and in particular that I could take my own needs and desires into consideration as I paved my personal and professional life. As I contemplate it all, I recognize that none of it could have come to be had I not allowed it, had I not given myself permission. And with that…

Here are my top 10 strategies for cultivating resilience and balance:

1. Permission: Mental and emotional health and wellbeing begins with permission. Giving yourself permission to take the time and space to do what you need to care for yourself. Ask yourself, how many times have you wanted to do something for yourself and yet have talked yourself out of it? Because you didn’t have the time, or you convinced yourself that something else was more important, or that self care was trivial or indulgent?

2. Managing Negative Thoughts: Negative thoughts are part of the human condition. We are thinking beings with always active minds and the evolutionary drive to notice danger and mitigate threats focuses our attention on the negative. But we have agency. We can redirect negative thought patterns to ones that feel supportive, nourishing, grateful, inspiring- in short thoughts that serve us rather than those that consistently bring us down. This practice can help alleviate anxiety and depression while enhancing overall well-being.

3. Managing our Consumption: What we consume impacts our mental and emotional health, be it highly processed foods or excessive news or social media. Be mindful of all that you consume, setting boundaries around those things that do not serve you.

4. Movement: This one is critical for my mental wellbeing. As you know, regular movement stimulates the release of feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, but also makes us better tolerate psychological distress and therefore more resilient to life’s natural struggles and setbacks.

5. Journaling: Make a practice of clearing your head at night by “emptying your mind” onto paper. Jot down thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This practice can help alleviate ruminations that impact sound sleep as well as symptoms of anxiety and depression.

6. Nature: Our relationship to nature is literally hardwired into our DNA as we relied on cues from the wild for our survival. Exposure to natural environments (and even merely watching nature videos!!!) stimulate the parasympathetic, or rest and relax part of our nervous system, promoting a greater sense of emotional wellbeing.

7. Sleep: Sleep is critical to mental health, period! Ideally shoot for 7 hours per night and try to create an internal environment for sleep by limiting substances and screens and by engaging in a soothing practice before bed.

8. Connection: Establishing connection can strengthen a sense of purpose and meaning. Connection can occur with oneself, with nature, and with the people around us. Think of people in your everyday life that you could connect with, the barista who makes your morning coffee, the postman, the janitor at your child’s elementary school. There are so many opportunities to connect right underneath your nose. Seek them out!

9. Managing Expectations: We have been sold a kind of American myth, we should always be happy, healthy, thin, rich… The truth is that we are not always happy, healthy, thin, rich, and even if we are, these states are fleeting, because the one constant in life is change. If we know, understand and expect this truth, we develop a develop a degree of resilience when real life happens to us all.

10. Self-Compassion: To be human is to be fallible, filled with set-backs, imperfections and failures. Cultivate self-compassion by offering yourself kindness instead of judgment when you meet your human limits and by recognizing your common humanity. After all, we are just mere mortals.

I wonder which one of these tips resonate with you the most? Write back and lmk! You can listen to the full episode here and while you are there leave us a review letting us know what you learned this week.

Wishing you a happy and healthy week, mind and body!