If you’ve moved over to remote work, you know it’s not always easy. While working from home might seem like a luxury, it can come with feelings of loneliness, stress, and anxiety as you are cut off from your regular points of contact. This piece goes over some ways that you can start working to improve your mental fitness, even at home.
Even people who are well aware of the importance of employee mental well-being can have a blind spot when it comes to their own mental fitness. Our brains are tricky things, and we can sometimes have difficulty being entirely objective about how we are feeling. In a lot of North American corporate cultures, there is also the pressure to be seen as “resilient” and “reliable”, able to take on anything that work can throw at you.
However, without taking proper care of your mental fitness, it’s inevitable that the quality and pace of your work will suffer. This can cause greater stress, leading to a spiral of burnout. By taking care of your mental fitness, you won’t only be improving your life outside of work, but significantly improving your capabilities at work as well.
It’s one thing to understand the importance of mental fitness. It’s quite another to actually commit yourself to improving your own mental fitness. However, you don’t need to be an expert in employee mental health at your company in order to establish some habits that can help improve your mental health.
Firstly, you should try, even if remote working, to get enough exercise and to try to stick to healthy eating. Physical fitness is tied to mental fitness, after all. However, remote workers may find that their new working situation makes working out harder than it was. It could be that a gym that was close to work is no longer sensible to visit. Pandemic lockdowns or weather may make it difficult to go outside.
It’s not impossible to get some exercise at home, however. If you set aside enough space for a yoga mat and can look up exercise videos online, you are in a good position to start an at-home workout routine. However, there’s no need for you to do this all on your own. It’s a good idea to ask your company if they can set up some virtual company events to promote physical fitness, letting you host a virtual workout session.
Virtual team-building activities are also a great way to keep your mind occupied with puzzles and mental challenges. Playing games, pub trivia nights, or other virtual activities, whether with your company or on your own, are all good ways to keep your mind occupied and prevent the dreaded “cabin fever”.
These kinds of virtual team-building activities aren’t just a good way to stay physically and mentally in shape. They’re also a great way to beat the isolation that can come with remote work. Even if you consider yourself an introvert, isolating yourself can have an insidiously negative effect on mental health. You need to treat your contact with other people not just as a way to socialize, but as a vital part of your mental fitness routine. Scheduling regular times to talk with friends or colleagues is incredibly impactful.
If you want to improve your own mental fitness or want to improve employee mental well-being at your company, Liberate is here to help. We don’t just offer services for companies – we provide mental fitness resources to individuals as well. Check it out today!
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