There's two ways to think about mental health. And
I think a lot of people don't realize that they're stuck in the first one. Most people believe that
you either have depression or you don't, that if you get diagnosed with depression or anxiety it's
like a permanent trait that you have and that all you can do is learn to cope with it. Now, I
don't think about depression or anxiety that way. I think of it on a scale. When your symptoms are
severe they interfere with your life in a big way, and when your symptoms are mild or when your
symptoms go away it doesn't interfere with your life anymore. Depression and anxiety disorders can
actually be resolved when we chip away at them. And thinking about them this way gives us agency.
It gives us power to change our own lives. Now, research shows that we can absolutely influence
our mental health in huge ways. So for example, daily aerobic exercise can decrease depression
and anxiety symptoms for over 75% of people. Eating a healthier diet can decrease your risk of
depression by up to 35%. Changing how you think, like going to therapy, helps 60 to 80% of people.
One study showed that for people with depression, when they treated their insomnia, 87% of them
saw their depression symptoms completely resolve. Using a therapy light or practicing meditation
can be more effective than medication at treating depression and anxiety. But the problem
is that all of these changes are hard, and they can feel super overwhelming
when you're drowning in anxiety or overwhelmed by depression. And then
often when we get really motivated to improve our lives, we try some huge change. We make some plan to run a marathon, or we sign
up for 5 a.m. CrossFit sessions at the gym, or we start some new diet. And while you can
willpower yourself to make these changes for a little while, willpower usually just doesn't
work as a long-term strategy. Then the bigger changes you want to make, the more exhausting
and overwhelming they are, which disincentivizes you from continuing them. It gets harder
and harder to do them instead of easier. So while you can willpower your way to doing them
for a while, the most likely outcome is that you get exhausted and you quit and then you're more
discouraged than when you start. So making these huge changes rarely works. Sometimes it does,
but it just can't be your only strategy. Now, I love to give people tons of options to improve
their mental health, but I know that this can be overwhelming. So in this video let's talk about
tiny yet powerful strategies that actually reward you for doing them. They make your life easier
instead of harder, and then you get feeling better and you get more energy and they become
easier to do because they're habitual. And then with that extra energy you can add another on.
And instead of feeling more and more tired, you actually feel more and more energetic and
resilient. Okay. So in this video you'll learn about tiny changes that take a few minutes a
day to build atomic habits for mental health. [Music] Okay. Small changes are better than big changes.
James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits - which is a great book, by the way - he tells the story
of the British cycling team. They were one of the worst teams. Despite having lots of resources,
they lost miserably. But then they got a new coach. And he didn't change the team by telling
them to just try harder or work harder or exercise longer. He just looked for tiny, incremental
changes that they could improve one percent at a time. So they changed tiny little things like
painting the inside of their vans so that they could keep their bikes cleaner, and they improved
their uniforms so that they were more comfortable, and they tracked sleep so that they could sleep
better. And they went from being one of the most underperforming teams to winning the most gold
medals at the 2008 Olympics and then repeatedly winning the Tour de France. Now, in Atomic Habits,
James Clear teaches how a one percent change every day makes you 37 times better by the end of the
year. But most people fail to change because they try to make some gigantic Improvement, which
lasts for a little while, but then they run out of motivation because the change takes so much
energy. So when you want to improve your mental health, I do not want you to make some huge,
monumental change all at once. I emphatically tell my clients to not do that. You'll be
much more likely to create real, sustainable change by choosing teeny tiny habits that make
your life easier over time instead of harder. So when you let these changes add up over time,
they snowball. So for example, let's say you start to take vitamins in January and it helps you
have just like one percent more energy each day. And then in February you can use that energy to
add in one small change. Like maybe you set a healthy boundary at work, like not answering
your emails after 5 p.m. And then that helps you feel less overwhelmed, so that gives you one
percent more energy. And then in March you add in a 10-minute walk to your day, and getting in some
exercise improves your sleep, which makes you a little bit less tired each day, which gives you
one percent more change in April. Each of these tiny changes helps you have more energy, be
a tiny bit healthier, and actually makes your life easier instead of harder. And these positive
changes snowball over time and can really help you get out of the rut of depression. So at this
point in May you've got five percent change, which is 72 minutes more energy than you had in
January. And with those 72 extra minutes of energy you might be able to make a few more tiny changes.
Tiny changes are way more effective than that diet that you dropped by the beginning of February,
which just made you feel worse about yourself instead of better. Okay. Now, I have an entire
course about how to use tiny changes to improve your mental health. It's called Change Your Brain:
10 Essential Mind-Body Skills for Mental Health. And I go into a lot more detail in that course on
how to create changes that are super impactful but also long-lasting. That that course is way more
in-depth. But in this video I'll give you about 30 ideas that you could use for your first
one percent change. But as I make this list it's really important that we talk about three
principles. So first, pick the low-hanging fruit. Start with one change that takes the least amount
of effort or is the most enjoyable for you. So if you love to exercise, add that to your routine
first. If you hate to exercise, maybe start with light therapy, right, because it's easier for
you. Or if you love people, schedule in some friend time. If being with people is exhausting
for you, maybe start with a change to your diet. The principle here is start with the simplest,
easiest changes first because these can give you more energy and motivation to make other changes
in the future. And only make one change at a time, and work on that change until it becomes easier
and easier to do. So I like a month as the initial time period. Okay. Number two: create a system to
make this new action easier over time instead of harder. So for example, taking your medication
every day can help improve mental health, and a system to make this easier is something
like buying a pill box so that you know when you've taken it already or putting that pillbox
on your breakfast table so that you remember to take it with breakfast every day. A system makes
it so that you don't have to remember it and think about it each day. Okay. And then third, I say use
a habit tracker and set a 30-day goal for a tiny change you want to make. And just give yourself
a check mark for every day that you do this tiny change. Now, Jerry Seinfeld had a habit of writing
one joke every day. But the way he tracked it was by putting up a big calendar and putting a big red
check mark for the days he wrote the joke. Now, use his method. That's awesome. Again, I learned
about it from Atomic Habits. It's a great book too. Read that book. You could also download my
free Habit Builder. Or I like the app, the free app Habit to track your progress. Okay. So that
being said, you know the principles behind this, I'm just going to throw out a bunch of ideas of
tiny changes that can improve your mental health. So light therapy. Really effective. A lot of
research shows it's as effective as antidepressant medication. So you could buy a light box and do 10
minutes a day of light therapy while you do your morning routine. Or if you can't do that, you
could just open your curtains in the morning or sit outside in the sunlight every day for 10
minutes. Another one: consider supplementing with a multivitamin or a multi-mineral. So this
supplement is a well-researched option. It's not a sponsor. But there's a lot of research behind
it that shows it helps some people. Right? You could try to add a fermented food to your diet
or consider a probiotic supplement. You can do any kind of movement outside. Add one vegetable
to your meal. So for example, buy pre-packaged vegetables and put them at your desk every day.
Daily gratitude practice. You could make a system of this by asking a friend to do it with you or
you could use a journal or you could use an app. Express appreciation. Tell your significant other
or your child something you appreciate about them every day. It will change how you feel about them,
and it might even invite them to improve too. Or you could express appreciation to your boss or a
cashier or a wait staff every day. Another small change that can make a difference is to watch
less news and use that time instead of watching news to do some good in the world instead. You
could also just switch your accounts to follow uplifting accounts like Good News or Upworthy.
Like, so make your social media a positive place, and just unfollow any accounts that bring a lot of
negativity to your life. And, you know, so setting up your your Instagram to follow more uplifting
people probably only takes a few minutes every day. Okay. Another thing that can make huge change
from a tiny change is improving your sleep. Now, this might feel impossible, but there are a
lot of tiny things you can do that really add up. You could try to wake up at the same time
every morning for one week. You could decrease your caffeine usage. You could use your bed only
for sleeping. Or you could set an automatic Do Not Disturb mode on your phone for nighttime.
Little things like that can add up over time. Practicing mindfulness: really beneficial for
mental health but feels overwhelming sometimes. Um just try practicing slowing down your breathing
when you're in your car and noticing your breathing in your car. Or when you're driving,
you just drive without listening to anything um and and let your thoughts wander for a
little bit. Or you could practice mindfulness in the bathroom. Right? So instead of staring
at your phone while you're on the toilet, just take a deep breath, slow things down. Right? Um another thing you could do that can improve
mental health is to set limits on your screen time, or you could, you know, choose to keep a
book next to your bed instead of your phone at night. You could try the brain-dump activity.
You could do a one-minute meditation each day. Just Google it. There are hundreds of one-minute
meditations. Uh during your breaks from work you could try going for a walk or stretching instead
of looking at your phone. Uh you could set a daily goal for how many steps you'll get to encourage
you to walk a little bit more each day. Uh you could practice a self-regulation technique once
per day. So this is things like deep breathing, uh the yawn, or tapping. And again, these only
take a minute or two every day. Okay. Um nature decreases cortisol. Nature decreases the stress
response. So for those of us who live in big cities or can't get out in nature very often, you
can do really tiny changes like getting a plant for your home. You could put nature photos on your
computer or in your house or on your screen saver or on your TV in the background. Or you could
just follow nature photographers on social media. Okay. Connection and relationships are one of the
biggest indicators of happiness and healthiness. So you could just try to deepen the relationships
you already have. These small little actions really do add up over time. So you could send a
text message. You could plan a lunch date. You could call someone up to ask how they're doing.
You could make a reminder to call someone you care about. Um so those are a few ways that you
could just improve your connections. Okay. Um there's a few other things you can do. And I call
this, like, setting tiny rules for yourself. And if you set these rules and you work on them, just
tiny increments for a month, your mental health will improve. So one of them is, like, setting a
rule like I'm not allowed to call myself names. Um I'm not allowed to use words like "always" or
"never." So you replace black-and-white thinking with grey thinking. Um you catch yourself
when you're using catastrophizing language, and you replace it with a courageous statement or,
like, use a growth mindset. So instead of saying, oh, you know, you replace the word "failure" with
"not yet," as in, "Oh, I haven't figured out how to do math yet" or "I haven't figured out how to
be a good listener yet." Right? So I hope, like, these are a ton of little examples, and again,
don't do all of them. Only pick just one that you want to work on. But I I hope that this list gives
you a ton of ideas that you could use to improve your mental health. And again, don't try to do
all of these; just pick the low-hanging fruit and start to implement one until it seems easy to
do, and then pick the next one to work on. I hope you found this video helpful. Let's get better at
feeling. Thank you for watching, and take care. [Music]
