Creating a mindset to beat depression and anxiety

By Julia Balto | May 23, 2018

What if you didn’t have to DO anything else to manage your depression and anxiety?

You’ve heard the recommendations. Change your diet. Exercise. Take up meditation. Drink more water. Manage your stress (whatever that even means).

There are SO many habits that you can develop to improve your mood. This is awesome because it means we have SO many options.

Butttt it can also start to feel overwhelming AF.

If you’re already barely balancing work and keeping your apartment sort of clean how are you supposed to find the time or energy to start meditating?

The more you hear about all the habits you could change, the guiltier you start to feel.

You replay all the times you’ve tried to get healthier by working out more or going on a diet and failed over and over again in your head. You know you’ll just fail again.

It becomes way too easy to spiral into total overwhelm and feeling completely incapable of making any kind of change to your lifestyle.

But never fear, there’s a better way.

To answer the question, ‘how can I manage my depression and anxiety without DOING anything else?’ we’ve got to look at where all those useful habits stem from.

If we figure out the source of successful habit changes, the power behind it so to speak, could that mean that we wouldn’t have to make as many habit changes?

Could that mean that there’s one powerful thing that makes a huge difference in your mental health?

Get excited, cause the answer is YES.

That thing? It’s mindset.

Mindset is sometimes called “the story we tell ourselves.” It’s your attitude toward things in your life.

The absolutely beautiful thing about mindset is you have control over it.

And research is showing that it may be far more powerful than we thought.

Here’s a quick story about a fascinating study.

Researchers at Stanford University looked at a bunch of people's health and wellness lifestyle habits, as well as health markers.

What they found was that the people who thought they were a lot less active had a higher risk of death than the general public. And, they also had up to 71% higher risk of death than people who thought they were more active. Even if they actually weren't less active!

Did you get that?

Their actual level of physical activity didn’t matter. What mattered was how active they THOUGHT they were.

How is this even possible that people who simply thought they were less active had higher risks, even if it wasn’t true?

There are a couple of ideas why. One is that maybe if we feel like we're less active, it may make us feel more stressed. And stress isn't good for our mental or physical health.

Second, there may be a bit of a mind-body connection where the body embodies what the mind visualizes.

Researchers don't know why, what we do know is that mindset is POWERFUL. You have the ability to create significant shifts in your mood, health, and LIFE with your mindset.

So, let me give you a couple of strategies to boost your mindset, especially when it comes to managing depression and anxiety.

Strategy 1 - Aim for good enough

Perfectionists are all too familiar with the concept of an all or nothing mentality. If something can’t be done perfectly, what's the point? See if any of these examples sound familiar:

You want to start eating better so you commit to a 10-day juice cleanse or a 21-day fix. The first instance you screw up you throw in the towel and give up just like you always do. So you sit on the couch with a pint of ice cream and a bag of Lays.
You have a project coming up for work or school. You revise it over and over again or procrastinate (because deep down you’re afraid it won’t be good enough) and then spend 3 days in a row working insane hours to finish it. You feel like a complete failure once it’s over and beat yourself up for being so stupid.
You realize that you never feel happy anymore, you have nothing to look forward to anymore, and you’ve always been a person who’s not easily satisfied.

NO ONE eats perfectly, exercises consistently all the time, succeeds with every project or is happy and satisfied all of the time.

Thinking in absolutes, perfectionism, and black and whites brings on shame, guilt, giving up, binging, and generally feeling horrible about ourselves.

None of these contribute to a healthy mindset and they certainly don’t help you to manage your mood.

Getting healthier (mentally and physically) requires making better choices and building better habits. And these are usually best done incrementally - one step at a time.

So, instead of having a black and white approach where everything is good or bad, try aiming for good enough to empower yourself to make better choices, instead of perfect choices.

Strategy 2 - Stop making tradeoffs

When you try to earn a “cheat” weekend by eating clean during the week, you're making a tradeoff.

When you treat yourself to a massage only after working a 60 hour week you’re making a tradeoff.

When you allow yourself to take a mental health day after only after breaking down in front of your coworkers, you’re making a tradeoff.

You're telling yourself that, as long as you're good or suffer enough THEN you can go indulge, have fun, or take care of yourself.

And that's not awesome because the mindset is jumping from one extreme to the other. You’re justifying your behavior instead of naturally choosing what feels good.

You're controlling what you do all week, punishing yourself and pushing yourself to the max. So that you can justify LIVING.

You don’t have to justify self care. You don’t have to justify taking it slow, staying in, eating food that makes you happy (even if it’s not the healthiest), or whatever the hell else your soul is craving.

Live as though you're trying to do well every single day. Like you care about your health and wellness. You're doing your best, and that's good enough.

Mindset is a powerful tool for both mental and physical health - not to mention a more fulfilling, happy, carefree life. Thinking positively and dropping the black/white and good/bad labels, can help you reach your health goals far faster than you ever imagined.

How is your mindset? Which of these tips resonate with you the most? How are you going to implement them in your life? Let me know in the comments below!