5 Mental Health Habits That Improve Your Life Without You Really Trying

When we talk about positive mental health habits, a few spring to mind. Yoga, exercise, cutting down on screen time, going to therapy—all are great ways to influence your mindset. But they take time people don’t always have, money people can’t always spend, and in our deeply tech-dependent world, ask us to step away from the very tools we rely on to work, stay connected, and function day to day. It’s not that people don’t want to feel better, but sometimes the advice doesn’t fit how we actually live.

But even small, seemingly effortless tasks can serve as the building blocks we need to start improving our mental health. You don’t have to wake up one day and change your whole lifestyle, there’s actually plenty you can do in under 60 seconds.

1. Get sunlight before you check your phone
“Guilty as sin” doesn’t begin to describe my personal culpability with this. I wake up every day in a dark room and scroll my phone for the most recent news. If you’re familiar with global happenings, it’s actually a terrible idea. When your alarm goes off in the morning, get up, go outside, and walk around for 1 minute. If you can’t walk around, stand. If you can’t go outside, open a window and breathe. Exposure to early morning sunlight affects our circadian rhythm and is positively correlated with improved mood and mental health. The more time we spend outside, the better our mental health tends to be. So even if you can’t commit to a 20-minute walk every morning, try committing to at least 1-minute of breathing fresh air before you check your phone.

2. Drink water before caffeine
It’s not revolutionary stuff. One of the personal delights of my mornings involves walking to a coffee shop. That sounds healthy, but remember I woke up, read the worst news imaginable, and directly went to drink coffee about it. For 16 straight months. Aside from putting my phone down, increasing my water intake would also go a long way in improving my physical as well as my mental health—and I know I’m not alone in that.

Our bodies dehydrate overnight, so starting the day with a glass of water helps replenish what we lost during sleep. If all you can manage in a morning is a glass of water before mainlining caffeine, then I am still proud of you for trying something different. But, if you can also put something on your stomach before coffee, this will help even more. Drinking coffee on an empty stomach triggers stress hormones in our body which—incidentally—spikes our blood sugar levels. “Elevated blood sugar can trigger inflammation and set us up to be on a blood sugar roller coaster for the rest of the day, thereby tanking our energy supply,” says Gabi, a nutritionist at The Fast 800.

3. Leave the house once a day (even if you don’t want to)
A short walk is the most recommended method of “leaving the house”, but it’s not the only one. Take your dog to get a pup-cup. Go to the store and grab something for dinner. Drive to one of those fancy carwashes and clean your car. Spending time with pets or friends, running quick errands, and sitting outside all break the trap of being stuck in your own head—which is usually where spirals start.

4. Respond instead of react
We are part of what is colloquially called urgency culture. In a world that constantly demands reaction—to emails, texts, Chipotle orders—we are having a harder time saying “no” and taking a beat to think. But we need to take a beat. If we’re always in motion, our mind doesn’t get a chance to settle and our body stays in a low-level stress response, constantly looking for something to react to. Over time, that stress builds in our bodies and shows up as anxiety, tension, and overwhelm. If you’re in the middle of doing something and you get a text or email asking a question, don’t feel like you need to pivot right away. Doing your task until it reaches a natural resting point also helps to ensure that you aren’t acting on emotion when you respond to something, and can give it your full attention.

5. Do one small thing you said you’d do
Wipe down your kitchen counters. Take the trash out. Shower. It doesn’t have to be a full to-do list, it doesn’t have to be something grand either. Just do one thing. It helps build trust with yourself, which is a pillar of mental health that people often ignore. When you honor the commitments you’ve made to yourself, you build an inner integrity that tells you that even if you don’t always make the right decision, you can handle whatever comes next. Self-trust keeps us from feeling at the mercy of our own life. It gives us a sense of steadiness, so we can move through the world with more clarity and control.

You don’t need to do all five of these things perfectly—you don’t even need to do all five of these things. But pick one and try it. You won’t become a different person overnight, but maybe you have a little more energy. A little more control. A little more personal pride. Over time, the small choices we make can either positively or negatively add up and shift how we feel about ourselves and our world. If we are intentional in our efforts to make positive choices, we will see the fruits of that very minimal labor very, very quickly. And that’s how lasting change happens.