Mental well-being is an essential component of the World Health Organization’s definition of health. Good mental health allows individuals to achieve their potential, overcome normal life stresses, accomplish productive work and contribute to the life of their community.
Excluding major disasters that affect entire populations, closer to home, stress, anxiety, depression and generalized fatigue can quickly overcome our management of risk factors and our quality of life. Daily life is stressful, but we can also create our own stress or exacerbate existing stress.
An approach that helps give people a better understanding of themselves, takes into account what individuals are dealing with, and works on their behaviour, should help them identify their disorganization or “putting off until tomorrow” mechanisms, which very often support stress. In addition to these types of behaviour, other internal stress agents can affect the decisions that an individual makes to manage his health, such as unrealistic expectations, unnecessary perfectionism, a desire to look good in too short a time frame and anger management when these are not successful.
Whatever the case, making decisions about our health and changing our attitudes is a difficult job. However, it brings tremendous satisfaction, a health makeover and a renewal of the vitality lost because of stress and anxiety.