Blogging As a Life Hack for Mental Health
Life hacks are a great way to take a concept that may be new to you and apply it to your own circumstances to give you a greater sense of personal satisfaction. There are life hacks for organization, career building, relationships and even health. I often think of blogging as a life hack for mental health as one worth exploring.
There are also many life hacks that assist you with improving your state of mind. Mental health life hacks alleviate stress, encourage and motivate you to be and do your best. Blogging is one tool that can have a life changing effect on you.
Enrich Your Life By Blogging for an Audience
Helping others can take the focus off of you as you navigate life’s ups and downs, twists and turns and showcase how you handle circumstances that present obstacles to you. Putting your struggles out there to the interested public can benefit you in several ways.
Having a blog means you have to maintain consistency for your audience. Whether you publish daily, several times a week or once a week, your audience will expect to hear from you.
If you’re blogging about your personal journey and growth, it forces you to be observant about life and reflect on your actions and behaviors on a regular basis. This is good for you because most people merely bury this information and glide through life without being able to make substantial, meaningful change.
Your audience won’t just be there to learn from you, either. A blog often creates a sense of community, and with you on center stage, it means you’ll have a bevy of friends at your disposal to help you make sense of anything confusing.
They’ll also be there to confront you about your mistakes, such as a lack of consistency or willingness to be honest about what you’re going through. They help you shine a light on your issues and make you take personal responsibility for them.
Having a blog for your own mental health means you get to explore the depths of your mind – and see how your point of view is impacted by your past, present and future experiences.
If your audience grows to a global size, where you have people reading from many different countries, you’ll gain the benefit of seeing how people in other cultures respond to situations and you can glean some knowledge you may not have considered.
Blogging as a life hack for mental health is a way to form an instant support group, which benefits both you and the participants reading and commenting on your posts. You can share your tips and recommendations as you improve your own state of mind.
Share Your Struggles and How You Overcame Them
What should you share on a blog devoted to improving your mental health? Make sure you know you can balance out the bad with the good. You don’t want it to just be a blog where you vent, but one where you show yourself and others that it’s possible to move past obstacles and live a better life.
Many people like to share their fears and anxiety on a blog and get comfort from the readers and from the process of analyzing your worries so that you can eliminate your concerns with rational, clear thinking.
Things that made you angry will be a topic that fits nicely on a blog. It could be a stranger or a loved one or even a world issue that causes alarm and brings up feelings of anger, and you can work through it as you blog.
Anything that creates sadness can be brought out of your head and onto the blog space so that you’re not having to carry I around with you, feeling burdened by it 24/7. Grief recovery through blogging is beneficial regardless of how big or how small the situation is.
Hopelessness is often overcome when you begin blogging and realize that nothing is hopeless in this world. There’s always a way to turn things around and change things with some strategic thinking and effort.
Situations where others negatively impacted your life might be a good topic of conversation for your personal growth blog. It might be something harrowing like an abusive parent or something as simple as an irritating coworker that brings the topic alive.
You can discuss poor decisions you made and how it shaped your life in some way. You don’t want to live with regrets, but you can objectively analyze what you did and make a commitment to change.
Loneliness can be remedied through the use of a blog. This is a good topic to discuss because it brings others out of the shadows of your blog community to support you and find camaraderie themselves.
If you ever feel overwhelmed, this is a good discussion to have on your blog to show how you go through the process of looking at the situation, organizing your thoughts, formulating a plan of attack and then carrying out your objectives until you attain a sense of peace again.
There’s no shame in sharing your struggles with others. In fact, it’s a very brave thing to do. It’s something that can help you release the weight of certain situations or emotions and live a healthier, lighter life.
Public Blogging Gives You a New Perspective on Life
When you’re blogging with a public audience, it helps you give it your all. Sometimes, if you have a private journal or diary at home, you might be negligent in terms of consistency and the depth at which you give your topics attention.
You’ll want to put your best foot forward with a public blog, and if you’re using one to better your mental and spiritual health, it can serve you well to think of all the ways you can use it to enhance your perspective on life and create lasting change from within.
There are some people who use their blog solely for goal setting and management purposes. Those goals can certainly be related to your mental health, but you may want to go further with how you manage your blog.
You can use it to stay on track with your journey and inspire and lead others through theirs. It works almost like a digital vision board. You can place text, images, and even audio and video on your blog about how you want your life to unfold.
One thing that’s great about keeping a running blog is that you get to see how your perspective on life changes over the course of the coming months and years. As you encounter new people and experiences, your outlook on life will evolve and morph into something new based on what you’ve gone through.
If you suffer from emotional trauma, then the process of blogging can help you lay everything out in a rational manner so that you can see it wasn’t your fault and you can gain new insight about what transpired.
There are many writing prompts you can use to dig down and see what your take on life is – things you may not have tapped into on a day to day basis. For example, a simple exercise like answering the question, “If your house caught on fire, what one item would you grab to save?” can reveal a lot about you.
Maybe you instinctively say you’d save your wedding album, in the midst of a period of time when you’ve been having marital issues, and this one exercise shows you that deep down, you care more about saving your relationship than you thought you did.
When you’re going through (or have gone through) tough time, it can force a change of perspective on you. It can be a form of survival and self preservation, so be able to look at things from all sides and consider every option about how you want to live from that point on.
You may realize, after blogging about something that happened previously, that it changed you for the better – that you wouldn’t be the same person had you not experienced some hard situation. And you gain some appreciation for your ability to endure something.
Altruistic Blogging Benefits Your Emotional Well Being
Altruism is defined as being unselfish in life. As a blogger, you have a platform and a mission to give to others as much as you give to yourself. That means you share insight, tips, truth and more in an effort to uncover obstacles they may encounter and help them succeed in overcoming them.
When you’re blogging as a life hack for your own mental health, you may have no idea just how much your words, thoughts and actions will impact another person’s life. But it should become a focus for you because it makes you strive for greatness in your own world.
It’s a feel good process when you help others, and by blogging, you may be healing others just by showing them what you went through and what strategy and tools you used to get through tough times.
With a personal blog, you’re a storyteller who is opening minds to new ideas and possibilities. You’re helping to make them aware of what’s going on in their own life as you break down and analyze the things going on in your own.
Sometimes, when you feel alone and hopeless and you blog about it, what you’re really doing is letting others know they’re not alone – that there are like-minded individuals out there who will advocate for their needs and support them in their truth.
There are so many people out there who are too shy or broken to speak up and have a voice in the world. By blogging about your own struggles, you’re leading the way for many of them from a dark place to the light.
Your powerful words and insight may lead to formidable change in the world. Increased acceptance. Inspiration for more action on a cause that you hold near and dear to you. There’s a saying that a rising tide lifts all boats.
While it was originally said about the economy, it’s true with blogging, too. Your effort to bring awareness to topics you’re going through will lift others up as they watch your journey unfold and see you working hard to succeed.
You’ll notice when you do this that you’ll not only develop a public following and community within your blog, but individuals will finally feel like they have someone they can trust to reach out personally through your contact form or email.
Charitable endeavors always improve one’s mental health. And blogging about important life issues is a charitable act when it helps so many readers who are out there in the world flailing about with no resources or insight as to what to do to save themselves.
You get to choose what you’re passionate about. Whether you open up about domestic abuse you suffered or a health challenge or a lack of confidence – when you share your journey truthfully, you’ll be having a strong impact on others that you may not ever know about.
Therapeutic Blog Journals Help You Navigate Life’s Rough Patches
There are many people going through a tough time – maybe many years of a nightmare existence. And for some, they can’t afford to go to a counselor. So instead, they adopt the habit of journaling.
Journaling today has taken the form of digital blogging, and by using this tool, you can navigate the worst life has to offer. This is especially beneficial if you suffer form anxiety and find yourself in the throes of a panic attack or excessive worry at a time when a counselor’s office wouldn’t be open and available to you anyway.
So instead, you log on and use blogging as a life hack and your personal mental medicine. But there’s a right and a wrong way to use a blog for therapy. Most people do it the wrong way. They merely dump all of their problems out onto the page and then shut it down.
In order for you to benefit from the blog or journal process, you have to dig deeper – just as a counselor would. That means analyzing your thoughts, deciding what’s rational and what’s not, and finding a solution for the next time this happens.
Blogging can be a coping mechanism if you take the time to organize your thoughts and then work with them. It’s normal to want to dump them and run so that you can escape the feelings and emotions that come with them.
But if you do that, they’ll only return to haunt you later. Instead, keep this record so you can look back on it. Take time to reflect on your habits, behaviors, and thought processes.
You might see a pattern of overreacting to minor things, if you look over a week’s worth of blog posts, for example. Ad then what you need to do is blog about the pattern you’ve spotted.
If you overreact and things never are as bad as you made them out to be, then it can help you the next time you encounter a situation where your kneejerk reaction is to make a big deal of it.
The pattern you spotted on your blog entries will enable you to quickly calm down, reassess the situation and act rationally until you have proof in hand about how things will pan out.
A blog is a wonderful tool for men and women of all ages to engage in. With the option of public or private post and the ability to house years’ worth of data about yourself to improve your mental health and life in general, you’ll be amazed at the progress you make if you give it your all and remain consistent with blogging as a life hack.
I’m bestselling Wall Street Journal and USA Today author, independent publisher, and serial entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and I would love to connect further with you. If you have an interest in hosting video live streams, even if you’re an introvert, to help you skyrocket your way to success, please check out my comprehensive training for beginners at Video Live Streaming for Introverts so you may get started right away.
Brian Goodman says
Thanks for the information. Keep up the good work.