How to Take An Effective Mental Health Day

We all need some time off.

Taking a day off to refresh and recharge ourselves is a necessity. Whether you take a day off of work during the week or use the weekend for some “me time'“ will be up to you. But whichever approach you take, you want it to be effective and meaningful and feel like it was worth it.

I know there have been several times when I’ve been getting up for the day and getting ready for work and wished that I could just sleep in for once, or that I could have a day to just do nothing. Over the years those opportunities have presented themselves and I have done those things - slept in for another hour or two, or just sat around and watched TV or read a book or did something that I normally couldn’t do due to working all day. The thing that I eventually realized is that these things don’t really seem to recharge me and often times I feel like I wasted the day. I actually have felt guilty for doing nothing when that was exactly what I was wanting to do!

I have come to the conclusion that it isn’t that I want a day to do nothing, it’s that I want a day to do what I want to do, and not what my employer wants/needs me to do. I’ve found that doing nothing isn’t motivating or productive (obviously), but that having time to do what I want to do IS motivating.

So for an effective mental health day, I challenge you to plan out your next mental health day. Fill it with activities that you want to do, spend time on your favorite hobby, do some yard work, work on projects at home that need to be done, work on yourself by going to the gym or engaging in some other type of exercise. Having an effective mental health day is really about disengaging from the normal day work stresses and doing all of the things you wish you could be doing if you weren’t at work all day long.

I caution you against filling up your mental health day with activities like you would your work day, so that you’re not just completing these activities to get them done, but to be in the moment and enjoy doing these activities. Whether you complete just one house project or complete all of the projects, at the end of the day the key is that you should be happy you used that time to be productive with the things you wanted to do.