A Personal Checklist for Emotional Stability

PHYSICAL

 Eating
Are you eating a nutritionally balanced diet, regularly and unhurriedly? Unlikely. Consider taking a daily multivitamin/mineral/omega 3 fish oil/ B complex and check for possible food intolerances.

 Smoking/Drugs/Drinking
Do you avoid smoking and drugs and drink in moderation?

 Sleep
Are you regularly getting enough sleep? Too little sleep affects thoughts and behaviour. Are you dreaming a lot, waking early and feeling tired? If so, what is unresolved from the day before?

 Exercise
Exercise is important to enable the mind and body to work efficiently. It doesn’t have to be strenuous, just regular. Just 20 minutes of the right sort of exercise can release endorphins - the ‘feel good’ chemicals. 

  Laugh a lot
Laughter is a great destressor and best done in company.

GETTING NEEDS MET

 Aims/ambitions
Projects that stretch you What gives you a sense of purpose in life? Can they be realised? Have short term and long term aims. What is your potential? Keep your mind/body stretched and challenged by work or learning.

 Own time
Do you take ‘time out’ for yourself and do something using your own skills/interests that isn’t work related. Discover unused resources. Find time for relaxing. Are you working to live or living to work?

 Social interaction
People benefit from being involved in something greater than themselves eg: community/charities/school/church. Do you meet and mix with people other than in work situations?

 Beliefs
Having a belief/religion can give people a meaning to life. Use reflection, meditation and prayer. It can reduce anxiety and be relaxing too.

 Social support
Can you talk over things with friends, family or colleagues, away from where any problems may lie?

 Physical contact
Touch is important. Do you have appropriate physical contact with anyone? If not a person, then pets can provide therapeutic contact. Also therapeutic massage treatments eg: aromatherapy, reflexology, back and neck etc.

 Give and receive attention
Recognizing that it is an essential component of all human interaction, but that we should not be greedy – both giving and receiving.

 Have you intimacy in your life?
One person with whom you can be yourself.

MAINTAINING EMOTIONAL HEALTH

 Introspections
Are you challenging negative thoughts and preventing them acting as self-fulfilling prophecies? eg: What is the evidence for that view? Is there an alternative? Are you forgetting your strengths and concentrating on weaknesses? Are you being excessively pessimistic? Or spending too much time in the past?

 Stress can kill.
Do you manage the stress in your life or does it manage you? How do you react when emotionally aroused? Do you know how to relax? Can you see the bigger picture or are you only looking through the letter box eg: narrow viewpoint? How much personal control do you have over situations?

 Always feel prepared for change
Mentally healthy people know that we live a transient life. They regard change as a constant and not as a threat.

 Self observation
Are you aware when your emotional life is becoming unbalanced? Are you honest with yourself? Can you see the bigger picture?

 Family and colleagues

Do you bring the best out of other people in your family and/or workplace? Make the most of people’s strengths not weaknesses. If there is something or somebody that can't / won't change, then change your own response.

 Needs and Wants
Can you separate what you actually need from what you want? Are your needs being met? Don't know that they are? Then look above. Can the wants wait?

 Self Regulate
Have you a way to spot when anything is moving off balance and then knowing what to do.

THE PLOUGH