How to Prioritise Your Mental Wellbeing Despite Financial Stress

The cost of living crisis is being felt far and wide, and if you’re feeling the effects on your mental health, you’re not alone. Whether you're feeling the pinch yourself, or looking for ways to manage stress and boost mental fitness, having the right support structures in place can go a long way for day-to-day resilience.

In this piece, we’ll dive into how to cope with financial stress by building your mental fitness—which is all about developing resilience, adaptability and strong support networks—to ensure your health stays a priority during these challenging times. 

Signs you might be struggling with your mental health as a result of financial stress

• You’re feeling constantly fatigued 
• Deadlines are becoming harder to keep track of
• Relationships both at work and at home feel strained
• Difficulty concentrating
• Your general mood feels lower 

How can mental fitness help?

The benefits of stress management

As a small business owner, you’re no stranger to stress. That’s why it’s critical you have support structures in place to ensure you don’t become overwhelmed and burnt out. 

Tips to support your stress management, you can:

• Prioritise activities that energise you
  
  When stressed, the small activities we enjoy doing in our free time are often the first things to be sacrificed to make more time for work.
  
  Try to continue to prioritise these activities and allow them to recharge your battery, rather than pushing to continue running on empty.

• Turn to breath work
  
  Breath work is a great way to step out of your head and tap into your body, allowing your nervous system to calm down in moments of high stress. By doing so, you’ll lower your stress levels and be able to tackle hurdles more objectively.

• Make time for movement

We all know exercise is a core component of being a healthy, balanced human. The good news is that there's no clear research that suggests one type of exercise is more beneficial than another. Exercise as a whole leads to a range of benefits, including an enhanced mood, lower stress levels and higher self esteem. 

So, whether you’re a runner, walker or yoga-poser, make sure you take time out to move.

The benefits of building resilience

Your resiliency to life’s unexpected ups and downs will massively dictate your ability to cope with the challenges of being an SME. Building mental resilience boils down to your attitude when faced with stress. 

By keeping an open, curious mindset—a beginner’s mind—you’re more likely to approach challenges with more mental resilience than before. Ways to build your resilience include:

• Treating yourself with kindness

We’re often our worst critic and the first to point out our own flaws. Try to show yourself compassion in moments of stress and treat yourself with care.

• Reflect on past experiences

When faced with a tough situation, try to reflect on a time you were faced with similar emotions. How did you get through it? What skills and strategies did you employ that worked? What didn’t? Learning from past experiences will remind you of your capability to get through your current situation.

• Stay connected
  
  Although being an SME can feel isolating sometimes, remember you’re not alone. Knowing when to ask for help is a critical skill that you should continuously strive to master to ensure you’re receiving the support you need!

The benefits of social connections and values

When stress hits, it’s easy to isolate yourself from others. However, humans need to be connected. It makes us feel safer, calmer, and gives us a sense of belonging. This leads to higher self-esteem, lower stress levels and generally higher feelings of contentment.

Relationships are most fulfilling (and beneficial to our health), when our values are acknowledged by and often shared with the other person.  

To help you foster strong social connections and values, you should try:

• Actively listening
  

Every conversation is a great opportunity to switch off from external stimuli and really become present in the moment. Active listening shows the other person that you’re attentive and engaged, making them feel valued and heard.

• Allowing your values to lead

Our values are our moral guideposts of what we believe are most important in our life. Behaving in alignment with your values minimises cognitive dissonance. By extension, we lower our stress levels, and raise our positive emotions and self efficacy.

• Acting with compassion
  
  Studies suggest that acting with compassion in our connections can actually activate the pleasure centres of our brain, lower stress  inflammation in the body, and raise self esteem. It also makes us more likeable to others—meaning stronger relationships.

The benefits of mindfulness

Mindfulness for business owners is all about re-centering your state of mind into a place of clarity and calm. Having been consistently linked to better psychological wellbeing and decreased stress, practising mindfulness is a health gold-mine for SMEs. 

By practising mindfulness on a regular basis, you might find yourself:

• Focusing on the present more often
• Identifying, acknowledging and understanding your emotions more easily 
• Disengaging with unproductive emotions and thoughts when faced with change

These skills and knowledge will allow you to approach the challenges of being an SME with a more actively engaged, emotionally controlled attitude. 

Build Skills for Lifelong Mental Fitness 

Mindfulness, stress management, building social connections and resilience are all skills—they take time, practice and patience. As with developing any other skill, some guidance and structured learning is incredibly helpful to get you started.

Evidence shows there are a range of skills that underpin mental wellbeing. And, just like we train different muscles to build physical fitness, we can practise a range of skills to build mental fitness and support our ability to thrive.

Whether you're just starting out or deepening an existing mental fitness practice, the Smiling Mind App gives you practical tools you can use anytime, anywhere. And it's completely free, because we believe everyone should have access to the resources they need for mental wellbeing.