A large portion of adults in the U.S. experience mental health challenges, but over half don’t receive any treatment. In addition to seeking professional help, incorporating mental health strategies into your daily routine can help you discover a better sense of balance in your life.

In a recent webinar from EdAssist™ by Bright Horizons, Dr. Aimee Dyal, Associate Professor with the American Public University System’s Public Health Department, shared tools and resources for managing stress and developing healthy habits. Get the top takeaways to learn how to regularly build resilience and self-awareness for lower stress levels every day.

How to Stay Balanced During High-Stress Periods

Dr. Dyal defines balance as seeking an equilibrium between your effort and your load. In order to achieve an even distribution of weight, you need to focus on both stability and durability. The best way to do this is to create habits to support that balance, such as:

• Saying no
• Setting boundaries
• Asking for help
• Seeking support
• Being realistic with our time

When you’re ready to bring more balance into your life, follow the three R’s to develop all of these skills: resilience, recovery, and reflection. Your future self will thank you.

Build Resilience

Resilience isn’t something that’s innately present in most people; in fact, Dr. Dyal recommends working on it every single day. Building a resilience readiness practice includes working on your mind, body, and environment.

Find things to challenge your status quo on a daily basis. The goal is to expand the edges of your comfort zone. Need some ideas? Try signing up for a 5k, smiling at strangers, taking a cooking class, or going to dinner alone.

Want an even bigger challenge? Leave your phone in the car! As you start tackling new opportunities, notice what happens as you challenge that status quo. These daily resilience practices act as training sessions that will come to your aid when a radical disruption beyond your control emerges.

Set Aside Time for Recovery

When a major disruption or stressful event occurs, it’s all right to allocate some time to recover. But give yourself a time limit to process everything that happened. Dr. Dyal recommends one day to feel sorry for yourself. The next day you’ll have a greater sense of clarity about the situation.

During your recovery process, look at the situation using a “SWAT” analysis, which is a little different than the typical “SWOT” analysis you might normally do at work:

• Strengths: Reflect back on your resilience performance and training. Did your practice pay off? Find what you can celebrate about your performance.
• Weaknesses: View any potential weaknesses as blind spots to identify any vulnerabilities or toxic traits about yourself. These may be things like avoidance, anxiousness, or anything that didn’t serve you during a stressful event.
• Action steps: Identify how the experience can improve your practice so you can react even better the next time something similar happens.
• Thank you: Have gratitude for your performance and your practice leading up to that. You’re making progress every day!

Initiate a Reflection Practice

The final stage of staying balanced during stressful periods is to reflect and appreciate the gift of experience. In addition to continuing your resilience practice, you should also develop a mental health management style that works for you.

Dr. Dyal’s 3-3-3 rule refers to adding in three mental health practices each for your mind, body, and environment. But it may take some experimentation to find the strategies that work best for you.

Here are some ideas that give you the opportunity to regularly reflect on your life and experiences, both good and bad.

• Mind: Read inspiring books, quotes, affirmations, or mantras.
• Body: Experiment with breathwork, different types of physical activity, or even your posture.
• Environment: Introduce one new sensory experience into different environments, such as your home, office, and car.

Get creative to develop three new reflection processes into each area of your life and you’ll begin to notice a difference in your overall well-being.

Take a Habit Inventory

There are already a lot of habits built into the process of finding better balance each day. But it’s also important to take stock of other habits throughout all areas of your life, such as your coping style, adaptation style, organizational style, and bad behavior regulation.

Try to unpack yourself to develop a very personalized mental health practice. And remember that it’s a moving target.

When you remain curious both personally and professionally, you’re better able to adapt to changing circumstances and even thrive during times that may have previously stressed you out.

Go even more in-depth with these resilience exercises and more by watching the full webinar replay. Get free access today!