Emotional Health

Up to now, I’ve written about physical health and even to some extent about mental health or rather mindset but emotional health also plays a huge role in your overall health. Before you can answer the question, how happy are you, you must answer what emotional factors are affecting your daily happiness?

Do you get up thinking like “oh great, I have to go work again’“ or have thoughts like “I feel happiest at work because coming home means a lot of stress” or similar thoughts? Both are related to your emotional well-being. Most of the time and depending on your situation you can control whether you continue to work at that job or not. Bringing your job and your job stress home isn’t going to help your home life either. Whether one knows it or not, your bad day can affect others at home so even if you are sharing your bad day, you are still bringing that stress home. So what should you do? Not talk about it? It depends because if you talk about it and it elicits that negative, stressful feeling again then don’t bring it up and if you are looking for advice on how to handle the situation, then bring it up but be prepared for answers that you may not like.

People are very receptive at home when your day is bad.  Spouses, kids, parents, etc. all know when you are coming home with baggage so whether you think you are doing a good job of hiding it or not, be aware that it is definitely reflected through your actions and even non-actions. How can this affect your overall health?

Well, consider this, stress increases cortisol so to minimize this find outlets to release it via an activity you enjoy—working out, tennis, racquetball, swimming, listening to music, reading, etc. An activity that you enjoy after a long day, even if your home life is stressing you, can only enhance your emotional health.