How To Connect and Uplift Your Finances and Wellbeing
Let’s talk about the expensive elephant in the room: financial wellbeing.
Financial wellbeing and your own physical and mental wellbeing are closely intertwined. Stress and anxiety around prices take a costly toll on your mind and body’s wellness, as well as your budget.
What’s more, the cost of living crisis has become a significant source of stress for many people, as housing, healthcare, and education costs continue to rise. The panic stories on the news certainly don’t help our stress levels!
On the other hand, good financial health can contribute to a sense of security and peace of mind, which can improve our mental wellbeing. The key is to link money with mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Control what you can, let go of what you can’t - a form of mental wellbeing training that uplifts and restores balance.
Financial wellbeing is just one of The Four Pillars Of Wellbeing which make up our all-around mental and emotional health - the other three being social, psychological, and physical. It’s vital to get an important balance of all four.
Wondering ‘how do I manage my financial wellbeing’? We’ve put together some tips to give you back financial control and practice mental health and wellbeing training.
Take A Breath
According to the Mental Health Foundation, more than one-third of UK adults feel anxious about financial circumstances, and 29% feel stressed about money.
Money worries can cause a great deal of stress and anxiety, which can have a negative impact on our mental health.
Financial stress is a common source of anxiety and depression. Money worries can make it difficult to sleep, cause headaches and muscle tension, and make it hard to focus on daily tasks. Financial stress can also lead to feelings of hopelessness, shame and isolation.
It's essential to slow down and focus on self-care during times of stress. Easier said than done - taking time for yourself may seem counter-productive when you’re worrying about money. But getting plenty of sleep, eating well, and moving your body will get you in a better frame of mind to practically tackle any sources of bad news, unrest, or anxiety surrounding the cost of living crisis, the 24-hour news cycle, or finances in general.
Mindfulness examples:
Have a nighttime routine
Meal plan (a great budgeting tip that keeps you nourished)
Go for a daily walk
Play a sport you enjoy
This links us back to the Four Pillars Of Wellbeing. Uplifting your social and physical wellness will do the same to your psychological and financial wellbeing too. Starting off slow and building up good habits of rest, eating well, and exercise ground you. You can even try taking these grounding practices to work; staff - wellbeing ideas or mindfulness and wellbeing courses can greatly improve office happiness.
Set Goals and Budget
One of the most important things to do when facing financial stress is to take control of your finances.
By taking control of your finances, you can reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed and helpless. This means creating a budget, setting financial goals, and seeking outside help.
With costs rising and the current climate changing at a rapid pace, monitoring and dividing up your income and expenses gives you that money mindfulness control, banishes money worries, and uplifts financial wellbeing. It's important to make sure you have a good understanding of your financial situation, by keeping track of your outgoings you can identify areas where you can cut back… Make sure to budget for treating yourself too! Or else you risk burnout and being back at square one.
Setting financial goals can give you something to work towards and help you stay motivated. How do you set financial goals? By identifying specific, measurable, and realistic targets for your financial future. That could be building an emergency fund, saving for a large purchase, or paying off debt. It’s important to consider your current financial situation, plus your short-term and long-term needs.
Practice Gratitude & Mindfulness
Now you’re eating well, moving, resting, and budgeting, keeping little pockets of happiness and mindfulness throughout your day will feed into all aspects of your life: including your financial wellbeing.
We can get overwhelmed by what’s on the news, or that we don’t have the newest trendy thing. Practicing gratitude and mindfulness can help you to focus on the present and appreciate what you have, rather than worrying about what you don't have.
By focusing on the things we are grateful for, we can shift our perspective from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. This gives us nice guidelines for mindfulness that can help us to appreciate what we have and feel more content with our current financial situation, rather than constantly striving for more. Additionally, gratitude can help to reduce stress and anxiety, which can be a major source of financial insecurity.
Bonus: being more present in the moment and paying attention to our thoughts and emotions lets us identify and address any negative patterns or behaviours that may be hindering our financial goals.
Financial Wellness is Mental Wellness
“The goal isn’t more money. The goal is living life on your terms.” - Will Rogers
By taking steps to improve our financial wellbeing, such as creating a budget, setting financial goals, and seeking professional help, we can also improve our mental health and overall wellness. Goodbye, money worries!
Take care of your mental and physical health
Create a budget
Set financial goals
Practice gratitude and mindfulness
Taking control of our finances, focusing on self-care, seeking support, and remembering that we're not alone, gives us the tools that can manage stress and uplift our financial wellbeing.
Looking for more wellbeing ideas for staff? Mind It offers health and wellbeing courses online and in person. Corporate mindfulness workshops promote the benefits of mindfulness in the workplace, improving office happiness, productivity, and overall health.
In our Financial Wellbeing workshop and webinar, we explore options to help to improve your finances, with budgeting tips and long-term planning to make sure that finances aren’t a worry anymore.
For more guidance and information, get in touch with us at: info@mind-it.co.uk
