Consistency beats intensity every time

I know a person who is known for his consistency. You might think he is predictable. The best part is that he is never spiralling around. He knows exactly what to do when. There is so much calmness then.

I, on the other hand, will remember what I forgot while working on another project.

I recently watched a friend cook and felt it was so meditative. She was speaking to me peacefully and answering my questions while attending to her food on the stove. A gentle stir here and a peep at the other pan boiling rice. Life flowed smoothly with a gentle rhythm.

I suddenly felt empowered. When I cook for others, I am usually petrified, worried what could go wrong. I remember the first time I fried something; my brother had to remove the battery from the fire alarm.

There are some individuals who learn cooking as a habit, just watching the family members do it. It can build confidence. For others, it could be a trigger for stress. Food is nutrition and part of nurturing, so cooking is an essential skill, and it is better to make it our hobby.

For some people, it is communication skills that cause stress. We live in a society, and we need to interact, but our minds have their own ways with our thoughts. Dealing with people, whether in a classroom or an auditorium, requires one need — the need to be accepted. This can make us nervous or anxious.

There is one factor we forget, and that is that even the members of the audience are vulnerable, because everyone is quietly fighting their battles and complexes. Some are trying to overcome the inferiority complex, while others are surfing on the superiority complex.

Whoever is going through either of these extremes tends to feel people are avoiding them. It could be that other people are sensitive and do not want to go through painful experiences, and the result could be a lot of unhappy people.

The routine is a good thing, but if it is just another chore, then there is no magic to it. Instead, if it is something that makes you happy and smile, then there is every chance that routine is going to be celebrated and form a habit.

According to experts, there is a four-step framework to build a realistic routine that actually sticks:

​This requires us to audit our day and to anchor our habits.

You know how we tend to add a new activity and give up in a few days' time. The gym memberships we enrol in and never attend after a few days.

​They say instead of trying to find a brand-new block of time, habit stack — attach a new small wellness action to something you already do every single day.

​While the morning coffee or tea is brewing, do two minutes of deep breathing or stretch your hamstrings.

​And another example is while brushing your teeth at night. They say it is the best time to do a quick mental review of one good thing that happened today.

​And then we need to cap activities at "micro-doses".

​Do you know why consistency beats intensity every time? I suppose it is because intensity is short-lived. Its very nature allows us only to indulge in it for a while. Consistency is more peaceful.

They say keeping our self-care practices remarkably small makes it feel impossible to fail at.

​Five minutes of journaling or reading a book (not scrolling) sounds more practical and doable than writing a whole story or reading the whole book.

​A brisk 10-minute walk during lunch or between meetings is manageable rather than beating the traffic to take a stroll at the beach.

So that is a look at mental and physical activities, but we also need to look at the emotional aspect, and that could be even saying "no" to one non-essential task or meeting this week.

​One of the major factors of mental health issues is the workplace burnout. The professional urge is to protect our transition buffers.

​It seems burnout often happens because we bleed work into rest with zero transition. So what we actually need to create is a five-minute buffer between modes, and we need to have two transitions: morning and evening.

​The morning transition is having at least five minutes of quiet time or looking out a window before checking our phone or email.

​The evening transition is when we have to practise "brain dump" on a notepad at the end of your workday — 'To close open mental loops so you don't carry stress into your personal life.'

​The one day of the week we can audit ourselves on what felt nourishing and what felt like a chore? Accordingly, we can adjust.

For those moments when you ever feel overwhelmingly anxious, we can try the grounding "5-4-3-2-1" technique.

Thoughts tend to spiral at times, but the sensory grounding can bring our focus back to the physical present.

​This is how we have to do it: notice five things that we can see around us, look for four things we can physically touch or feel, three things we can hear, two things we can smell and finally one thing we can taste, or it could be one positive thing about yourself.

The world celebrated World Mental Health Day on October 10. Mental health must have been an issue from the beginning of humanity.

Mental health challenges affect millions of people worldwide today across all demographics, yet barriers like stigma, high costs, and lack of resources, and fear of breach of confidentiality frequently prevent people from seeking or receiving help.

It is time to remember that bringing back a smile to a person's face could be one of the most precious gifts we can ever give to someone.

Quite often all one needs is a sincere listener.