Christmas health and wellbeing advice from the Mental Health Nursing team

As you wrap presents, keep the children entertained and cook a meal for the family, Christmas is a time of the year when it can be all too easy to neglect your personal health and wellbeing.

The University’s Mental Health Nursing team provide their ‘top 10 tips’ to help you stay cool, calm and collected during the festive season:

• Be genuine – sometimes you can feel under pressure to attend a variety of festive activities, do what you want to do and don’t feel obliged to please everyone
• Be kind – the holiday period is not a positive time for everyone, take the time to be kind to others
• Be mindful – take time to stop and notice. We can get carried away with the pressures of daily life and not notice the little things around us
• Be balanced – it’s important to be aware of a balance of food and drink as it can be tempting to over indulge. This can then have a negative impact on our wellbeing
• Be active – we can get so busy over the holiday period we can neglect exercise – it’s important to keep active even if it’s just taking the stairs rather than the lift
• Be reflective – it’s important to stop and reflect on what really matters to you; family and friends
• Be in touch – it’s important to reach out to others, we can forget those around us and need to take the time to reconnect
• Be spontaneous – we spend most of our time having to work to deadlines – find something new you want to do and do it
• Be rested – it’s important to ensure you maintain good sleep, it can be easy to burn the candle at both ends so take time to rest
• Remember – the holiday period may not always be as you want it to be – if it doesn’t go to plan, don’t worry, tomorrows another day.

Have a very merry Christmas and happy New Year!