Wellness in the 21st Century is being treated as important as academic achievement for all sorts of reasons. Apart from the fact that happier people work better at their jobs, getting into the habit of treating your mental health as a priority ensures you are in good practice for future life. Here are our tips on what you should include in your plan for keeping a positive mental space as a student.

What Does Wellness Look Like?

Everyone has a different conceptual idea of what positive mental health looks like. For some people, it is seeing a therapist regularly or getting good exercise, or eating healthily. Rather than work from someone else’s list, make sure you are coming up with ideas that are right for you and make sure to work on that with a counselor or other mental health professional if you have any questions. Part of that always should include a financial component because financial stress is one of the hardest to overcome at college, especially for those seeking to work in the medical profession after graduation. Remember that you can use private lenders for your medical school loans if needed because sometimes clearing those major stressors off the decks is the best thing you can to do to maintain your positive mental well-being.

Set Up Your Plan

Once you have a concept of what wellness looks like for you then you need to create some strategies so that you can maintain that state of mind. This might be that you need to set up regular sessions with a personal trainer, if exercise was included, for example. Make sure you are consulting with experts in their appropriate fields wherever possible because it can be easy to get into the mindset of “I know how to do this; I watched a video on YouTube”. While social media is a valuable resource for learning and sharing information, checking in with someone who is a qualified expert in the field for an in-depth session ensures you are taking the best advice to move forward.

Identify College Resources

Some of these maintenance strategies may be easier since you are in full-time education. For example, student discounts exist for gyms all over and you can use that discount to put towards other costs, for example, therapy once a month. Otherwise, you can contact your college or student’s union to find out if there are college subsidies for using services connected to the field that you are most interested in. Undergoing therapy from one of the students training in the area, for example, may mean that you get free access to a counselor for a set period of time.

Evaluate

Like all plans, time needs to be evaluated and modifications need to be made if needed. Did the nutritional expert you hired as part of the process work or did she just suggest vitamins to take on a weekly/daily basis to improve your sleep? Having a look at all of these strategies and plans you have in place to ensure they are worthwhile is also a healthy practice, especially if you are planning on going into academia after you graduate.