A great question!

1. First of all, It's not a matter of "should".
   It's totally possible to live one's life without ever going on a wellness retreat, meditating, or reading a self-help book. However, there are incremental things you can routinely add to your life.
2. Secondly - you do not need to be broken or need fixing to work on your mental health routinely.
   But like everyone else, as you grew up, you've picked up beliefs systems, habits, and expectations, some of which may not be aligned with who you want to be in life.

The personal growth practice is individual mental health and wellness activities based on your present needs.

For example, if you're struggling with intimacy or relationships. Or critical of yourself or others. Feeling depressed or not knowing what you want. Then creating and committing to a regular personal growth practice will help you identify more supportive behaviors, which will lead to different results.

• It can also help you build acceptance towards what you cannot control.
• It can help you heal from the past, especially if you've experienced hardship or trauma.
• It can make you more resilient and recover quickly.

It starts with self-care, setting healthy boundaries and commitment.

Basic formula:
The basic formula backed up by science is: spending time x being courageous x being loving x being aware = deeper connection.
Benefits:
Longer life, less stress, increased happiness, sense of meaning. Only then can our body relax, and then we feel safe and connected.
Common regrets:
One of the most common regrets people have at the end of their lives is " I've spent too much time on work" and "little focus on my relationships."

Steps to deepen relationships.
The past 30 yrs of research show that the relationship deepens when our vulnerability is met with compassion. Everyone plays a role in creating such moments. It consists of:

1. Personally being vulnerable with others. Self-disclosure plays a central role in the development and maintenance of relationships. When someone compassionately responds to us, we feel seen, heard, and accepted as we are. Openness → trusting the other person → creates deeper relationships (spending additional time with them and getting closer).
2. How we respond when someone is being vulnerable with us. Consists of creating a safe place, validating their feelings and experiences, and offering support.
3. Good communication is at the heart of all good relationships. This includes setting and respectfully communicating our boundaries. This is associated with trust: do we feel safe to share what we want and need. The word courage traditionally means "speaking one's mind by revealing one's heart.

We need to tend to our relationships to make them strong. Growing deep roots in our relationships. However, stressful periods can feel lonely because bonds tend to slip down in our list of priorities. Knowing what we value in life allows us to take action to live a life that is meaningful to us. This allows us to make active decisions on how and with who we want to spend our time.

There are various scienced-backed techniques to help you recover from stressful situations while on the go. While you're at the office, with your families, or riding the bus.

In an acute bout of stress, the first step is to be willing to feel our uncomfortable feelings rather than trying to avoid them. Mindfulness meditation is an excellent way to come into our bodies, practice acceptance, and get close to stress-related feelings. These can be physiological sensations like tight chest, high heart rate, exhaustion, or emotional states like irritability or fragility.

Often, taking five to ten minutes to focus on our breath can give us a moment of rest and relaxation, critical components of stress recovery. We recommend finding a seat in a chair and taking long, slow breaths. You can find a guided meditation like this on the 29k: Mental Health app.

Another technique available to help you meet stress at this moment is the body scan. This exercise scan is a form of meditation that brings awareness to your whole body and can help you feel the particular effects of stress in different parts of your body. This is an essential part of learning to recognize stress in yourself before it becomes overwhelming.

Stress will return, and that's ok because it's a natural part of being human! However, it's easier to meet stress with grace in the future when we know we have strategies to manage it.

Anxiety reactions are part of a major alarm system in your body that reacts to threats or danger, sometimes called the "fight or flight" reactions. All the physical reactions associated with anxiety are our body's way of preparing to take action in the event of perceived danger. Interestingly enough, this is a significant evolutionary advantage that has kept us alive for centuries.

It comes with an intensive unsettling feeling of discomfort and can manifest in a lot of different ways. Some of the symptoms you can experience can be pressure over your chest or a fast/hard heartbeat. Also, dryness of the mouth, a stomach ache, feeling dizzy, or muscle weakness. Sometimes it may feel you're living in a bubble, disconnected from your surroundings and feeling like an outside observer of your own thoughts or body with a loss of control over your thoughts or actions.

When we're anxious, we tend to do things that make us feel better in the moment, making things worse in the long run. This throws us in an endless loop. And the more we do to overcome the state we're in, the more anxious we feel. We call this feeding the anxiety monster. We engage in these kinds of behaviors because they make us feel good at the moment. They give us a false sense of being in control.

To work on your anxiety, we have several exercises and courses in the 29k app and as always, reach out to your local health care provider.

Yes, It can be hard to be a parent.

But, remember... Good enough is good enough. No one is perfect, and that's the way it should be.

Research states that focusing on the important elements below will take you far:

• love, warmth, tenderness
• positive interactions
• quantity is quality when it comes to parenting

We all know that, what you pay attention to and prioritize, you will see better results, which means your recovery time. For example, many of you have been on an airplane, and the safety of your children depends on you. So, ensuring your oxygen mask is secured on your person before assisting others is another example you need to work on yourself to be able to help anyone.

Concrete tips:

• Try to create child-controlled time
• Focus communication to children, what they should do instead, not what the child should not do
• Always encourage effort - not results
• As a parent, do something crazy - tell them it was wrong and that you regret it (if you do)
• Confirm that all emotions are okay - but not all behaviors
• Act as a role model - children do as you do, not as you say
• Pay attention to what works and iterate
• Make it easier for the child to do the "right" thing.