A study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that more than 1 in 10 people globally lived with mental health issues in 2017.
In the UK alone, it’s estimated that 1 in 4 people experience mental health issues each year, and in the US that’s 1 in 5.
It’s a lot — especially if you consider that most of the people facing mental health issues either don’t realize they do or don’t report it.
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Studies found that the average person in modern-day America spends at least 10 hours per day in front of a screen.
We are busy.
Busy scrolling, watching, writing, learning, thinking. We work hard, and when we aren’t working we either think about work or numb out on our social media feeds or other addictions that help us disconnect from our busy mind and get some (perceived) rest.
In our free time, we might go to the gym, museums, cinemas, or pubs.
What is the problem with this, you may ask?
There are two problems with this:
- They are all indoor activities.
- It’s all about doing.
Never in history have humans spent so little time in physical contact with animals and plants.
And while medical technology continues to improve to fight the rampant diffusion of mental health issues, most of us ignore what’s the easiest and smartest thing to do to preserve our overall well-being:
spending time in nature.
This Is How Nature Changed My Life
I used to be a typical indoor person.
Every morning I’d drive to work, spend 9 hours of my day in an office, drive back home, and meet my friends at a bar or go grocery shopping.
On weekends I’d do some house chores, relax on the couch and see my friends again for dinner and an evening at a club.
I come from a long line of sedentary indoor people.
I have no memory of my parents ever taking me anywhere in nature as a child. And I lived in a city surrounded by mountains.
My lack of fresh air was so profound that at some point I developed a nasty sort of allergic reaction to the sun’s rays.
It lasted two years, during which I couldn’t go out in the daylight without getting a very bad skin rash.
Things changed when I adopted my first dog, Mia, and then met my current partner.
Together we moved out of the city, to a small village surrounded by woods. His love for hiking and trees made me discover the beauty of nature and its healing powers.
Before I knew it, I started choosing long walks in the woods with my dogs (we later adopted another one) over hanging out in the city.
I started inviting my friends over to spend some time outdoors with me rather than meeting them in pubs.
Everything in my life improved.
My health, mood, creativity, inspiration, spirituality, career, personal growth — everything.
We Need Nature to Thrive
There are hundreds of studies proving that nature has benefits for both physical and psychological human wellbeing.
Being in touch with nature improves blood pressure and heart rate and activates the brain areas devoted to stimulating quiet, relaxation, rest, digestion, and energy intake. It reduces stress levels and contributes to bringing the body-mind back to a state of peace.
We all know that, right?
What you might not know is that the benefits of nature for our well-being are not limited to relaxation:
- Contact with nature has a positive impact on happiness, well-being, and social interactions, and gives a sense of meaning and purpose in life.
- Being exposed to nature (even via video) brings significant improvements in your attention, positive emotions, and the ability to reflect on a life problem.
- People with access to nearby natural settings show increased levels of satisfaction with regard to their homes, jobs, and lives in general.
- Green spaces near schools promote cognitive development in children and green views near children’s homes promote self-control behaviors.
- Being exposed to natural environments improves working memory, cognitive flexibility, and attentional control.
- Looking at nature from your window while performing a task results in fewer mistakes being made in accomplishing the task.
The view (even on screen) of nature scenes helps to recover faster after acute mental stress.
The list could go and on, but the bottom line is:
Spending time in nature makes you healthier, happier, and more productive. And this is all proven by years and years of research.
How To Add a Touch of Nature to Your Busy Life
There are so many things we can do to take in all the benefits that daily contact with nature does to our bodies and minds.
Experts recommend spending at least 20 minutes per day outdoors, and although it’s really not much, it can seem a lot when you have a busy schedule and no time for any extra activity.
Like always, it’s a matter of choices.
If you see the value in something, you need to make a conscious choice and make time for it.
However, there are a couple of things that you can do starting today while you work on making space for the actual 20 minutes outdoors — and these won’t cost you an extra second of your time:
- Go for a hike on weekends instead of going to the shopping mall, museum, etc.
- Instead of going to the gym to exercise, go for a jog
- Choose nature over cities for your next vacation
- When you have a virtual meeting, take your laptop to the nearest park and attend from there
- Take breaks from work and look outside of your window. If you can’t see anything green, look at the sky
- Hang pictures of natural landscapes that give you good vibes in your office
- When performing a repetitive task, put on your earplugs and listen to some sounds of nature
Surrounding ourselves with nature is not difficult.
As obvious as it might sound, nature really is all around us.
We just need to make a conscious effort to allow ourselves to unplug, quit the doing for a while and just be.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash