It’s more than natural to feel the weight of everything that is going on and is yet to be done during a move. Believe it or not, moving takes the cake as one of the most stressful scenarios, succeeding only to bigger ordeals like death and divorce. Now that you know this, you might feel a little more at ease with how nervous you’ve been about your upcoming move. And no, putting your mental health in one of many storage boxes around you until you’re through with the move is not an option.
Conducting a successful move and taking care of your mental well-being does not have to be two mutually exclusive things. There are practically applicable ways to prioritize your mental well-being during a stressful move, and we’re going to let you in on them.
Curb unpredictability as much as you can.
We’re not saying that you can fully ensure that no unexpected things pop up during a move, but we’re saying that trying will really help your mental well-being. Nothing triggers stress quite like things not going according to plan or unplanned hiccups that you cannot figure out a solution to. Having a tentative roadmap for doing everything is the most useful thing you can do for your mental peace. So, try and plan everything beforehand.
Don’t leave the decisions you can make now for a later date, and certainly don’t think of winging anything. Pick the moving date with all things considered as soon as you can. Decide the kind of help you’re going to need, whether calling on family or hiring movers and also have a plan in place for how you want to approach both packing and unpacking. Having measures in place to counter accidents of all kinds should also be heavily considered.
Keep yourself optimistic.
It’s more than easy to see an unending pattern of things going wrong during a move. When you think of everything that there’s still left to do down to how you’re going to manage to adjust to a completely new location, things are going to start feeling overwhelming. Take a breather, and remind yourself of all the reasons you thought of moving in the first place. There are certainly a lot of advantages to it; otherwise, you wouldn’t have dived into the entire process.
When the water seems like it’s getting over your head, have a list in place to remind you of all the positive aspects of the move. Whether you’ll be moving to a bigger space, a better neighborhood, or closer to a better workspace, every little dimension counts. Negativity is, unfortunately, one of the biggest sources of stress during a move, and you need to counter it with realistic positivity.
Don’t carry everything by yourself.
One of the major reasons why you are mentally feeling overwhelmed during a move is that you’ve probably taken on much more than you can do. Often, the ones who have a tendency for perfectionism or are people-pleasers end up being the ones whose mental health is absolutely devastated during a move. They’re either too ashamed to ask for help for fear of not inconveniencing others or feel as if no one can do things right.
If you feel like you identify with any of these behaviors, then you need to take a step back and reassess. Distribute moving tasks with other family members and enlist others for help too. You’ll be surprised at just how willing people are to provide help to their loved ones. They simply might be holding back because they don’t want to overstep. Trim the weight that falls on you for the move and watch how your mental health improves for it.
Visualize for results.
During a stressful move, you can almost always picture what and which things might go wrong. And then, as a rule of thumb, they always end up happening that way too. This is because you’re visualizing the negative parts and then manifesting them into existence. Try to switch this one up to not only attain the right results but also help yourself process a better and more workable plan for things.
Picture how you see your items packed, the order, how your inventory is going to work out, and then how you see yourself approaching the unloading and unpacking processes. You’ll have a clearer and more tangible strategy in place and will also motivate yourself to do things the right way. This is also the part where integrating an extra pinch of optimism will do wonders!
Don’t compromise your health.
Mental health is impacted by a variety of things, but one sure way to wreck it is to be inconsiderate about your body’s well-being. Lots of people tend to skip sleep and eat during a move. They believe that they’ll accomplish a lot more in the wee hours of the night, which is actually a strategy that’s bound to backfire pretty fast. Nothing eats away at your mental well-being like being sleep-deprived and famished.
Your body lacks the energy to do anything during the move day, and then you put pressure on it and yourself to do things it does not have the capacity to get done. The number one rule for good mental health during a stressful move is to take care of your physical health. Eating well and on time as well as clocking in an appropriate amount of sleep, are all things that will come in handy for a hassle-free move.
Here’s the bottom line:
Going into a move without considering how your mental health is being affected by it is the first of a few steps toward a full-fledged breakdown when you least expect it. Facing the move with an open mind and plenty of preparedness are key to overwhelming yourself as less as possible. Also, allowing yourself the grace to be cared for and share the burden with others are also golden rules to keep yourself sane while also making sure that move progresses smoothly!