The older you get, the stronger you realize the relationship is between your mental wellbeing and your health, relationships, work performance, and life satisfaction. Of course, knowing your mental wellbeing needs to be a priority is a much different thing than knowing what you can do to help improve it. The following will explore some ways women can care for their mental wellbeing. Of course, these tips can also be applied to men.

1. Address Harmful Thought Processes

Study after study has shown that your thoughts influence your health, mood, and life. Sometimes dealing with harmful thoughts can be as simple as asking yourself: wait, do I know that’s true? Actually? You’ll be surprised how often you accept thoughts that are clearly incorrect if you take a second to think about them. You might also want to apply some positive affirmations for women; as you work on your thought processes, you might need to put aside some time to deal with what arises within you mentally, emotionally, and physically. If you feel resistance to a positive affirmation or the rejection of a thought that is objectively false, you might need to ask yourself why—what sort of experiences led you to have this self-limiting belief? How can you prove to yourself the belief is wrong? If someone is trying to get healthy, they might discover internal beliefs like ‘There are no healthy foods I like; I’ll have to be miserable or healthy; I can’t enjoy food and be healthy.’ All you have to do is find one food that’s healthy that you do like to prove that thought wrong. Just one food. Look for ways to disprove harmful thoughts.

2. Learn How To Breathe Properly

That’s right. You’re probably breathing wrong. It turns out that when people breathe through their noses, they get 30% more oxygen than when they breathe through their mouths. This extra oxygen floods the body and contributes to feelings of focus and mental clarity, and helps combat stress. If you can’t breathe through your nose (and you don’t have a cold at the moment), this is an indicator that something needs to be addressed. Get your allergies tested as there might be something in your daily life causing congestion, and if you are found to have allergies, don’t resort to relying on allergy medication as long-term usage severely damages the gut microbiome, which is needed for a balanced mood; focus on removing the allergen from your life. If you have no allergies, consider some breathing exercises that can help strengthen the nasal passages as, often, this area can become weakened if not used.

3. Seriously Reconsider Birth Control

This is a tougher subject to broach because many women rely on hormonal birth control to maintain the lifestyle they desire. Of course, think about this information in relation to your situation and weigh the pros and cons carefully. This being said, most women are not truly informed of the consequences of using the hormonal birth control pill or other hormonal contraception methods like the patch, implant, or IUD. Hormonal birth control has hefty impacts on your hormonal balance, meaning it alters your mood, your sleep, your appetite, and your priorities.

4. Put Plants In Your Home

Humans evolved to thrive in natural environments, so it should come as no surprise that the human body and plants function symbiotically. You breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide; plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. Having plants in your home improves the oxygen levels, which helps keep your mind clear and your stress levels down. It also boosts your mood and cleans the air of toxins - our homes are brimming with toxins from our cleaning products, the materials our clothes and furniture are made out of, our hygiene products, plastic products, and air pollution.

All of these toxins wreak havoc on the endocrine system (the hormonal system), which damages mood, ruins sleep, messes with our appetites, and destroys our ability to handle stress. Do yourself a favor and fill your home with plants. If money is a bit of a struggle for you, know that there are countless types of plants that can be grown at home from cuttings off of friends’ plants. Ask friends for some baby spider plants or cuttings or even pick plants from the wilderness you like (just be sure to get all the roots). You can even find excellent soil on a hike if you need a bit of that too.

The above tips were selected for this list because of their ease. Each of these things can be started with little to no effort and will contribute to greater mental wellbeing, which will have a positive impact on every aspect of your life.