What is mental health? How do get to be mentally healthy and how do we maintain it? In this podcast I will share with you: 4 Things Mentally Healthy People Do 10 areas that contribute to mental health 7 Ways to Maintain your Mental Health You don’t want to miss this one!    Show Notes:   Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis of The Chic Site 3 in 30 Podcast Dr. Leah Weiss   This post contains affiliate links.   Show Summary   Today I want to talk to you about mental health.  I think it is something we are really lacking in today’s world and something that is so important.  Most people think that mental health is just a lack of mental illness.  A lack of depression or anxiety.  I also think some people think they are mentally healthy because they don’t have a diagnosed mental illness like bipolar or schizophrenia.  But what I want to offer you today is that mental health is not just a lack of mental illness, but it is a state of awareness and well-being.  It determines how we handle stress, how we relate to others, and make choices.  Mental health is about mindfulness and where your thoughts and intentions are at all times.   Now that being said, if you suffer from mental illness from a chemical imbalance,  I think you can still achieve mental health with the help of medication.  I think medication is also helpful to get someone to the point where they can be more mindful and shift their thinking so that they can get mentally healthy and don’t have to be on medication anymore if they don’t have a chemical imbalance.   There is so much to mental health that I want to talk about today.  What does it mean to be mentally healthy and how to get there. But first WHY?  Why do we want to be mentally healthy?   I was to a podcast and the host was interviewing Rachel Hollis.  If you don’t know who she is, she is a female entrepreneur and runs a lifestyle website.  She recently came out with a book called “Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop believing the lies about who you think you are so you can become who you were meant to be”  I’ve heard great things about this book and I think it encompasses a lot of things we talk about here on the podcast and in my coaching program.  But on this particular podcast I was listening to, she said as she was writing this book she was looking back over the hardest things in her life and the whole time she was trying to figure out how to SUFFER less.  And I was thinking about that and isn’t that what we all want? We want to suffer less?  And whether the situations truly hard, or we just find it hard because of where we are in our life, it is still suffering.  And that is what Life Coaching does for people.  We teach you what you can do to suffer less.  We think that our circumstances are causing our suffering, but really they aren’t.  It’s our thoughts and how we are dealing with our circumstances that cause our suffering.   But someone who is mentally healthy is able to deal with those circumstances a lot better.  I see these posts on facebook of women who are constantly struggling with anxiety about driving places, and going to their kids soccer game, and making a phone call to make a doctor appointment.  And all of that is suffering!  And that is not healthy!  And that is no way to live!  That is not what Heavenly Father wants for us!  He wants us to be brave and courageous and confident in our abilities to deal with anything that comes.  I want that for you!  For you to feel confident and empowered, and that you can deal with whatever.   For example - I was talking to a friend of mine this morning.  She is the one who originally introduced me to Life Coaching and has been getting coached herself.  May is always a crazy month for everyone - I call it May Madness!  Along with all the end of the year school stuff, sports, she also has her birthday, her husbands birthday, and 3 of her kids birthdays.  And May is usually just so insane.  But this year, even though she just had just as m